Email Support

What Is Email Piping, and How to Set It Up on WordPress?

Have you ever thought about making your support emails more efficient? Imagine if these emails could find their way to the right person automatically! What if emails could be sorted and sent to the right support agent or even grouped based on what your customers need help with? That would be neat. This whole email automation process is known as email piping.

In this post, we’ll explain what email piping is and, more importantly, show you how to set it up on your WordPress site. And guess what? We’ll do it using one powerful native WordPress plugin called KB Support. So, grab a coffee, and let’s get started!

What Is Email Piping?

Email piping, or email-to-ticket conversion, is setting up an automated system where incoming customer emails are automatically routed, categorized, and assigned to specific support agents or teams based on predefined rules or criteria.

Let’s say you run a customer support team for a gadget company. You could set up email piping, so whenever customers email support@gadgetco.com, their messages get automatically categorized. For instance, emails with “Technical Issue” in the subject line could be directed to your tech experts, while those with “Billing Question” might go to your finance team.

Benefits of Email Piping for Customer Support

When it comes to email piping, you’ll find that various tools come with their own set of cool features. And the cooler the features, the more awesome stuff you can do with them. So, it’s like picking the perfect tool for your task. If you go for a top-notch one, you can unlock even more advantages and get the most out of it.

Here are some major benefits of email piping:

✅ Efficient Ticketing: The key benefit of email piping is that it automatically converts customer emails into support tickets. This ensures all support requests are neatly organized in one place, making tracking and managing them more manageable for your support agent.

✅ Categorization: Email piping also ensures that each query reaches the right person who can help the customer best. It classifies emails into different categories or departments. For instance, sales inquiries go to the sales team, while technical issues go to the tech experts.

✅ Priority Handling: Some emails are more urgent than others. With email piping, you can set rules to prioritize certain types of emails, ensuring that high-priority issues get immediate attention.

✅ Faster Response Times: With email piping, your support request doesn’t get lost in the ether. It’s prioritized and assigned, leading to quicker responses.

✅ Centralized Communication: All your interactions with the company are neatly organized within your support ticket. No more searching through a cluttered inbox.

✅ Improved Customer Experiences: Support agents can provide more personalized and efficient assistance because they have all the info in one place.

Now that we’ve discussed how email piping can be a game-changer for your customer support, let’s dive into how you can set it up on your WordPress website.

The best tool you can use for the process is KB Support.

Introducing KB Support: Best Plugin to Set Up Email Piping on WordPress

KB Support is the ultimate helpdesk and support plugin for WordPress.

Think of any web-based helpdesk tool and its features like a fancy ticketing system. With built-in knowledge base support, the power to customize things the way you like, a user-friendly interface that’s a breeze to use, the ability to connect with other apps seamlessly, top-notch ticket management, robust security and privacy controls, and excellent email support. Well, you’ll find all of that in KB Support.

The best thing about KB Support is that the base plugin is FREE. You get all the essential features to kickstart and create a solid support system on your WordPress website.

If you’re looking for more advanced features, you might want to think about investing in KB Support’s premium extensions. The best part? They come at really budget-friendly prices, too!

Consider investing in KB Support’s premium extensions for more advanced features. The best part? They come at really budget-friendly prices, too!

To top it all off, KB Support is a super user-friendly and beginner-friendly plugin. You won’t have to break a sweat or write a single line of code to make the most of KB Support and its extensions.

Now, as we focus on the Email Support Extension, let’s explore some of its main features before diving into how it operates.

Features of Email Support Extension

• Effortless Ticket Management: Say goodbye to the hassle of logging into a website whenever you need to manage a ticket. With Email Support extensions enabled, you can easily manage tickets by responding to them through email.
• Email-Based Ticketing: Your customers can open new tickets or respond to existing ones simply by sending or replying to an email.
• Automatic Notifications: KB Support’s automation features help you stay in the loop with instant email notifications. Your customers and support agents receive notifications about ticket events directly via email, simplifying the response process.
• Mailbox Monitoring: Email Support monitors multiple mailboxes, quickly identifying replies and creating new tickets when needed.
• Customizable Settings: You can choose whether to allow new tickets via email and specify if they should only come from known customer email addresses.
• Content Trimming: Email Support helps you eliminate lengthy email threads. You can intelligently remove irrelevant email content and focus on the latest message for a cleaner ticketing experience.
• Unassigned Emails Management: Emails that can’t be processed are organized in an “Unassigned Emails” list, and senders are notified of the issue. You can review, attach them to tickets, or delete them.
• Automation: Send specific commands in your emails, and watch Email Support make things happen, such as assigning tickets or changing their status, with verification to ensure authorized action.
• Attachment Support: Need to send or receive files? No problem! Email Support handles attachments seamlessly, considering your file type preferences.
• Compatibility: Email Support extension works seamlessly with any email provider.

How to Set Up Email Piping on WordPress?

Now that you know what features you get with the Email Support extension, let’s quickly move to its setup process.

Installing KB Support and setting up the Email Support extension is as simple as a b c.

1. Install and Activate KB Support

You first need to install and activate KB Support on your WordPress site. Because KB Support is a free WordPress plugin, you can:

1. Get a zip file of KB Support from its WordPress directory.
2. Install KB Support from your admin dashboard.

At this point, it’s safe to assume you already have a website running on WordPress. So, let’s install and activate KB Support directly from your admin dashboard.

Log in to your website and head to your admin dashboard. Then, click on “Plugins” and select “Add New.” On the following page, type “kb support” into the search bar, and as soon as you enter the name, the plugin will pop up on your screen.

WPChill develops KB Support, so ensure you get the correct plugin.

Once the plugin appears, click on the Install Now button. Once the installation process completes, you’ll notice an Activate button. Click the button to complete the process.

As soon you activate the plugin, new Ticket menu options will display on your WordPress dashboard. This will also help you ensure that KB Support is successfully enabled.

2. Get the Email Support Extension

Once you install KB Support, the next step is to complete the purchase of the Email Supporting extension.

You can buy bundle packs including all KB Extensions, such as Advanced Ticketing System, Custom Ticket Status, and Knowledge Base Integrations, or you can get an individual extension. The choice is yours.

If you want to buy a bundle pack, go to the pricing page of KB Support, choose your preferred premium package, and complete the payment process.

To get the individual extension, go to the Individual Extension page on KB Support’s site, click the Add to Basket button, and complete the necessary payment details.

Once you complete your purchase, you’ll get the extension’s Zip file. Check this tutorial to install and activate KB Support’s premium extensions.

3. Configure Email Piping Settings

As soon as you upload the Email Support’s zip file and add its license key, you can configure the email piping settings of KB Support.

To do that, head to your WordPress dashboard and click Tickets >> Settings.

The page will take you to the main Settings page of KB Support. Click the Email Piping tab.

When you click on the tab, it’ll take you to a page where you can configure email piping settings. On this page, you’ll see different choices to adjust these settings. Let’s go through each option to determine what each does.

General Settings

The first sub-tab is General Settings. Just like the name suggests, it’s where you can handle all sorts of basic email stuff, like dealing with incoming emails and making new support tickets.

• Custom Reply Addresses: This option lets you decide whether your agents can use their custom email addresses when replying to tickets.
• Open New Tickets: If you enable this option, incoming emails that don’t match any existing ticket will automatically generate a new one. For instance, a customer emails you about an entirely new issue with your product. With this option enabled, the system creates a fresh support ticket for this unique problem.
• Must be Registered: This setting works with the “Open New Tickets” feature. Only people already registered as support customers can create a new ticket via email if you enable it. If not, it’s open for all, and new customers will be added automatically.
  This feature works great if you offer premium support to customers who have bought your product. Enabling this setting means only those registered customers can send support requests via email. Others will need to sign up first.
• Anonymous Replies: When this is on, anyone can add a response to a ticket via email, even if they’re not the ticket owner or an existing participant. The system will make them a participant so they get updates on the ticket. But remember, you need to have the “Ticket Participants” feature turned on for this to work.

I’ll show you how to activate Ticket Participants, but ensure you’ve set up and saved your Email Piping Settings first.

To enable ticket participants, go to the main Tickets tab, check the option Enable Participants? and click the Save Changes button.

• Ticket ID Wrap: KB uses a specific method to identify tickets based on how you format the ticket ID within the subject line of emails. The characters you choose here play a key role in how our Email Support extension recognizes a ticket number. You can set characters that wrap around the ticket ID in the email subject.
  When you include “##” in the subject line, it’ll look out for tickets with a setup like “##300##. If you add prefixes or suffixes for tickets, they’ll also be part of the search.
• Trim Previous Content?: If you enable this option, your Email Support will automatically delete everything in the reply emails except for the most recent one.
• Poll Mailboxes Every: This option is like setting a timer for when your email inbox checks for new messages. By default, it is set to check your inbox every 15 minutes, but you can adjust it as you prefer.
  This setting is based on a built-in WordPress cron feature & requires activity on your website to execute the polling tasks. If there are visitors for a while, it may be checked less often.
• When Processed: This setting lets you decide what to do with emails after you’ve handled them. You can delete them forever, mark them as “read,” and keep them in your inbox.

Once you are done setting up General Settings, hit the Save Changes button, scroll the page up, and go to the next sub-tab, i.e., Server Connections.

Server Connections

The Server Connection page is the main page where you can see a list of all your email accounts that you’ve set up. It displays a list of your configured email connections and some valuable stats. These stats include when your email was last checked, how many new messages were found during the last check, and the total number of messages in your mailbox.

Here you can:

• Add a New Connection: If you want to add a new email account, click the Add Server Connection button, and you can input all the necessary information for the new mailbox you wish to connect to.
• HTML and Plain Text: Choose how you view your emails – either as HTML text with all the fancy formatting, like pictures and links, or as Plain Text, which keeps things simple.
• Edit or Delete: Either Edit or Delete your email connections right here. It’s just like editing or deleting a contact from your phone.
• Test Connection: Tests your email account’s health–it’ll ensure everything’s running smoothly and give you the lowdown.

Once you add your Server Connection, Save Changes and move to the Notifications sub-tab.

Notifications

In this sub-tab, you’ll find setting options for emails that can’t be processed for one reason or another.

• Notify Sender?: This option lets you notify the sender when their email isn’t processed.
• Notify Admin?: If you enable the above Notify Sender option, you can also check this box to include admins in the notifications sent to the email sender when their emails can’t be processed.
• Unassigned Reply Subject: Here, you need to define the subject line for the email sent to the person who sent an email that we couldn’t process.
• Unassigned Reply Content: Here, you can add the message sent to the person who sent an email that we couldn’t process. You can provide all the necessary information, including text and multimedia content, explaining why their support email couldn’t be processed in detail.

Once done, click the Save Changes button and move to the Email Error Log sub-tab.

Email Error Log

Email Error Log logs errors related to email sending or receiving. You’ll find error messages, codes, timestamps, recipient and sender details, and descriptions of issues.
This log helps you diagnose and resolve email problems by providing a clear record of what went wrong and aiding in troubleshooting and improving email communication.

Wrapping up!

So, here’s how you can get email piping up and running on your WordPress site using KB Support and its Email Support extension. KB Support simplifies the whole email piping process without burning a hole in your pocket.

You don’t need to be a coding whiz to set up KB Support – it’s user-friendly. Plus, it’s incredibly cost-effective compared to other web-based helpdesk tools.

Even more incredible is that since KB Support is a native WordPress plugin, you won’t have to stress about integrations and messing around with APIs. So, why wait? Grab KB Support now to streamline your support system.

What are your thoughts on this article? Feel free to share them in the comments section below!