What are Cc and Bcc, and how to use them with customer support?

If you actively use mail when communicating with clients and colleagues, a rare day is complete without copies. They are an integral part of working correspondence. Therefore, many customers, moving to Omnidesk from the good old mail, often asked about the support of Cc and Bcc. Before this functionality appeared, we received 47 (!) Requests to add it. The figure is impressive, because at best 5-7% of those wishing to write about their needs and questions.

Before we go into the details of our implementation of the copies, let's figure out what they are.

Types of message recipients

The To : ( anyone ) - the main recipient of the letter.

Cc : ( carbon copy ) - secondary recipients of the letter to which the copy is sent. They see and know about each other.

Bcc : ( blind carbon copy ) - hidden message recipients whose addresses are not shown to other recipients.

Copy examples

a. The user asked for help and asked to send answers to both work and personal mail. You indicate his personal address in a copy (Cc) so that he can answer from any address and see all correspondence in each of them.

b. The client paid for consulting / support / development, and you regularly communicate with its employees. You add it to a copy (Cc) so that it receives all your answers, can wedge your correspondence at any time and evaluate the quality of the services you provide.

in. The manager wants to monitor the support communication with VIP clients. In requests from these clients, the leader is added to the blind carbon copy (Bcc) so that he always gets your answers (with a history of correspondence).

The beauty is that the client does not know about “surveillance”, and the manager can answer you personally and, for example, make a comment :)

d. The client contacts you to discuss receiving discounts and payment methods. He immediately adds his accountant to a copy (Cc) so that he can follow the progress of communication and take the baton at the right time.

How did we implement copy support?

The above examples describe only some of the scenarios that customers "sold" to us, arguing the need to support copies on the service. We implemented all the standard points, but did not forget to add some useful features. Let's consider everything in order.

Basic functionality

1) To the right of the name of the field “Recipient” we placed two links for adding copies - “CC” and “Bcc”.



2) When you click on “Cc”, the “Copy” field appears and the link “Cc” disappears.



3) When you click on “Bcc”, the field “Bcc” appears and the link “Bcc” disappears.



4) If you click on the "remove" link, the field disappears, and the "CC" / "BCC" link returns to its place (to the right of the name of the "Recipient" field).

5) When an employee adds an address to a plain copy (Cc), his response is sent to the main address from the Recipient field and to the address from the Copy field. In this case, both users see that the letter was delivered to two addresses. Each of them can answer both the employee and employee + another user.

6) When an employee adds the address to the blind carbon copy (Bcc) , his response is sent to the main address from the Recipient field and to the address from the Bcc field. In this case, the main user sees that the letter was only sent to him, so his answer can only be sent to the employee.

At the same time, the user from the blind carbon copy sees who was the main recipient, and can send a letter to both the employee and employee + the main recipient.

7)Copy support works the other way around. If the user sends a request (or a new answer to the current correspondence) and adds another address in Cc, we automatically write this address in the “Copy” field so that when the employee answers, the letter is sent to both addresses.

Useful Chips

8) All changes in the fields “Recipient”, “Copy” and “Bcc” are recorded in the history of actions.



9) For each appeal, we remember all the addresses that were indicated in the fields “Recipient”, “Copy” and “Bcc”. Therefore, after removing the address from the field, it can be easily returned. Just click in the desired field, and we will offer to select the address from the drop-down list.



10) When the user from the blind carbon copy answers the employee and the main user, his letter is added to the appeal in the form of a regular answer. If he answers only to the employee, then his letter is added to the appeal as a note that is not visible to the main user (when viewing correspondence on the appeal in his account).



eleven)In the rules for incoming calls, we added the condition “Copy (Cc) of the appeal” so that you can track the availability of a specific address (or domain) in the copy and automatically perform the necessary actions.



12) Two new actions appeared in all types of rules - “Add to copy” and “Add to blind carbon copy” in case you need to add addresses in the copy when the appeal meets the conditions of the rule.



These are useful copies. If you have not used them before, now be sure to start :)