We have so many communications channels with friends and family, work colleagues and customers, it’s hard to keep track of it all.

In business, I am keen to use Client (or Customer) Relationship Manager (CRM) software tools. There are many such systems out there, with perhaps the biggest and most expensive (?), being Salesforce. As the name suggests, it is beloved by sales teams needing to track leads, opportunities and deals, and manage the sales pipeline.

My use case is simpler - to keep a timeline of my email conversations with a prospect, current or past customer. When did we last ‘chat’? What was it about? What was the outcome?

I have an email provider, I might have a customer facing project management system, a customer support platform and tools to manage software product development.

Through many of these tools, the one common thread is a person.

That person could be a prospect that becomes a customer, that becomes a user.

That user is probably going to need support, and may offer feedback and request product enhancements or file bug reports.