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The Bottom Line
Pros
- AwayFind lets you get away from email while urgent messages still find you
- In your auto-responder, you link to your AwayFind contact form
- AwayFind can capture message categories and forwards either to another email address or via SMS
Cons
- AwayFind could be smarter about routing and identifying urgent messages
- Lacking integration with email itself, AwayFind makes people with urgent matters repeat their email
Description
- AwayFind lets people emailing get through to you faster with urgent messages.
- A link in your "out of office" auto-responder directs people to your AwayFind contact form.
- AwayFind can send the urgent message to a separate email address (yours or a colleague's) or via SMS.
- Messages captured by AwayFind can also be accessed via the web.
- With AwayFind Professional, you can capture message categories, too, and have them handled differently.
- AwayFind provides decently worded auto-responder templates to direct people to the form — but only for urgent matters.
- A CAPTCHA makes sure only humans can submit the AwayFind form.
Guide Review - AwayFind - Email Service
You know you could spend less time accomplishing more with an email inbox less sticky than yours. You don't want to let loose completely, though, deal with email once a day, and get the urgent message too late.With AwayFind, you can get your days back and still be within reach. In an auto-reply to incoming mail, you explain your email policy (as you would without AwayFind) and link to your AwayFind contact page.
There, people can have their message sent to you via SMS, find your phone number for emergencies or learn who else to contact while you're away. AwayFind's strength lies in that contact page's flexibility: you can set it up to route messages by category, for example. For a small office, AwayFind can double as a general-purpose contact form.
Still, AwayFind could be even smarter. Integration with email — by accepting forwarded mail, for example — should allow it to send auto-replied itself, and intelligently: filters from a simple address book and keyword to self-learning algorithms or human assistants could take some burden off those sending email. They have to take a number of steps (which include copying the message from the sent email to the AwayFind form) to urgently reach you after all. This might avert non-urgent mail from first-time senders, but it could help teach frequent contacts go the urgent AwayFind route right away — and always.
Establishing sane communication expectations and a relaxed, productive email approach by sheer practice is great. Where that does not work, AwayFind is an effective and simple way to combine the freedom of handling today's mail tomorrow with the peace of mind in knowing urgent matters will find their way to you in time.
