Email Instructions
Email Instructions
We use Google Chrome as our browser for our general Email client. We also login to STARS with the Chrome Browser. The advantage of this is we can click on links to emails from STARS and it will open the email in Gmail, a great time saver! Email is a huge part of our communication with customers, shippers, carriers and even with drivers too. There are several advantages to using email.
- Time saver – If you can send an email you save time in not having to make a phone call.
- Reference – Because the information in written down, there is less confusion when providing information over the phone and someone having to take information down by hand.
- Time Date – We save all emails and they are a great way to time/date stamp when a conversation happened. It’s a lot more difficult for a carrier to say “you never told me that” when you have it written down in an email.
We all share a Google Gmail account for administrating our emails. There are several points that we want everyone to follow.
- Do not delete emails. Use the archive button instead. This allows us to reference the email in the future as necessary.
- Every dispatcher has their own personal email, but we primarily use the trucks@heavyhaul.net email and then just sign your name at the bottom.
- Because all emails come to one account we all have access to read the emails, so do not use your email for personal emails.
- If you read an email that does not concern you, be sure to mark the email as “unread” if it was unread when you opened it. Otherwise the intended recipient might not notice the email.
- You can “star” an email you want to come back to later.
- When an email has been read and no longer needed be sure to archive the email and keep the inbox clean of unnecessary emails.
Labels – Gmail calls the left side navigation “Labels”. They are used with filters that automatically place an email from a sender into the correct label. An email will still show up in the inbox, but will also show up in the label whether the email has been archived or not.
STARS – Our software has the ability to send emails to customers and carriers. With just a click of a button you can type a quick message and send and email straight from STARS. If, for example, you want to update a customer on the status of their load, you can type “your load has been delivered”. All the rest of the information for the email has already been applied by STARS. Your name, load, etc is automatically entered.
Faxes – We use email to both send and receive emails. If someone needs to send us a fax, just provide them our fax number 417-312-2925 and we will receive it in our inbox in Gmail.
- Inbound Fax – Subject will read as follows: New Fax Message from (xxx) xxx-xxxx on (date) at (time). The attachement is a PDF so you can open it with Adobe PDF reader or similar program. From this point you can save the document on your computer or print it on you printer or just archive the fax for future reference.
- Outbound Fax – To send a fax is simple. You type the number followed by @rcfax.com example: 4173122925@rcfax.com. You then must attach a PDF document to the email. You can leave the subject line blank. If you need a cover sheet with a comment, then you can type that in the subject line of the email itself. This is generally not necessary but it is available. The body of the email does nothing, so it does not matter whether there is text in the body of the email or not.
It can be helpful to read emails as they come in as a learning tool. You can get familiar with terms and how certain things are discussed between customers, drivers, and carriers. There is generally no sensitive information in these emails, so feel free to read away.
