You can send follow-up messages to immediately respond or answer some questions in an e-mail and send additional responses with answers to remaining questions at a later time. For example, you may want to acknowledge a message with a response and let the customer know that the question requires investigation. Or, a message may contain several questions, some that you can answer immediately and others that require research.
When you create a follow-up message, the following occurs
The new message inherits the case number from the original message
The text from the original sent message appears in the Incoming Message box
The reply for the previous question appears in the Outgoing Message box after the words "Previous Reply Follows," if you have selected to include incoming message text in the reply.
If you create a follow-up message from a message in your Inbox, the follow-up message is added to your Inbox when you send the message. If you create a follow-up message from the Find Results or Customer History windows, the follow-up message is added to your Inbox and opens immediately.
Important! Follow up messages are treated as originated messages; originated messages are not escalated.
Consider the following when creating a follow-up message:
From the Inbox, you can only create a follow-up message for one message at a time. From the Find Results window, you can create as many as you want.
You cannot create a follow-up message and apply Route or No Answer actions to the original message. However, you can create a follow-up message to a completed Route or No Answer message from the Find Results or Customer History windows.
You can create a follow-up message and apply the Forward and Track or Collaborate actions to the original message.
You can create a follow-up message to a follow-up message.
When you create a follow-up message, the text that displays in the Incoming Message window is not necessarily the same as the original message. For a follow-up message to a no-answer message, the Incoming Message window displays the original incoming message. For a follow-up to an incoming message that has been replied to, the Incoming Message window contains the response to the original incoming message. For a follow-up to a follow-up message, the Incoming Message window displays the first follow-up message text.
Important! Completed follow-up messages do not show up in Statistics under Completed messages because follow-up messages have the same case ID that the original message has. If you search for completed messages (CTRL +F) in your Inbox, the follow-up messages are displayed.