At the end of 1999, the Akio Mail Center first version was specifically designed at a customer’s request based on detailed specifications. The idea was to develop an inbound email management system from the telephony management solutions - the Akio Mail Center was born ! 

Since 1999, Akio has been particularly careful to collect customers’ needs, suggestions, ideas and/or remarks. We consider Akio users’ contributions as essential to make our software evolve in the right direction. This regular feedback quickly materialized as the "Akio Users Club". 

Akio collects functional evolution needs from both customers and/or prospects. Those requests become the first steps of future version developments. At year end, we establish a roadmap for the new version’s functional development. The roadmap is stewarded by the frequency of the requests, functional priorities, market evolutions, and so on. This roadmap is then submitted to Akio Users Club for consideration and comments. 

Once the roadmap is established, we produce mock-ups to present to our customers.  We offer our clients a concrete vision of the new future version. Mock-up presentations are done by group.  Customers are gathered according to their emails treatment usage (some customers are call centers whereas others are organized in small autonomous teams) and their branches of industry. A customer can freely express an opinion during the presentation allowing the exchange of ideas and feedback. Subsequently, the development phase is implemented. 

Upon completion, our customers are invited once again for a “beta version” presentation. This version can still be slightly modified according to their comments. 

The last "Akio Users Club" meetings took place in February and March 2006 and no less than ten groups were joined together representing more than thirty Akio customers.