Shared Inbox: Team Collaboration and Customer Support
Shared Inbox: Team Collaboration and Customer Support
Emily Rivers
Marketing & Product
May 16, 2024
8m
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TL;DR: Shared inboxes centralize communication, enhance accountability, and streamline customer interactions. Limitations encompass potential for duplication, security concerns, and management complexities. Top shared inbox tools include Productlane, Google Collaborative Inbox, Outlook Shared Mailbox, Intercom, and HubSpot. Effective shared inbox management involves organization through tags and internal notes, logging in with personal credentials, and clear communication guidelines.
What is a shared inbox?
A shared inbox, sometimes called a shared inbox, is a collaborative platform where multiple users can access and manage incoming emails or messages from a single email address or communication channel. It serves as a centralized hub for many business operations, including customer emails, support tickets, sales queries, and even internal conversations.
Usually, your team members sign in using their own personal inbox credentials and then access the shared inbox so they can work on incoming messages and assign emails to different team members. Shared inboxes are perfect for customer support teams who may need to draw on colleagues' expertise to answer a customer query. They also help to distribute work evenly among teams so no single team member is left dealing with the entire inbox.
What is the difference between a shared inbox and a normal email account?
The main difference between a shared inbox and a normal email account is that multiple people can have access to the same inbox without having to share one set of login details. While a normal email account is typically owned and accessed by an individual user, a shared inbox is accessible to multiple users within a team or organization. Shared mailboxes have their own email address but can be directed to an individual user's inbox, allowing team members to collaborate, assign tasks, and track progress efficiently.
It's much safer to use shared inbox tool for a support team inbox or another group inbox. With a shared inbox, every team member uses their own login details to access the inbox, whereas if your team were accessing a normal email inbox, they would all have to use the same login details. This is less secure and could lead to data breaches, which could be costly for your company.
Why use a shared inbox?
There are so many reasons to use shared inbox software in your business to help improve team collaboration, client communication, and more:
Streamlined communication: By consolidating messages in a single platform, shared inboxes simplify communication workflows and minimize the need for switching between multiple accounts. They allow individuals to assign conversations to relevant team members to ensure customers get support quickly.
Enhanced accountability: With shared inboxes, the entire team is accountable for responding to messages, reducing the likelihood of emails slipping through the cracks.
Customer-centric: Shared inboxes facilitate prompt and coordinated responses to customer inquiries, enhancing overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Improved collaboration: Shared inboxes enable seamless collaboration among team members, fostering collective ownership of tasks and efficient resolution of customer inquiries.
Enhanced efficiency: Centralizing communication in a shared inbox reduces the need for forwarding emails or duplicating efforts, saving time and minimizing the risk of overlooking messages. Tools like Productlane even allow you to turn customer support inquiries into issues in Linear, so you can let your product team know about bugs or feedback without leaving the shared inbox.
Transparent communication: With a shared inbox, team members have visibility into each other's interactions with customers, ensuring consistency in responses and facilitating knowledge sharing.
Scalability: Shared inboxes can easily accommodate growing teams and evolving communication needs, providing a scalable solution for businesses of all sizes.
What are the limitations of a shared inbox?
Like any tool or software, a shared inbox tool does have some limitations that are worth understanding before you decide which shared inbox software to use:
Potential for duplication: When many people have access to one shared inbox and can respond to incoming communications in real time, there is a small risk of different team members responding to the same email at the same time. One way to avoid this is for users to assign emails to specific team members. It's also a good idea to look for a shared inbox tool that tells you when another user is typing (often called collision detection) so these clashes are less likely to happen.
Security concerns: Although it's better for security that all users of a shared inbox log in with their own details, shared inboxes can still pose security risks if sensitive information is not adequately protected. Make sure you run data protection training with all team members who use shared inboxes so they understand how to keep customer information secure.
Can become difficult to manage: Managing access permissions, organizing messages, and ensuring efficient workflow management can become challenging as team size and message volume increase. Future-proof your shared inbox by choosing shared inbox software that will grow with you.
What is the best shared inbox?
The best shared inbox software for you will depend on your business needs and what you want to use it for. Here are our top choices:
1. Productlane
Productlane's shared inbox is ideal for growing customer support teams. Assign conversations to different team members, use tags to help organize your inbox, and write internal comments to your team members to avoid duplicate responses.
The best thing about Productlane's shared inbox tool is that you can create issues in Linear directly for your development or engineering teams so they can act on customer feedback or problems as soon as possible. And once the issue is fixed, you can close the feedback loop by letting the customer know you've made changes based on their feedback.
2. Google Collaborative Inbox
If you're an early-stage business or have a small team, you can leverage the power of Gmail and Google Workspace and use the free Google Collaborative Inbox. Google Workspace users can create a Google Group, essentially a folder, that multiple people can access through their own email accounts.
Once members are added to the group, they'll have access to and can respond to customer conversations within this Gmail inbox. However, it's not a full solution and you may run into duplication issues as your team expands.
Outlook Shared Inbox
Ideal for businesses already using Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Shared Mailbox offers a familiar interface and robust collaboration features for managing shared inbox. If you have automapping enabled, any shared inboxes that your team members have been given access to will appear in their Outlook app.
However, there are limitations to Outlook's solution. There's no way to assign emails to different team members, and there's no internal team chat function to collaborate on specific customer conversations. Again, as your business grows, you may run into productivity and duplication issues.
Intercom
Known for its customer messaging platform, Intercom also offers a shared inbox solution that enables teams to manage customer conversations across multiple channels efficiently. It allows teams to provide customer support across the entire customer lifecycle and through other channels besides email, all from one central hub.
The good news is that Productlane integrates with Intercom, so it's easy to add conversations and segments into your Linear issue tracker.
HubSpot
HubSpot's shared inbox feature is part of its comprehensive CRM platform, offering seamless integration with sales, marketing, and customer service tools. It supports Gmail, Office 365, and many other email clients so you can link all team members to relevant shared inboxes. You can use email templates, canned responses, and shared drafts so your customers get the support they need.
With Productlane HubSpot integration, you can sync contacts to push feedback to Productlane and see the delivery status directly in HubSpot. That makes it easy to tell customers when their feedback has been acted on.
Shared inboxes are a powerful tool for enhancing communication, collaboration, and customer service within businesses. By understanding their functionalities, benefits, and the best shared inbox tools for their size, organizations can harness the full potential of shared inboxes to drive efficiency and excellence in their customer support teams, sales teams, and more.
