{"id":12285,"date":"2022-09-06T14:11:34","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T14:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helpcrunch.com\/blog\/?p=12285"},"modified":"2022-09-06T14:11:35","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T14:11:35","slug":"shared-mailbox-best-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helpcrunch.com\/blog\/shared-mailbox-best-practices\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Shared Mailbox Best Practices: Keep Your Team on the Same Page"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You’ve got a new message <\/em>\u2013 this phrase triggers many customer service reps’ emotions, from a sigh of relief to eye twitching. Why does the second scenario happen? Well, let’s see\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say that there are four reasons: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) Customer support agents don’t know their duties and competencies, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) The email inbox is crammed to the gills, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) There’s no route plan when a new query lands in the inbox,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Lack of an appropriate tool to help deal with incoming correspondence fast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is pretty obvious: complete pell-mell in the inbox<\/em>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you relate to this situation at least a tad, we won’t let you skip a beat (as we always do!). Because there’s an ideal way out \u2013 a unified inbox. Read on to find out what this thing is as well as some shared mailbox best practices so that your team runs like a charm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

What is a shared mailbox?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A shared mailbox (aka inbox) stands for a special folder where all the incoming correspondence lands and teams can process it working in tandem. They can send emails back using one common group email address, for instance, info@, hello@, sales@<\/em>, support@,<\/em> etc. Basically, this is what Gmail or Outlook accounts are all about.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you hear about such a mailbox for the first time (which I doubt, of course), there are some of its major use cases that your company might embrace:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customer support <\/strong>\u2013 let’s say, your support team has this shared inbox: supportheroes@company.com<\/a> (or any other name you pick, this is the catch!). Each time a client shows up with an email support request, it’ll land in this very inbox. Prioritize or move queries automatically and manually, escalate more complex issues, and infuse knowledge base to search related articles immediately. So you don’t have to ask Lucy from the sales dep or Mike from the devs team to forward you that email. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sales department<\/strong> \u2013  I guess this inbox tends to be the most jammed one in a company. When a prospect or a new lead contacts you over email, the sales reps open the ball right away. You can round-robin<\/a> customer requests in the inbox so that each team member gets the same workload, set reminders to follow up, etc. No mishmash, lost opportunities, and killed deals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketing team <\/strong>\u2013 each time you have an interested partner scouring your website for contacts, they see marketing@company.com<\/a>, so that’s half the work. The next step is when they actually contact you. And the whole beauty is that you won’t be looking for their email for ages as everything will come to one inbox. That’s time-saving and helps you always stay in the context. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

7 shared mailbox best practices to boost team collaboration  <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now that we’ve talked the talk, time we discussed the key agenda \u2013 the best practices for managing a shared mailbox. Get ready as these recommendations are worth the salt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Gather all communication under one roof<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Remember the times when your dialogues were scattered across the desktop and tabs? You never knew who wanted what, where this or that info was, and why on earth Tim from your department asked you to loop in the discussion with a client. This dumpster fire ate up your time and nerves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a shared inbox, you’ll be free of such a pain in the neck. Duh, this is what the whole concept is about! Live chat, email, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger conversations will float into the same place.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2757\ufe0fJust a casual mention: being a customer communication platform your team will thank you for, <\/em>HelpCrunch<\/em><\/a> provides a shared mailbox as well. So it doesn’t matter what messenger your customer uses to write you, no message will fall through the cracks. To test-drive it, <\/em>create a free account<\/em><\/a> (14 days, no strings attached). <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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How the HelpCrunch shared mailbox looks like<\/em>
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2. Orchestrate emails the right way <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever calculated the number of emails you receive every day? I guess you’ll get more than 100. They’re all different, and that’s why each of them requires its own organizational game plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, you get an email where a customer asks about your pricing policy. This is clearly a sales team case. Or here is a technical issue that needs to be escalated quickly. A devs team would be of help the most. If your software allows it, use labels or tags to organize everything logically. This would be the easiest way.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Using tags to label and file a conversation<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

To make all this a coherent picture, there is one more hack. We at HelpCrunch have already forgotten what a cluttered inbox looks like thanks to custom inboxes<\/a>. Oh, this feature is a blessing! Judge by yourself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n