Email plays a crucial role in team collaboration and business communication in general. A staggering 72% of adults prefer to interact with brands and retailers via email, according to a study by research firm marketing sherpa.
Naturally, teams work hard to be efficient at managing group emails.
but, the unfortunate truth is that you can’t rely solely on email in its original form. lacks basic collaboration features such as assigning, delegating, and tracking task progress.
So businesses turn to G Suite/Gmail Collaborative Inbox when they run into this roadblock. why? because it’s a google product and people expect it to work like gmail.
Unfortunately, this is only a temporary fix. let’s see how.
index
- what is google collaborative inbox in google groups?
- what are the biggest problems with google collaborative inbox?
- 1. your team will have a hard time using google collaborative inbox
- 2. there is no way to sync your emails seamlessly
- 3. the internal communication becomes a hassle
- 4. you will have difficulty finding the status of emails
- 5. there is a huge room for duplication of work
- 6. you will have to deal with many more emails
- 7. you will not be able to measure the performance of the team
- manage shared email accounts directly from gmail
- effortlessly delegate emails to your team (no forwarding)
- know email status in a jiffy
- avoid nasty collisions and duplication of work
- facilitate internal discussions
- harness the power of reporting and analytics
what is google collaborative inbox in google groups?
Google Groups Collaborative Inbox, as the name suggests, is a Google product to help teams distribute and track accountability for emails that arrive in team inboxes like [email protected] or [email protected]
why do we need a solution to manage group emails? because email was designed for personal use. when you want to distribute and share responsibility between team members, gmail really doesn’t do a great job.
the only way you can share information or collaborate with others is the traditional functions like cc, bcc, fwds; It’s no secret that they bloat inboxes and confuse people.
It hurts even more because we already have trouble managing emails every day.
As a result, many Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) administrators turn to Google Collaborative Inbox because it’s built by Google. and they make awesome products. but, not this one.
When you start using Collaborative Inbox, the first thing you’ll notice is that it’s not collaborative at all.
what are the biggest problems with google collaborative inbox?
1. your team will have a hard time using google collaborative inbox
the google collaborative inbox user interface is nothing like gmail. first of all, it was not designed to work as an email client. it’s a brand new interface that looks completely different than any other google app.
Your team will have to spend a lot of time getting used to it. the UI isn’t intuitive like gmail (I love gmail. I’m sure you do too!).
also, they will have to constantly switch between their gmail inbox and the collaborative google inbox; it is very likely that some emails will be lost.
Switching inboxes is also a huge distraction for your team. And according to this study, the cost of distraction is enormous:
2. there is no way to sync your emails seamlessly
When your team uses Google Collaborative Inbox for a scenario like, say, customer service, making sure your emails are always in sync and up to date is of the utmost importance.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case with Google Collaborative Inbox. To keep your inbox in sync, your team members should always remember to cc the email id from the google collab inbox while replying to your customers.
If they don’t do this or even inadvertently forget to do this, the email won’t appear in the collaboration inbox. and this could be a critical point of failure because your team members won’t even know these emails exist.
This would of course lead to a loss of liability and perhaps a barrage of dissatisfied customers.
3. Internal communication becomes a hassle
No matter which team you’re on: sales or customer service, seamless team collaboration is crucial to getting work done effectively.
sometimes you’ll even have to collaborate with other departments for various reasons. However, for Google Collaborative Inbox users, neither internal nor cross-functional collaboration is easy. mostly you have to rely on long email threads, ccs and forwards. too many emails!
4. you will have a hard time finding the status of emails
let’s say you’re providing customer support from gmail and start using google collaborative inbox.
an email arrives and one of your teammates responds to the customer from his personal inbox. unless that person copied the group’s email address into the reply, they won’t know. no one on the team will know that the email has been answered.
let’s say that person remembered to copy the group’s email address in the reply, but the client “replies” and doesn’t “reply all”; again it is a single person.
You and the rest of the team will always be in the dark about the status of emails.
5. there is a huge room for duplication of work
When you and your team don’t know if an email has been answered, chances are someone else will start working on it.
Imagine you lead a sales team using Google Collaborative Inbox and two sales executives end up responding to the same lead. you’ve ruined your first impression right there. for all you know, you would lose the client by not being professional.
The same applies to customer service teams. An email arrives and two people start working on it at the same time. and then both reply to the same client: you’re basically telling the same thing to the client twice.
Even when you’ve assigned the email to one person, the rest of the team won’t know about it. to them, email looks unattended unless they see a response.
6. you will have to deal with many more emails
A good team tool should make it easy for people to communicate and collaborate. they should be able to exchange information without writing more emails.
but, within a collaborative google inbox, the only way to communicate with a teammate is by writing more emails.
Do you have any questions? send an email and you will get an email response. do you have a status update to ask? send an email and again receive an email response.
basically, when you use google collaborative inbox, the only way to exchange information with someone is via email, which unnecessarily clogs everyone’s inboxes and slows down teamwork.
7. you will not be able to measure the team’s performance
When you run your support or sales from Google Collaborative Inbox, it’s absolutely important that you know how well the team is dealing with emails.
Within a Google Collaborative Inbox, if you’re looking to monitor team performance, all you’ll know is the number of emails received and sent.
You have no way of knowing how your team handles emails. For example, if you use Google Collaborative Inbox to manage support, you won’t have answers for (a) the average first reply time, (b) the average time to close a ticket, or (c) who on your team needs more training.
running support or sales without knowing how well your team manages emails is like driving a car with your eyes closed.
well, the hard truth is that google collaborative inbox is not suitable for doing sales or support, or anything that requires collaboration from your team.
and that’s why we built hiver.
how hiver helps you achieve seamless team collaboration
hiver has an answer for all the shortcomings of google’s collaborative inbox. let me explain.
manage shared email accounts directly from gmail
When you use hiver, you can create shared inboxes for your email accounts like [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected]
and you can manage these shared inboxes from your own gmail inbox. You no longer have to log in to a third-party interface like Google Collaborative Inbox.
You’d love this: When you use hiver, there’s no limit to the number of users you can add to a shared inbox. otherwise google does not allow more than 25 users to access a shared gmail account.
effortlessly delegate emails to your team (no forwarding)
hiver allows you to delegate emails to your teammates without having to forward them. all it takes is two clicks from the gmail sidebar.
Your teammate can start replying to that email thread the moment you assign it to them. you don’t even have to copy them.
Know email status in a jiffy
every time you want to know what happened to an email you’ve assigned to someone, you won’t have to send another email reminder.
hiver tells you the status of each email in your shared mailbox: open, pending, or closed. it becomes visible again to everyone who is part of the shared inbox.
unlike the collaborative inbox, you’ll have access to the replies your team sends even when you’re not copied on them.
avoid nasty collisions and duplication of work
When you assign an email to someone, everyone in that shared inbox can see it. the whole team will clearly know who is working on what.
Within a hiver shared inbox, emails are categorized into different groups: unassigned, mine, team, pending, and closed.
When you enter a shared inbox, the default view is “unassigned”, which will only contain emails that no one has started working on. you can go ahead and assign them to your team.
There is no room for confusion or duplication of work.
facilitate internal discussions
hiver allows your team to communicate with each other using email notes that are like chat messages that appear right next to the email thread.
Using notes, you can communicate with anyone who is part of the shared inbox. notes are useful for many things:
-
- You want to broadcast a question to all members of the group. start the note with @all and it will notify everyone in the group. anyone in the group can now reply to your note.
- you want to communicate with a specific person. start the note with @name and only that person will be notified. you can now exchange messages with that person as you would in personal chat.
- You want to add some context or learning to email that you think might be useful in the future. just write it down and it will stay with the email.
Basically, you and your team write fewer emails when you use hiver notes. you can completely eliminate internal emails if you use notes the right way.
leverage the power of reporting and analytics
When you run your support or sales from gmail, it’s absolutely pertinent that you keep an eye on how well the team is handling emails.
Within hiver analytics, you have access to all vital customer support metrics, right inside your inbox.
and much more!
with hiver, you also have the possibility to:
-
- automate key actions like assigning emails and live chat messages based on pre-set rules.
- save email filter combinations as views (such as all emails emails from austria that cynthia is yet to work)
- save the canned responses as email templates. Easily embed it in responses and share it with your team.
- Collaborate on your email responses by sharing email drafts. write an answer, have a colleague review it in real time.
more information about hiver
hiver is the world’s first customer service software designed exclusively for google workspace. To see how you can streamline your team’s workflows and improve efficiency, you can:
- request a demo
- sign up for a 14-day free trial