If you’re new to the term or just want to refresh yourself, start at the beginning. don’t worry, it’s a quick read.
In this article, we’ll cover: – what is a shared inbox? – why should your team use a shared inbox? – what is the best shared inbox for teams? are some typical use cases of a shared inbox? – and some other frequently asked questions about shared inboxes?
If you’re already familiar with shared inboxes, you can skip ahead to the “why your team should use one” section or check out some “typical use cases” so you can see shared inboxes in action.
If you’re trying to decide which collaborative inbox is best for your team’s workflow, check out “the best shared inbox for teams.”
what is a shared inbox?
you may have heard these terms before: shared inbox. collaborative inbox. group email. team email.
or maybe you haven’t. but if you work in a team environment and most of your communications center around email… the very idea will give your team feelings of hope and possibility.
Shared inboxes, when truly designed for teams, are the ideal tool for effective collaboration. your company can create shared inboxes for specific email addresses, invite relevant team members and let them manage it together.
a sales@yourcompany email address for your sales team; support@yourcompany for your support team.
one for info@, jobs@, billing@, or whatever your business workflow requires.
what’s so good about shared inboxes?
managing a group email as a team without the proper structure can lead to a lot of guesswork (who saw/opened that email? someone is already on it), frustration (as keeping everyone in the loop involves a lot of forwards and cc-ings, thus flooding everyone’s inbox), or worse, errors (oh wait, 2 team members responded to the same client request!).
Shared inboxes let everyone work together and tackle incoming workload knowing who’s working on what. email exchange and email delegation become clear and simple.
no more internal copying, forwarding and cluttered inboxes.
And with all activities fully synced in real time, you can be sure everyone is on the same page. this means that accountability would be clear without further confusion. no more mistakes, no missed opportunities.
Before we get into more benefits and use cases of shared inboxes, let’s look at why your team should use one in the first place.
Why should your team use a shared inbox?
Email wasn’t designed for team collaboration, and it doesn’t take long for teams to realize that.
As a one-to-one communication tool, email is great, and to be fair, it’s done its best to keep up with modern equipment. But work environments with constant internal and external communications have expanded email in ways it wasn’t intended.
As the volume of communications increases, so does the need to collaborate. work teams have real actions that need to be taken in response to each email.
An incoming email typically leads to an internal team chat, followed by a series of actions from multiple members and multiple departments. all with periodic returns to that email, either as a reference point to report back to or as a source of additional information as new emails arrive.
so what are the teams doing? in most cases, they come up with alternative solutions. As unique as these tricks are, they’re just not efficient and definitely not sustainable as your team grows.
On one extreme end, you have teams that physically share a computer to access the same inbox. a bad step, in the wrong direction, is the teams that share passwords to be able to access the same group mail.
There is no need to go into security issues here. or organizational issues. or the fact that your email client probably doesn’t allow it.
On the opposite side of the extreme is where you’ll find companies using overloaded tools they don’t really need. tools that promise to fix everything but actually make things worse.
Shared inbox “solutions” outside of your inbox!?
It’s frustrating to be promised a shared inbox “solution” that ironically lives outside of your inbox.
The first of many complaints from your team will be the time and effort required to learn this other tool. Not to mention having to manage data between your original email client and this new third-party platform. Sporadic syncing is a common problem with solutions outside of your inbox.
what you can expect is a frustrated team requiring training sessions and long onboarding times as they struggle to manage multiple platforms.
this shows that simply having a “shared inbox” doesn’t solve your computer’s problems; forcing you to see why all shared inboxes are not created equal.
Why are some shared inboxes better than others? And which one is the best for your team?
When it comes to your team’s workflow, the right shared inbox can mean the difference between organized success or frustrating failure.
what is the best shared inbox for teams?
Now that we have a basic understanding of what a shared inbox is, let’s dive into why some are better than others.
A shared inbox will organize your incoming emails, but it won’t do much to support the actual work you need to do after receiving the email.
Most shared inboxes don’t include the corresponding features that will really benefit your team’s workflow.
what makes gmelius shared inboxes different?
gmelius brings the concept of shared inboxes into your team’s workflow.
To begin with, gmelius’s shared inboxes are designed with a collaborative-first approach. meaning your team will have the ability to work together on project and client management, without leaving their inboxes. not just the communications, but the actual work that comes out of them. With gmelius, you can carry out the associated tasks, offering an easy way to collaborate and keep everyone informed.
once you install gmelius, your gmail inbox will become your new workspace; It hosts not only shared inboxes and shared gmail labels, but also a host of other features for team collaboration and workflow automation.
but don’t be fooled. gmelius fits nicely into the gmail he is familiar with. features are out of your way when you don’t need them and easily accessed when you do.
Your new shared inboxes will be organized with a set of subfolders, making it easy to control and manage multiple inboxes with your team.
gmelius shared inboxes are organized for clarity and designed for collaboration.
You can easily share emails and delegate them to specific team members.
It’s done with just one click!
and so is changing statuses from ‘assigned’, ‘pending’ and ‘closed’, giving you clear visibility into the progress of emails and tickets.
Adding labels to emails gives your teammates additional context. they can further collaborate behind the scenes with private notes. @mentioning your teammates will automatically share the conversation and ping them with a note that runs in a chat-style thread along with each email.
With gmelius, your team can forget about conflicting and duplicate emails. teammates will see each other’s avatars if they’re viewing a shared email, and red ellipses will flash in real time if they’re replying.
As you can see, gmelius overloads your gmail inbox so no more emails get lost. think of your team’s frustration every time an email is lost. less frustration will make your team happier.
In addition, gmelius offers actionable analytics for your shared inbox.
With clear numbers to assess your team’s workload and response times, you can confidently optimize workload distribution and improve email response times.
And how can you ask? Here again, gmelius brings you a no-code workflow optimization suite so you can better distribute work and automate repetitive tasks (such as assigning specific emails to a specific teammate or delegating new requests to the team member with the least amount of time). number of assigned emails).
To better describe how gmelius turns your inbox into the ultimate collaboration tool, let’s look at how teams of all sizes, across many industries, are using gmelius.
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what are some typical use cases for a shared inbox?
Managing group emails like sales@ and support@ has never been easier, but gmelius’s shared inboxes also act as the foundation for your team’s workflows, including managing clients, projects, and accounts.
sales@yourcompany
sales teams use gmelius as a complete sales automation tool; to scale your reach and streamline your team’s workflows.
again, gmelius is much more than a shared inbox, so sales teams can:
- work together on incoming emails from your shared inbox
- organize conversations by customer name with shared gmail labels
- share and assign conversations for a clear accountability
- automate your sales outreach with smart sequences
- accelerate and scale communications with custom email templates
- collaborate behind the scenes with email notes .
- turn emails into task cards and add them to trello-like kanban boards
- get clear visibility into your sales pipelines on those shareable boards
- and more
The basis of this workflow is the sales@yourcompany shared inbox.
support@yourcompany
yes, you can turn your gmail inbox into your company’s helpdesk.
no, you don’t need expensive and difficult to use help desk software.
gmelius is the best alternative to overloaded solutions, making it easy for your team to provide the best support without leaving their gmail inboxes.
- create a shared inbox with help desk style tickets
- share emails and assign them as tickets for clear accountability
- change statuses and add labels for context
- speed up support communications with custom email templates
- organize conversations by customer name with shared gmail labels
- collaborate with each other racks with email notes
- turn emails into task cards and add them to trello-like kanban boards
- easily monitor support pipelines on those shareable boards
- and more
gmelius makes it easy for your team to manage your support@ email address by turning your emails into help desk-style tickets.
“______”@yourcompany
No matter your use case, gmelius will simplify your team’s workflows. and getting started is easy. you can create a shared inbox in a few simple steps from your gmelius dashboard.
It’s clear that if you’re part of a team that relies heavily on email, you need a shared inbox.
If your team works together managing projects and clients, you need gmelius.
Install gmelius and transform the way your team communicates, collaborates, and gets work done.
try gmelius – it’s free
and some other frequently asked questions about shared inboxes…
do we need a separate username or password for a shared inbox?
not. gmelius shared inboxes are integrated into your standard inbox. a login, a password, an inbox. Your new Shared Inbox is perfectly placed in the familiar left pane of your G Suite or Gmail inbox.
who receives incoming replies in a shared inbox?
all users of the shared inbox will receive and have a record of all replies. Depending on your workflow, you can choose to “assign” emails to specific teammates, making them the delegated owner of that conversation.
what’s the best way to organize who replies to a shared inbox?
gmelius shared inboxes allow you to structure the best workflow for your team. exchanging emails, assignments, and ticketing make accountability clear. so it’s all up to you: who can see and monitor emails versus who is responsible for responding.
can anyone send an email from a shared inbox?
yes, any member of a shared inbox can send emails with the from address of that particular shared inbox. for example, any member of the sales@yourcompany email address can send and reply to your emails, directly from their respective inboxes.
why is a shared inbox better than a google group?
google groups miss out on the main benefits of gmelius shared inboxes: being able to collaborate in real time and all shared inbox activity is fully synced with your personal inbox. you can’t access google groups from your gmail or g suite inbox. this means your team will have to manage two inboxes, each on separate platforms. and you won’t know if someone has responded or what the current status of a conversation is. With gmelius, all inbox replies and activities are synced, in real time, between all inbox members and all your devices.
what is a collaborative inbox?
if you google “collaborative inbox” most results will take you to google groups. but for the reasons stated in the answer above, google groups are not the best option for teams looking to truly collaborate. At gmelius, we define the collaborative inbox as an email address that becomes the central hub for your team to work together. they can truly communicate and collaborate, not only on incoming emails, but also on the many workflow actions that follow. gmelius is a collaborative inbox.
what is a shared inbox?
A shared inbox is the answer to your team’s internal and external communication problems. when packaged into a complete solution like gmelius, with collaboration and automation features, it is the key to your team’s success.
Install gmelius and turn your inbox into your team’s workspace!