10 Best Practices for Managing Team Inboxes

Research indicates that the average professional receives 120 new emails each day. When they have little else to do, and the emails don't require much other than a quick response, it does not appear to be a problem. However, that is rarely the case.

Most of the time, there's a lot more work waiting to be done, and at least half of those emails require more than just a courteous reply. That's where team inboxes can be a great help. They reduce the burden on the individual and make email management a team effort.

However, team inboxes are only truly effective when used to their full potential. So we compiled this guide to the 10 best practices for managing your team inboxes. Your journey to total email efficiency starts here.

What Is a Team Inbox?

A team inbox is a shared email account used for business, also known as a shared inbox.

Instead of individual email accounts for different team members, a shared inbox collates their multiple email addresses in one workspace. Here, all the members can access, view, and manage incoming emails, practicing teamwork at its very finest.

Team inboxes facilitate better collaboration, by allowing each team member to play a part in a smooth email management process. When used correctly, it encourages the very essence of teamwork, with everyone fulfilling their team role, while supporting others.

Top 7 Benefits of a Team Inbox

So, a team inbox is just a different way of viewing emails, right? Wrong. It's so much more than that. Team inboxes offer several distinct benefits to the business world, especially for customer service. Here are the top seven that apply to customer service in almost all business environments.

1. Centralized Communication

When each team member has a separate email account, important emails can be forgotten or missed. Team inboxes offer centralized communication, with all email interactions in one place, and ensure that important emails don't fall by the wayside

This at-a-glance overview of all incoming emails streamlines communication, and makes email management easier. Now everyone can see what queries, requests, or complaints are coming in, and what feedback needs to be going out.

2. Improved Collaboration

Team inboxes improve collaboration as they allow multiple team members to access emails and address the tasks associated with them.

Whoever has more time available can handle the emails, while the remaining teammates are engaged in other tasks. More experienced staff members can be asked to handle complex issues. This is the very essence of collaboration, with everyone contributing their unique strengths.

A team inbox also offers the opportunity for employees with the right skill sets to handle the more sensitive or demanding email tasks. For example, more experienced customer service agents can deal with more demanding customers.

3. Delegation

What's the key to successful management? If you answered delegation, you're right. Although good management requires many skills, the art of delegation plays a very important role. It promotes teamwork, yet offers employees autonomy and room for growth.

It also distributes workloads more efficiently, leading to higher productivity. Every manager knows how important delegation can be. Well, the key to successful email management is email delegation.

A shared inbox is the perfect tool for practicing the type of management and delegation that counts. It's the kind that not only gets work done faster, but also enhances customer perception of your efficiency.

4. Visibility and Transparency

Because all the team members can view the entire conversation thread at a glance, they can avoid duplicate responses to customer emails. This high visibility not only saves time but also helps to maintain a professional approach to customer service.

Sending multiple responses accidentally is easily avoided when your email software has a feature called collision detection, which prevents duplication of responses. But if you don't have this feature, it's still much easier to avoid duplication with shared inboxes than multiple separate ones.

Team inboxes offer transparency, too. Now, no employee's responses to emails are easily checked. There's no room for error. This means they will take greater care in addressing emails punctually and professionally. All of this leads to higher quality customer service you can all be proud of.

5. Quicker Response Times

Team inboxes allow team members to respond to customer queries more promptly. Anyone on the team can access the incoming messages, which means they can get replied to quickly and in order of urgency.

This is crucial for customer complaints or queries when delays only add to frustrations. There might be a good time or a bad time to send marketing emails. However, when it comes to the best time to send emails relating to customer service, it's always the same – as soon as possible!

Quicker responses don't just resolve your customers' issues faster. They also allow your team to get more work done in less time. That means your department will consistently experience higher productivity and you'll have even more satisfied customers in a fraction of the time.

This is why introducing a shared inbox into your customer service department is the easiest way to boost your customer service reputation, at minimal expense and without any extensive training or downtime needed.

6. Consistent Customer Service

In the business world, no matter your particular niche, customer service is always going to be your top priority. Your customers expect transparency, efficiency, and above all, consistency. A shared inbox for your customer support team will make it easier for you to give them what they want.

Thanks to the improved collaboration, speed, and transparency offered, customer service in general gets a phenomenal boost from using team inboxes. Customer emails are read sooner, the tasks associated with them are handled more quickly, and customers receive prompt responses.

7. Efficient Workflow Management

Team inboxes don't just improve your levels of customer service. They enhance your workflow management too. Everything flows more smoothly, unlike the disjointed processes that often arise from having separate inboxes for every team member.

But the best thing about this more efficient workflow is the effect it has on all the other workflows and processes in your company. When customers' emails are handled swiftly and efficiently, it allows the other teams addressing requests or queries to do their jobs more efficiently, too.

10 Best Practices for Managing Your Team Inboxes

The benefits of using team inboxes for your incoming customer service emails are undeniable. But to make the most of a shared business email inbox, you need to use it to its full potential. Here are the 10 best practices for managing your team inboxes for maximum benefits.

1. Establish Clear Ownership

Your department might need more than one team inbox, or you may only need one. This will depend on your company's size and the scope of your customer service. Small businesses' customer service requirements will differ from large corporations.

But whatever your size and type, your business needs properly maintained email inboxes. Maintain order by establishing clear ownership of team inboxes.

Name your team inboxes and decide which email accounts will be sharing it. Once again, this will be influenced by your unique business environment. But naming inboxes with the name of the division it corresponds to, avoids any confusion and helps employees to find their emails faster.

2. Set Guidelines and Processes

Set guidelines for how the team inbox should be used. Ensure that all employees who will be using it are aware of these guidelines. It also makes things easier for new employees who join the team, as everyone uses the same set of guidelines. This minimizes confusion and prevents mistakes.

The process will be different for a shared inbox than for separate ones. When each employee handles a batch of emails that comes to their inbox, they alone are responsible for sorting, reading, and replying. With a shared inbox, those responsibilities are also shared. It's an entirely different process.

3. Use Email Filters and Labels

An overflowing inbox is always challenging, even more so when there's no logical order to it. Organize your team inboxes with custom email filters and labels that best fit your department's needs. This will prevent the inbox from becoming disorderly and chaotic.

It will also make it easier for your team members to search for and find specific emails quickly. This can make all the difference when dealing with customer complaints. If they have to reply to an irate customer waiting for feedback, they can't spend ages searching for that email. Every second counts.

4. Assign Roles and Delegate Tasks

Assigning designated roles to specific team members. Some may be allocated the role of sorting emails into categories for the rest of the team. Others will be tasked with categorizing them further into simple requests, more complex queries, and complaints that need urgent attention.

Choose the team members best suited for these roles, but always have a backup plan. If a specific team member is not available because they are on leave or otherwise engaged, there must be another who can fill that role. But try as far as possible to stick to the designations you have set.

5 .Implement Email Templates

Do you ever feel as if you are typing the same thing over and over again, but to different customers? That's probably true. Most customer requests and queries fall into a few narrow categories and are easily resolved. Customer service email templates are the solution.

Create a few customizable templates for responding to your most common queries and requests. Implement these email templates in your team inboxes, and it will save your team a lot of time and effort. They can simply select the template that best suits the task at hand.

6. Establish Response Time Targets

Establish response time targets for customer service emails. Of course, there will be times when these targets cannot be met. This is understandable as certain customer queries may take longer to resolve than others. But a response time target gives your team a goal to work towards.

Time management is a highly valuable skill and when it comes to customer service, it can also save the company's reputation for prompt and efficient service.

Be realistic with the targets though, or you run the risk of overloading team members and causing them stress. The point of a shared inbox is to ease problems like email overload, not add to employees' stress.

7. Record Processes Outside of the Mailbox

Remember those guidelines you drew up? Be sure to include a record of it outside the mailbox, so teams can easily refer back to it when they need to. What about those templates? They need a dedicated space where teams can access them too.

Any customer support team would also benefit from a handy guide to common customer service issues and the best responses to them. Make all these resources available in a shared space on Google Docs or any platform you use for internal documents.

8. Aim for Inbox Zero

Aim for Inbox Zero and your team will be even more productive and efficient. As helpful as team inboxes can be, they get cluttered, very quickly. Filters and labels can only do so much. Every day, more emails are flowing in, and an inbox can quickly become overloaded with non-essential emails.

Unfortunately, this makes it more likely that important emails will be missed. And by the time they are spotted and opened, precious time has gone by. That's not conducive to good customer service.

So, what is Inbox Zero and how can it help? It's a method of keeping your inbox as empty as possible.

The easiest way to introduce this method is by teaching your team to methodically address email tasks. They should sort emails that must be kept into categories (custom folders are best), and delete unnecessary junk mail. Read our guide to mastering Inbox Zero for detailed email sorting strategies.

9. Prioritize Accountability

The point of a shared email inbox is that email management responsibilities are shared amongst the team. But that doesn't mean that you want everyone in the company to access those emails. Control access to emails on sensitive topics, and hold employees accountable for their shared inbox activity.

Assigning clear responsibilities to specific team members is just the start. Track responses to customer queries, monitor responses, and if you see that someone is not adhering to your guidelines, address the issue immediately. A shared inbox can only be efficient if the people who share it are too.

10. Monitor Metrics and Analytics

Your team inboxes will only work their magic for you if you constantly refine your email management processes. This entails monitoring your email metrics and paying attention to analytics and the insights they offer.

Every team is different, and you may find that some adapt to a shared inbox more quickly than others. You might notice that they aren't keeping to the guidelines you set. Perhaps they are consistently missing the response time targets. An in-depth tutorial on using the new email tools might be necessary.

Conclusion

Team inboxes in your business can enhance your customer service in many ways. Emails are answered more promptly. Staff availability is optimized. And the email management workload is distributed so no team member is overwhelmed, and no emails slip through the cracks.

To get the most out of your shared inbox, you need the right strategies, but more importantly, the right software. Helpmonks offers a collaborative approach to email management with shared inboxes, custom team inboxes, and the best email management tools.

Thanks to collision detection, reminders, internal notes, and a range of other powerful features, your team will have all the support they need for stellar customer service.

Register an account today to access your 30-day free trial.