Learn the Benefits of a Shared Inbox for Improving Customer Support

Customer support is one of the most important parts of any business–it’s how you interact with your customers, build relationships with them, and keep them happy–but it’s also one of the most challenging. There are a lot of moving pieces involved in customer service, from understanding what your customers want to fielding questions about your product or service. And if you’re not careful, all those moving pieces can cause chaos in your inbox—and lead to poor customer experiences as well! That’s why many companies have started using a shared inbox for improving their customer support operations: they provide an easy way for everyone on staff to collaborate and respond to incoming messages quickly and efficiently.

But what if you’re not a big company with lots of employees? How can you use a shared inbox to improve your customer service operations—and still keep it simple? Here’s how.

Define a Process for Using a Shared Inbox

Defining a process for using a shared inbox with your team is critical to ensuring effective customer support. If you don’t have a shared inbox, you can still use this process for managing incoming messages. You may just want to consider using a shared inbox as your primary tool for doing so, though. So how do you set up a process for using a shared inbox?

Choose the Right Tool

Choosing the right tool is the most important step. When choosing a customer support solution, look for a platform that meets these requirements:

Train Your Team

Ensuring your internal team knows and understands how to use the shared inbox you are implementing is crucial to success. Make sure everyone understands that the goal is to reduce email clutter and ensure nothing gets missed in their emails, so they know what information to include in their responses.

Measure the Results

Once you’ve set up your shared inbox, it’s time to measure the results. To do this, you need to define what metrics you want to track and how you will measure them.

For example, if one of your goals is to increase the response time of your first touch after a support ticket, then each week after implementing shared inboxes, look at how quickly responses have been sent from each group and compare that against previous weeks or months.

Once these numbers are within your target range, then congratulations! You’ve now got measurable results that tell you whether or not using shared inboxes has been effective for your customer’s needs.

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Customer Engagement Tactics for Small Business

A Shared Inbox can Improve Customer Support Quickly and With Little Up-Time

A shared inbox can help improve customer support very quickly and take very little time to set up. Shared inboxes are an inexpensive way to provide better customer service, and they’re easy to use even if you’re new in the field of customer support.

The best thing about a shared inbox for customer service is that they don’t require as much training or onboarding as other software as a service (SaaS) solutions do—it’s as simple as opening an email app on your computer or using a mobile phone app. Some shared inboxes even work across different devices so you can use the same program on your computer at home and then access it from your smartphone when you’re out and about (or vice versa). Mobile access to a shared inbox is a great way for small teams and startups to manage customer service when away from their computer.

Set up a Shared Inbox for Internal use

Shared inboxes aren’t just for external use either. A tool like Spike lets you create a shared inbox for internal teams. A great example of how to use this is having a group for your IT team to chat about open help desk tickets or your marketing team to share the latest design mock-ups. The benefit of a shared inbox is that it keeps your team in the loop and allows them to get things done without having to email back and forth in new threads. You can also control who’s in the group so that only certain people have access, which prevents too much noise from getting into the channel.

With Spike, there’s no need to download new software or apps for team communication. Anyone can join a Spike Groups chat at any time, just as they would on their favorite messaging app. But instead of sending messages via that platform’s interface, you’ll be using your email inbox to communicate with other participants in the thread.

Spike Groups offer real-time communication, immediate replies, and a simple app design that streamlines project management. It also makes it easy to find attachments or files—everyone has access to the files they need when they need them.

Spike Groups are also a great way to help teams work together on projects. You can create a Group for your team’s next project, invite everyone involved in the thread, and get started right away. Team members can use their email inboxes to communicate about the project and keep track of everything that’s happening, resulting in an email management experience that solves all sorts of problems.

Summary

We have seen that a shared inbox is a quick and easy way to improve customer support and internal collaboration. The benefits of using this type of tool are numerous and include helping your team share information, find answers more quickly when communicating with customers, and save time by eliminating communication breakdowns between departments or teams. The best part about shared inboxes is that there are many different types of solutions available for you to choose from. You can find a program that fits your organization’s specific needs, whether it’s customer service, sales support, or project management with your team.