In 2018, over 281 billion emails were sent and received around the world every single day.
With so many people using email for everyday communication, it’s no surprise that it’s become a popular way for customers to reach out to businesses when they need help.
This has also caused a rise in email technology as companies understand how important it is to provide great customer service via email. One way businesses of all sizes are doing that is through shared inboxes.
Before you decide your company doesn’t need shared inboxes, keep reading. We’re going to share nine things you need to know about shared email accounts that will help you understand just how necessary they are.
1. Streamline Email Support
In some cases, it can be impossible for one individual to keep up with an email inbox on their own. This is especially true if they have to do any amount of research before replying to each email.
However, when you have a whole team of people that are all working from the same inbox, you can provide answers to your customers far more quickly and with greater accuracy.
This is amplified with a software program in place that allows you to tag certain employees who are needed to respond to certain emails.
2. Simplify Customer Service
You want to make things as easy as possible for your customers. This is even more important when expanding your reach to new customers. If someone’s first impression of your business is that it’s hard to reach, you may end up losing that potential customer.
However, when you have a shared inbox, you can publicize that email address which makes it easy for customers to contact you. From there, the right person can pick up the email and respond appropriately.
3. Improve Employee Accountability
Transparency is an essential part of running a business today, especially when it comes to monitoring the actions of your employees.
To keep them on track, use a shared inbox where anybody can peek in on their conversations and make sure they’re providing the best possible customer service in every conversation.
4. Avoid Dropped Recipients
When an email conversation needs to include more than two individuals, the only way to do that with traditional email is to add more than one email address to the “to” box.
Then, everyone involved needs to hit “reply all” for every email, and this is where things can start to fall apart. If someone only replies to one person, others are left out and it can quickly get confusing.
With a shared email, everybody who needs access to the conversation has it. And, with a software program in place, you can also add tags so involved employees are notified of new messages.
5. Allow Easy Access to Shared Files
If your company shares a lot of files through emails, it can sometimes be hard to track them, especially if they’re going to different email addresses.
However, when you have a shared inbox, everybody can quickly get any files they need to do their job effectively. You also don’t have to figure out who has the file and who doesn’t since everybody can get it.
6. Easily Scale Up
Let’s say you’re currently using a personal email address of one team member for all questions related to a certain topic. As your business starts to grow, you’ll have more inquiries coming in which that person may begin to struggle to respond to.
The obvious solution to this is a shared inbox that comes with a more general email address. That allows you to add as many team members to that area as necessary to keep up with the demand.
7. …Or Down
Now let’s consider you have an employee that needs to be let go. However, it’s their name on the email inbox where people are sending all of their questions about one of your products or services.
What happens when you need to let that person go, or they leave your company? Making the switch to a new person with a new personal email address will be tricky and can cause some customers to lose trust in your company.
This is something you don’t have to worry about with a shared inbox. You can easily reassign the responsibility to someone else for a quick and painless transition to a new team member.
8. Better Security
Security is something all business owners today should be focused on. While the majority of attacks come from outside of a company, there are others that come from within.
One way data can leak out of your company is when former employees still have access to their email accounts or have been using a personal email address to communicate with clients or coworkers.
A shared email inbox gives you complete control over who has access to it, so you can remove those who no longer need to use the inbox and protect your company from data breaches.
9. Has Software to Improve Usability
Although there are some disadvantages to using a shared inbox, these can be avoided by using a software program designed specifically to help you improve customer support.
Some features of shared inbox programs include:
- Adding tags to label conversations
- Alerting specific people when conversations are tagged
- Being able to assign people to emails
- Providing background information on customers
- Easily bringing up previous conversations
These, along with others, are why so many companies have already chosen to use a dedicated program alongside their shared company inboxes.
Ready to Get the Most Out of Shared Inboxes?
Now you know nine facts about shared inboxes. As you can see, there are many advantages to using them for your company.
There are also some drawbacks, but these can be eliminated by using our email management software. We also provide even more benefits that will allow you to get even more out of a shared inbox.
Sign up today for a free demonstration of our software so you can see how much of a difference it will make in your business and for your customers.
