Shared inboxes: answering info@ as a team
How a small team answers info@ without two people replying to the same customer, or nobody replying at all.
Almost every small company has an info@. Often it's a mailbox one person checks, or a password everyone shares, or an address that forwards to five people.
All three go wrong in the same two ways. Two people answer the same mail, and the customer gets two different answers. Or everyone thinks someone else did, and the customer gets nothing.
One inbox, everyone in it
In Email.eu, a shared inbox is an address like info@ or support@ that your team opens right next to their own mail. There's no shared password, and nothing is forwarded. Everyone looks at the same conversations.
Reply, and it's yours
We wanted the simplest rule we could think of. When you reply to a conversation nobody has taken yet, it becomes yours. The app tells you: It's yours now.
Your colleagues see that you're on it. They also see when someone is reading a conversation or writing a reply, so nobody starts a second answer. There's no button to press first and no claiming step. You were going to answer anyway.
Talk next to the mail
Sometimes you need a colleague before you can answer. Instead of forwarding the mail around, write a comment next to it and @mention them. The whole story stays in one place. The sender never sees the comment.
Hand it over
If a mail belongs with someone else, assign it to them. It lands on their Today, the screen with their meetings and the mail that's theirs to handle. Nothing slips through the cracks because it was nobody's.
Two people answering the same mail is a waste. Nobody answering is worse.
A few habits that help
The app takes care of who's on what. A few habits make it work even better:
- Agree who looks first. One person glances at info@ each morning and assigns what isn't theirs.
- Answer, don't forward. If you know the answer, reply. It's yours now, and that's fine.
- Ask in a comment. A quick question to a colleague belongs next to the mail, not in a new one.
- Use more than one address. info@ for questions and support@ for customers already make it clear who should look.
Which plan
Shared inboxes come with Team and Business, from €19 per person a month without VAT. Guests are always free. If you're coming from Google Workspace, here's how to switch in a weekend.
Written by the Email.eu team in Groningen.More from the blog