If your team logs into a shared mailbox (like sales@company.com, support@company.com, finance@company.com ...) to share the workload of incoming emails like sales enquiries, customer service requests etc - you'll know that it can be challenging to keep track of who's dealing with what, and emails tend to slip through the cracks. Some of the challenges you might be accepting are:
- Difficulty assigning emails to team members
- No clarity on who's dealing with which emails
- No way to get a clear overview of what work is in progress
- No way to see which items due for customers are outstanding
- Lack of visibility into how long customers have been waiting for a response
Sortd can be used to manage shared mailboxes, and has all the tools you need to create an exceptional customer experience every time. With Sortd you can see your Inbox, unassigned emails, and everything that's currently in a work in progress state on one screen.
The problem with having another Inbox
Many shared email solutions make the shared Inbox accessible to everyone from your own Gmail account using a folder structure - something like:
- Inbox
- Support Inbox
- Sales Inbox
- Sent
- Drafts
With your shared email set up like this, you still need to keep switching between your own mailbox and the shared mailbox to check for new messages. That diminishes one of the biggest benefits of using Gmail to field customer emails in the first place.
This guide will run you through how to turn a shared mailbox into a collaborative team workspace with assignment and workflows in Sortd.
* Note: If you use a distribution list where everyone receives mails to a particular email address in their own mailbox (as opposed to a single mailbox that all members of the team log into), please see the bottom of this post.
How shared email works in Sortd
Sortd only shows the Inbox of the account you are logged into in Gmail, so you only need to worry about managing one Inbox - your own. The Inbox of the shared mail account (if you are using a shared mailbox) remains in tact.
The way email is shared with a team in Sortd is via a shared board to the right of the Inbox. Each user who has access to the shared board will see their own Inbox on the left and the same shared board on the right.
How to set up a Shared Inbox in Sortd
1. Install Sortd (if you haven't already)
Install Sortd for Gmail - Chrome Web Store (google.com)
2. Log in with your admin account
Your admin account is the one that you first used with Sortd. If you use multiple accounts and you aren't sure which is the team admin, navigate to the team settings and open the Admin group.
3. Add a board to your team
When you set Sortd up a team was automatically created for you with the template board that you selected during the onboarding. Make sure that you have switched from your personal board to a board on your Team (you can't collaborate on your personal board).
Depending on how you like to manage things you will either tweak the default list names on the board (by adding, renaming, deleting), or you can arrange your board with a list for each of your team members. There's no right or wrong way, just go with what makes the most sense to you.
Default setup
Alternative setup (organized by Team member)
At this point, if your team members all install Sortd and log into the shared mailbox as always, they will see the board automatically - there's nothing more they need to do. However, if you'd like to be able to track emails through a process and assign to individual team members - you'll need to invite them.
4. Invite your team members to the board
To share a board with multiple email accounts you simply invite users to that board using the + button next to your profile at the top right.
5. Move emails from the shared Inbox to the board using an automation
If you have a person on your team who is responsible for managing the shared Inbox, they can drag an email to the board in order to share it with the team and assign it to a team member.
If you want email sent to the shared mailbox automatically shared with the team, you can set up an automation (note: only a team admin can set up automations on a team). Once you have that in place there is no longer a need for anyone on the team to log into the shared mailbox, since they all now have access to the email on the shared board.
The automation criteria is important - if you want it to move all email that comes in, set the automation up to move anything where the recipient is @yourdomain.com to the board.
If multiple people have the same board open, when an email is automatically moved to that board everyone will see it on the board, so you can pick one list to function like an Inbox.
❯ Click on Automations from the Sortd Menu
❯ Select the team (in blue) that contains the board that you want to apply the automation to
❯ Click New Automation on the top right
❯ Type any email address (e.g. support@company.com) that you want to push onto the board.
You can enter any email address to trigger the automation (even if you are not currently signed into that mailbox). This can be your own email address or another email address.
If you are signed into Gmail with the email address that you specified above, you will not be required to verify the email address again. If you are not signed into that mailbox, a Gmail window will pop-up and Google will ask you to enter a password to verify that you are authorized to access that mailbox.
❯ Define what you want the automation to do. Here is a common example below:
NOTE: Automations aren't available on your Personal Board.
If one person on the team is responsible for assigning the tasks and doesn't log into the shared mailbox you might want to consider automatically assigning all email to that person in the automation - that way you can be sure that when there is a new email on an unassigned list someone always knows about it.
6. Automatically assign emails to team members based on rules (optional)
If you have any criteria that enables you to identify who in the team an email should be sent to - rather than adding all email to one list on the board, you can automatically add to other lists and automatically assign to different team members (this is all done through the automation setup screen).
For example, if all emails from a particular client domain are handled by the same person on the team you could automatically assign emails from that domain to that particular team member based on those simple criteria.
Using your Shared Inbox in Sortd
Assign and process emails
The board that you set up and share with your team is visible from all of the individual mailboxes of the team members you added to it. Each person on the team will log into their own email account, open Sortd in full screen mode and navigate to the shared board.
The automation you set up will be moving all emails that arrive in the shared mailbox to the shared board, which the team all now have access to from their own email accounts. Every email that is automatically moved to the board is also automatically shared with all of the team members.
Troubleshooting
If you are not receiving email on your board automatically, ensure that your Shared Inbox account has recently logged into Gmail. Gmail typically logs accounts out after 30 days of inactivity and you may need to log into the shared account (e.g. support@xyz.com) periodically to ensure Sortd has the access it needs.
For more help log a ticket or email team@sortd.com. Please note that automations are available only to paying users or users in a trial
Related
If you are using an Email Alias or Google Distribution list for e.g. info@, sales@, orders@ etc and you want to add emails into one of your boards or lists, read this article: Using Automations to Collaborate on a Google Distribution list