How to properly manage a shared mailbox
Organizations often believe that setting up a shared mailbox will drastically improve customer service and operations will de facto run more efficiently.
No doubt a shared mailbox can be very useful for customers to be able to reach out to you in one place and not have to search for individual emails. Further, all the members of your team will be able to see the incoming requests in one place.
However, while on paper it may sound very good, in practice, a shared mailbox requires that the person(s) in charge be well organized.
Some of the issues encountered when working with a shared mailbox:
- If there are too many incoming messages, the risks are: not being able to provide an answer before several days or even failing to respond to an email;
- An email may be accidentally deleted or misplaced;
- Each member of the team may be relying on the other to handle an incoming request;
- Each member of the team may need to be on the lookout for each and every incoming email;
- The easiest queries to respond to may be handled first;
- By mistake, several responses may be provided to the same email query.
To avoid such issues, the manager of the team may need to review a few things and in particular:
- Decide on a reasonable standard response time for acknowledging receipt of a request (if there is no automatic reply system in place) so that at least some response is provided. Without an answer, your customer will not understand what is going on; you will be projecting an image of a “black box”;
- Ensure that each member of the team is aware of the risk of accidental deletion or loss of an email, if handled without caution. Reminding this regularly may be necessary. Don’t underestimate the power of repeating; it takes time for things to sink in. Waiting for the customer to write again is not the solution;
- Decide who in your team will handle which type of requests and who will be in charge of monitoring the mailbox to ensure that all queries are handled in due course;
- Give responsibility to one or selected few persons to be responsible for all incoming emails and to categorize those that need to be handled by other members of the team;
- Underline the importance of handling incoming messages on a first-come first-served basis. Otherwise, those who shout the loudest may always get served first;
- Ensure that, once an email is handled, it is categorised as “done” and that, in case of doubt, before providing an answer, the team member, groups the message by “subject” to ensure an answer has not already been provided.
Remember, when you share something, whether it is a car, a flat or work, you will need to set rules and boundaries because you cannot be in the other’s head. The same is true for a shared mailbox. It will not work without some prior discussions and some adjustments. The effort is worth it.
In essence, if you are unable to put processes in place to ensure proper handling of your shared mailbox, you may as well be warned that you will be up for more work, not less.
This is probably not what you want, so take enough time to think this through.
