For most organisations, maintaining high levels of customer service and sales team success means a mastery of email. Email is arguably the most essential business application and a primary interface between an organisation and its customers, prospects, and partners.
Sales and customer service teams use email daily to reach out to new prospects, respond to incoming queries, resolve customer requests and generally maintain high levels of engagement and customer experience throughout.
One of the more popular tools for customer and sales teams is the shared mailbox, which enables multiple team members to receive and respond to customer and sales requests to ensure quick resolution of queries.
However, keeping track of a shared mailbox can be tricky, especially when popular email platforms such as Outlook and Gmail don’t offer much out-the-box functionality for their shared mailboxes.
Shared mailbox reporting tools are helpful additions to teams seeking deeper levels of data insights into their email productivity. By using a shared mailbox reporting tool, companies can track and measure reply times, peak hours, top performers, and areas of improvement.
This will improve the level of customer service and help close sales deals more quickly.
But which of the many shared mailbox reporting tools are right for your business?
In this guide, we will look at five top shared mailbox reporting tools and compare their respective pros and cons to help you make an informed decision over which solution will best support you and your teams.
A shared mailbox is an email inbox that multiple users can use to read and send email messages. It’s a great tool for providing multiple team members with access to a central email address, for example info@company dot com or help@company dot com, and allowing them to respond to mails.
Each response from the shared mailbox appears as if it was sent from a single source, helping create a consistent customer experience and uniformity in how the organisation responds to incoming queries.
Shared mailboxes are typically used by teams that deal with a large volume of queries, for example support requests for a product or service or incoming sales leads and allows each team member to respond individually from the same email address.
Using a shared mailbox enables teams to better keep track of all incoming queries. Important emails are less likely to be missed when a team member is away from the office, and managers can more easily track whether emails are responded to quickly, effectively and to a satisfactory outcome.
While a shared mailbox can bring greater transparency to how teams communicate with customers and prospects via email, keeping track of the shared mailbox is not always simple or easy.
The two most popular business email platforms – Outlook and Gmail – do not offer shared mailbox reporting capabilities. This makes it hard for teams to know which team members are dealing with which customer queries, see the status of each team member’s workload, how quickly emails are responded to, and where improvements are needed.
Shared mailbox reporting solutions for Outlook and Gmail, such as timetoreply, make it easier to keep track of important metrics that can improve teams’ sales and customer service efforts.
For example, many companies find it hard to see which requests have been handled and completed and which ones need attention. timetoreply simplifies the process of tracking completed or pending requests and enables teams to produce reports that help them benchmark their reply times, closure rates and more.
Many organisations also have agreed-upon reply times for incoming service requests that are linked to formal service-level agreements (SLAs). Unfortunately, out-the-box functionality on both Outlook and Gmail offers no way to track whether SLA goals are reached.
timetoreply makes that process easy by tracking and reporting on whether teams are meeting their SLA goals, which emails have been responded to within the agreed timeframes and where responses have been slow. The intelligence produced by timetoreply equips managers with actionable insights that can drive improvements in their teams’ shared mailbox reply times.
Companies seeking a powerful shared mailbox reporting and analytics tool for their Outlook and Gmail shared mailboxes, timetoreply offers unbeatable value.
timetoreply is a SaaS tool for sales, support and customer success teams looking to improve their response times and improve deal closure rates.
Our market-leading shared mailbox analytics solution can immediately boost your team’s sales and customer service success by producing actionable insights within minutes of activation, with no install required.
timetoreply connects to shared mailboxes to measure reply times, email volumes, peak hours, and a range of other metrics to bring clarity to the performance of sales and customer-facing teams on company email channels.
By using our platform, companies unlock data-rich insights that can inform customer engagement and sales efforts to the benefit of the company and its customers.
Offering the highest levels of security and regulatory compliance and powered by a public API that unlocks a world of third-party integrations, timetoreply is a vital ally in company efforts at improving their teams’ email productivity and performance.
timetoreply offers affordable and convenient pricing options to suit the needs of teams of any size, with monthly or discounted annual payment options.
For smaller companies with five to ten customer-facing team members, the Starter package will enable them to get started with:
For larger teams of more than ten people that want access to enhanced reporting capabilities and convenient data export, the Pro package is ideal. Our Pro package offers all the benefits of the Starter package, as well as:
For large or growing teams, our Elite package offers the full suite of timetoreply functionality as well as access to BI tools via our API. Elite users have access to all of the Pro functionality as well as:
All three of the above packages offer a 15-day free trial without the need for credit cards, giving you the flexibility to test the power of our platform without any risk.
In addition, an Enterprise package is available for teams of at least 50 mailboxes, with a comprehensive enterprise support plan that includes 24-hour support, SLA guarantees, customization and onboarding and training support.
Email Meter is an email statistics platform for individuals, teams and enterprises working exclusively in the Gmail and Google Workspaces email environments.
The solution connects to team mailboxes to generate data and insight that can inform better decision-making and improve email response times.
Email Meter helps organizations track response times and other important email KPIs, but so does timetoreply, which also offers greater flexibility into the filters applied to key metrics as well as easier integration with CRM systems.
While it can be a useful tool for teams working in Google’s email environment, Email Meter provides no support for other email platforms, and integrations with other solutions are limited to reporting tools that plug into PowerBI.
Reports are also only generated on a weekly or monthly basis so teams seeking real-time, daily reporting capabilities may be frustrated with Email Meter.
Email Meter also does not ingest the data it tracks and instead stores everything in the Google Cloud. In comparison, timetoreply offers superior data filtering capabilities as well as the option to delve into deeper layers of detail around key data points.
See how Email Meter compares to timetoreply here
EmailAnalytics is another solution that allows organizations to visualize their team’s email activity within Gmail or Google Workspaces.
The solution is helpful for teams working only within Google Workspaces or Gmail to measure email activity and improve response times.
EmailAnalytics tracks a number of email metrics, including emails sent and received, email traffic per day or per Gmail label, response times, email traffic per hour of the day, and helps companies identify top email senders and receivers.
Data is stored in Google Cloud, but other solutions such as timetoreply can also offer a Google Cloud-hosted solution in addition to other hosting services.
The main shortcoming of using EmailAnalytics for your shared mailbox reporting is that it exclusively tracks Gmail and Google Workspaces email environments, so it’s unsuited to teams working with other email platforms.
EmailAnalytics also doesn’t offer email logs for deeper analysis or to support compliance efforts, whereas timetoreply provides organizations with message logs that enable them to dive deeper into minute details of their teams’ email performance.
A lack of integration with third-party software solutions also leaves organizations seeking greater integration between their various business productivity and analytics applications to seek an alternative solution.
Security and data privacy is also not up to the standard of other platforms, including timetoreply.
See how Email Analytics compares to timetoreply here
Hiver is a popular helpdesk solution for teams operating in the Gmail and Google Workspaces email environments.
The platform is designed to support customer service and support teams by improving their email productivity and boosting team performance and responsiveness.
Hiver is specifically designed for shared mailboxes. Similar to timetoreply, Hiver is easy to activate within the Gmail environment to quickly start producing actionable insights into customer-facing teams’ email responsiveness.
It tracks SLAs and a range of key email metrics and enables teams to measure customer satisfaction by means of short surveys at the end of emails.
Hiver is purpose-built as a helpdesk solution, so offers no support to sales teams.
The solution is also limited to Gmail and Google Workspaces, meaning teams operating in other popular email environments such as Outlook will need to seek out alternatives.
Hiver is also slightly more expensive than other comparable solutions, especially for larger organizations.
Looking for the best alternative to Hiver? Try timetoreply for free
Front is a customer communication platform combining emails, apps, and teammates into a single view with the purpose of improving how companies communicate with customers.
Similar to timetoreply, Front measures email response times and tracks trends in customer communication through email analytics.
Front stores all emails in a single place, which enables users to quickly notify teammates when their input is needed in internal conversations.
Custom automated workflows and improve collaboration enables Front users to prevent duplication of tasks while also ensuring customer requests are handled quickly and effectively.
The platform enables companies to connect as many inboxes, SMS or social accounts as they like, and works best for teams that want to handle customer communications from a single, shared inbox.
The biggest hurdle to companies using Front is that the solution requires that all email communication moves to its own platform, which is not for everyone.
In addition, significant change management is required to get everyone up to speed on how to use Front, which can undermine productivity and be costly to implement.
Not all companies prioritize collaboration when seeking shared mailbox reporting tools, so much of Front’s functionality may be superfluous to the needs of the average customer-facing team.
Front also lacks integration with some popular apps, while the overall cost can become pricey when companies are scaling up for a growing team.
Critically, Front is not designed with sales teams in mind and fares far better when used to support customer-facing teams, leaving sales teams to seek other solutions.
See how FrontApp compares to timetoreply here
Customer service teams seeking shared mailbox reporting capabilities for their Gmail or Google Workspaces environments are spoilt for choice with several excellent solutions available.
However, for companies seeking shared mailbox reporting capabilities for their sales teams and for those working in other popular email environments such as Outlook, timetoreply offers the best value and greatest functionality.
timetoreply’s simple deployment and quick integration to both Gmail and Outlook enable sales and customer service and support teams to immediately start benefiting from insightful analytics into their email performance, allowing them to optimize their productivity and drive bottom-line results.
Add world-class security and easy compliance with a broad range of international data and privacy regulations, and teams using timetoreply can rest assured that they remain compliant and that their data is safe.
With a quick deployment and no-risk trial period, as well as a public API that unlocks endless possibilities for third-party integrations, timetoreply is the best solution for improving your sales and customer service email efforts.
Request a timetoreply demo today to see how it can power your teams’ success.
Gaining a view over team activity in a shared mailbox is as simple as enabling timetoreply and adding the shared mailbox as well as the individual users that are active on that shared mailbox.
If you are looking to audit email volumes, reply times and average reply times to customers, the number of emails that were responded to within their reply time goal (SLA goal) and understand workloads and performance across the individual team members that are responding to the shared mailbox, then timetoreply is the solution for you.
1. Create an account on timetoreply.com
2. Link your o365 shared mailbox and team members
3. View reports and track email volumes, see what is waiting for a reply, view first reply times, and overall reply times, create scheduled reports and more!
If you are looking to audit your Gmail shared / group mailbox email volumes, reply times and average reply times to customers, the number of emails that were responded to within their reply time goal (SLA goal) and understand workloads and performance across the individual team members that are responding to the shared mailbox, then timetoreply is the solution for you.
1. Create an account on timetoreply.com
2. Link your Gmail group mailbox and team members
3. View reports and track email volumes, see what is waiting for a reply, view first reply times, and overall reply times, create scheduled reports and more!
For sales and customer service and service teams seeking a shared mailbox reporting tool for Gmail or Outlook, timetoreply offers the best value. Easy to deploy, rich in functionality and adhering to the highest global security and privacy standards, timetoreply enables companies to improve response times, resolve customer and sales queries more efficiently, and remain compliant.
Getting started on our 15-day trial that will let you experience the benefits of data-driven customer communication.
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