Almost everyone has a Gmail inbox of their own, and while Gmail has a wide range of application scenarios, the need to use it in a business or organization can change. There is a way for an entire team or department to manage a single email address and work together to respond to incoming messages - create a shared inbox.
Pros and Cons of Gmail Shared Inbox
Shared mailbox access can also be achieved using these methods with a free personal Goolge account, and we'll explain more about managing shared mail using the Google Workspace product below.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Entrusted Account
Google Groups and Collaboration Inbox
While the forum feature is not particularly useful for this use case, using Google online forums as an email newsletter group list is a popular way for businesses and organizations to set up dedicated departmental email addresses (support@, billing@, sales@, etc.). without incurring the cost of additional user seats.
Disadvantages.
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Pros and Cons of Gmail Shared Inbox
Shared mailbox access can also be achieved using these methods with a free personal Goolge account, and we'll explain more about managing shared mail using the Google Workspace product below.
Shared Credentials
This approach can be a security risk, and sharing your password puts your Gmail account customer data and company reputation at risk.
Advantages
Simple
Allows companies to send and receive mail using a single address
No training required
Disadvantages
There are security risks
No collaboration tools
No reporting tools
Entrusted Account
Because sharing login information among multiple people is not a good idea, Google offers a more secure way to share email access among multiple users: delegated accounts.
A single Gmail account in Google Workspace can be associated with up to 1,000 proxies, all of whom use their own Gmail credentials to access their inboxes.
Delegated accounts don't offer many additional benefits, other than improved security. The only real difference in the feature set is that when another user sends an email from a delegated account, Gmail can indicate the sender of the email in the email header, which adds some accountability and transparency.
Google Groups and Collaboration Inbox
Another way to give multiple people access to incoming email is to create Google group, which can facilitate collaborative communication in three ways.
Community Forums: Group members create and respond to conversation threads in a similar manner to electronic bulletin boards.
Email distribution lists: Emails are sent to a single email address and distributed to all group members.
Collaboration Inbox: People direct email to an email address; group members can view email in their Gmail accounts or log in to the web interface to access collaboration features.
While the forum feature is not particularly useful for this use case, using Google online forums as an email newsletter group list is a popular way for businesses and organizations to set up dedicated departmental email addresses (support@, billing@, sales@, etc.). without incurring the cost of additional user seats.
Companies receiving large volumes of email can also choose to enable the group's Collaboration Inbox feature, which creates a shared mailbox that all group members can access. It has basic collaboration features such as the ability to assign conversations to specific people, tag and filter messages, and mark issues as "closed" when they are complete.
Disadvantages.
It still lacks proper collaboration features (collision detection, internal annotations, etc.)
Inability to store knowledge for easy reference (help center articles, email templates, etc.)
No reporting tools.
Use customer support software which contains an efficient knowledge base, ticketing system and Live chat. Minimal cost to enhance customer experience.| BClinked
Rapid deployment, simple enough but effective customer support system