In 2020, close to 306.4 billion emails were exchanged each day, and this number is expected to shoot up to over 361.6 billion daily emails in 2024.1 With so many emails being sent and received on a daily basis, email management is critical for organizations to function smoothly.
Especially for customer-facing teams that deal with customer emails, day in and day out.
We’ve put this article together to help these teams identify when it’s time to upgrade to an email management software, and we’ve also listed the best email management solutions that are perfect for delivering customer service.
Let’s dive in!
What is email management?
Email management involves tracking and responding to large volumes of work emails in a streamlined and efficient manner.
All internal and customer-facing functions need a dedicated system, such as an email management software, to manage all emails and ensure that nothing goes amiss.
When do you need to start using an email management software?
Trying to manage large volumes of emails using Gmail or Yahoo or Outlook is not a viable option in the long run. These email apps were initially created to help people stay in touch on a one-to-one basis, and were not built to enable businesses to manage emails at scale.
Even when email providers started deploying email solutions for businesses, things could easily get quite tedious and eventually stand in the way of employee productivity, and nobody, including this squirrel, wants that to happen.
Here are 5 unignorable signs telling you to upgrade to an email management system right away:
– You’re finding it difficult to categorize incoming emails
– Your team unable to track ownership or assign accountability of emails
– Two or more people end up replying to the same email
– A lot of your emails go unread or are pending on you for a follow-up
– Your team isn’t able to view emails the way you want to, that is, by newest or older first, emails that you’re copied on, or the ones that are still waiting on the customer.
If these problems sound all too familiar, we’d recommend that you start using a dedicated system to manage your emails. Here’s a list of the best email management solutions along with their G2 Crowd ratings. (We’ve discussed these tools in detail later in this blog – click here if you’d like to jump to that section.)
| Email management software | Free trial? | Free version? | G2 Crowd rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freshdesk | Yes (21 days) | Yes (for unlimited users) | 4.5/5 |
| Front | Yes (7 days) | No (pricing starts from $19 per user, per month) | 4.6/5 |
| Hiver | Yes (14 days) | No (pricing starts from $7 per user, per month) | 4.6/5 |
| SaneBox | Yes (14 days) | No (pricing starts from $7 per day, per email account) | 4.7/5 |
| Outpost | Yes (14 days) | No (pricing starts from $12.5 per user, per month) | 4.3/5 |
| Mailbird | Yes (free download) | Yes | 4/5 |
| SpamTitan | Yes (30 days) | No (pricing starts from $1.15 per user, per month) | 4.6/5 |
What are the benefits of using an email management software for customer service?
Since email largely remains as the customers’ most preferred channel of communication for customer service, (66% of customers prefer sending emails to communicate with brands2), investing in an email management software will enable you to efficiently handle the large volumes of emails that you receive.
With an email management software for customer service, you can:
– Track, and manage large volumes of emails at scale without letting worrying about emails slipping through the cracks
– Ensure that each incoming ticket is automatically categorized, prioritized, and assigned to the right person
– Improve productivity by providing easier options to deal with repetitive customer questions
– Create a sense of accountability and urgency using service level agreements (SLAs)
– Measure your team’s performance and make improvements accordingly
How to select the right email management software?
With plenty of options for email management available today, choosing the best email app for your team might be confusing. Here’s a list of the most important and useful features you need to look for while picking an email management software:
– Categorization and prioritization: Automatically tag each email that comes in, and prioritize emails according to importance using keywords or customer segments.
– Workflow automation: Make sure that all incoming emails reach the right person, are followed up on at the right time, and more, without any manual intervention.
– Autoresponders: Automatically update and notify customers to let them know that you’ve received their email, that you’re out of office, etc.
– Canned responses or email templates: Save responses to common, repetitive questions so you can answer these within a single click.
– Email collaboration: Reach out to team members or colleagues from other teams and work on a customer’s issue together.
– Reporting and analytics: Get a comprehensive picture of your team’s performance, your email volumes, etc, and make changes to your strategy accordingly.
– Feedback forms: Understand how satisfied your customers are with your service by triggering feedback forms after every customer issue is closed.
7 best email management software in customer service
#1 Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a free email management software that gives you an effortless way to track and respond to customer emails by converting incoming emails into tickets. You can manage multiple email inboxes and resolve issues across all of them without any overlap or issues.
Using Freshdesk, you can automate the process of assigning emails and ensure that your team maintains a low response time and resolution time. Freshdesk also serves as a collaborative digital workspace for your teams to work in and improves team efficiency with canned responses and autoresponders.
With Freshdesk’s one-click reports, you can take stock of all email activities, spot outliers, identify trends and patterns, and make improvements to your strategy accordingly.
The best part about using Freshdesk for email management is that you can minimize the need for agent intervention and deflect emails by launching comprehensive self-service options such as a knowledge base and a help widget.
#2 Front
The Front App has a good blend of the features that you can find on Gmail (email snooze, and labels), functionalities that are unique to the app (collaboration tool, and shared drafts).
Front also has a feature that lets you see if the customer or client opened and saw your email response.
While you could find some comfort in the similarities between Front App and Gmail, you might be very disappointed to know that Front App does not integrate with the rest of the G-Suite. This means that you cannot access Contacts, schedule meetings in Google Calendar, or drop files in the Shared Drives right from within the app.
#3 Hiver
If you’re looking to continue using your Gmail account for customer service, then Hiver is perfect for you. This email management system adds a layer of organization on top of a Gmail inbox.
This “Gmail-based helpdesk” gives you a well-structured shared inbox, and has features for automatic assignment, basic collaboration, and reporting.
The downside is that there is no way for you to offer assistance on other channels that your customers might try to reach out to you on such as social media or messaging apps. Your team will end up juggling between tools and that can really eat into their time and energy. Plus, you cannot use Hiver as a web-app or a desktop-app, you have to download a Chrome Plugin.
#4 SaneBox
SaneBox is an email service management platform that is great for productivity.
What’s unique about SaneBox is that it comes with powerful AI that filters unimportant emails out of your inbox. Newsletters and messages that you’re copied on (CC’d) go into two separate folders. Plus, you get to schedule breaks from email notifications – this email app can really stay true to its name and help you stay sane at work.
While you can create folders to stay organized on Sanebox, you might not be able to establish a sense of accountability. Although related emails might reach the right folder, there’s no way of routing emails to the right person – you might have to use other apps that allow for automation.
#5 Outpost
With features for assignment, collaboration, templates, and analytics, Outpost makes for a great email management software for small businesses.
The best part about Outpost is that it offers a conversation history that agents can refer to and follow up with customers.
Outpost also enables you to bucket your emails using tags. However, there are no further categorizations that you can do. For instance, you cannot create a folder for finance and create subfolders within that for billing or payment failures which is a great disadvantage when you want to maintain a well-categorized inbox.
#6 Mailbird
Mailbird is a customer service email management system that comes with a customizable layout. You get to choose from tons of free color themes and transform your account into a work of art. You also get an option to switch to dark mode.
Mailbird helps you increase your productivity with an in-built speed reading feature that rapidly displays words so you can absorb phrases and sentences at a faster rate. Mailbird also has a Linkedin Lookup feature that allows you to look up your sender on Linkedin and connect with them using only one click from within your inbox.
Mailbird only has a desktop application, so if you prefer a web-application, then this might not be ideal for you. Mailbird also does not have in-built reporting and analytics which means that you’ll have to use a third-party application to measure metrics and track performance.
#7 SpamTitan
If all you need is to make sure your inbox is spam-free, then SpamTitan is probably the one for you. This tool will make sure that those spam emails don’t reach you. It offers email security by blocking phishing, spam emails, malware, viruses, ransomware, and other email threats.
Which email management tool is your favorite? Which one have you decided to go with? Let us know in the comments.
Source:
1 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/456500/daily-number-of-e-mails-worldwide/
2 – https://www.freshworks.com/resources/report/the-new-rules-of-customer-engagement/
Looking For Startup Consultants ?
Call Pursho @ 0731-6725516
Telegram Group One Must Follow :
For Startups: https://t.me/daily_business_reads
