Best Email Management Software for Customer Service in 2021 | #customersupport #supporticket

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.)

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.