Managing a shared info@ inbox: who answers what, and when

• One message has one owner. Whoever starts on it assigns it to themselves, and the others can see that.
• What is not yours, hand on by name rather than just forwarding it.
• Have somebody look once a day at what is still unassigned.
• For holidays, name a stand-in to whom you assign the mail.

If most of the mail is support requests, let a rule do the sharing out as well: HelloCRM's helpdesk can assign tickets among colleagues in turn or to whoever has the fewest open ones, and only to people who still work there.

When the customer asks for something they expect an answer to by a certain time: a fault, a complaint, a question about the service. A request for a quote or a general enquiry can stay ordinary mail, but a complaint must not get lost among the rest.

In the Helpdesk module, mail to a support mailbox opens tickets by itself, with a number, an owner and a promised response time; the reply goes into the same conversation, and it shows what has waited too long. Saved replies can be kept too, so nobody retypes the same answer.

The rest of the mail needs a next step too. A request for a quote becomes a deal in the pipeline, with an owner and a next step; a request for an appointment becomes an event in the calendar; a request for a call-back becomes a task with a due date. That way the shared inbox is not a store where mail lies about, but the first step: once a message is read, it is always clear who does what with it, and by when. What is only for information (a copy of an invoice, a newsletter) can be closed by marking it read.

1. Connect the company's shared mailbox (info@, say) under Mailboxes, with your mail provider's access details.
2. Mark it as the company's mailbox, not one colleague's: mail in a personal mailbox is seen only by its owner.
3. Switch on the Shared inbox module; it has a free 3-day trial.
4. Agree who looks at unassigned mail each day, and who stands in during holidays.
5. If support requests are many, mark the support address as a helpdesk mailbox so it opens tickets.
6. Save the answers you give often as saved replies.

The team sees the company mailbox's mail; a colleague's personal mailbox is seen only by them. A message that belongs to a customer follows the same rule as the customer: somebody set to see only their own customers does not see other people's customers' mail in the shared inbox either.

So the shared inbox is not a way round the permissions, and a new colleague does not get a look at correspondence that is not their business.

The same holds when somebody leaves: their access ends, but their mail and replies stay with the company, on the customers' timelines. Their open mail and tasks are handed to a colleague, so nothing is left without an owner and nobody has to ask for a former colleague's password.

In the first weeks the same three things tend to slip. Somebody keeps replying from their old mail program out of habit, and the reply never reaches the customer's timeline. Nobody takes on the sharing out, so the list fills up with unassigned mail again. And nobody changes the shared password, so the old access stays as it was.

• Agree that info@ mail is answered only from the CRM from now on.
• For the first two weeks one person makes sure no message is left unassigned by the evening.
• After connecting it, change the mailbox password and give the new one only to the CRM.
• After a week, look together at what got stuck and adjust the rules.

• Going through the unassigned mail once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
• Not leaving finished conversations marked unread.
• Recording a promise to a customer (a call-back, a quote) as a task with a due date.
• Keeping internal discussion in a note rather than in the mail thread.
• Handing a leaver's open mail and tasks to somebody when they go.