In the event you’re taking a look at Gmail alternate options, chances are high you’re already outgrown your mailbox. You want options designed particularly for customer support – enabling proactive help and automating repetitive duties.
With customary electronic mail – Gmail or in any other case – you may’t collaborate on emails successfully with the remainder of your group. Digging by way of a mound of unorganized messages is irritating and ineffectual. Responding to suggestions throughout a number of channels is time-consuming.
If that sounds acquainted, we’ve obtained loads of alternate options so that you can contemplate. We’ll check out some underrated Gmail alternate options for buyer emails. These instruments are designed particularly for buyer help, not simply monitoring on-line purchases or Fb updates.
How Would possibly Your Enterprise Profit from an Various to Gmail?
Gmail is taken into account person pleasant, and I’m inclined to agree.
It nonetheless appears to be like nice, and it’s straightforward to make use of. And but there’s a ton of competitors on the market with extra intuitive person interfaces and options geared particularly towards buyer help.
Your group most likely needs their inbox was only a little bit simpler to navigate, kind, and optimize for customer support, proper?
Gmail lacks a few features which can be essential for delivering environment friendly buyer help. For instance, it’s lacking integration with socials or a dwell chat characteristic. You should purchase software program from third-party corporations that combine with Google Chat, however you then’re paying the whole month-to-month value of a assist desk service only for a single characteristic.
Past responding to inquiries or organising conferences, your buyer help instrument ought to allow proactive omnichannel help. Think about in the event you had been capable of create self-service sources for patrons, so they might problem-solve on their very own. Or what in the event you had been capable of leverage automation to kind all of your incoming inquiries?
I do know it will probably appear formidable to transition from familiarity into the unknown, however loads of these instruments are straightforward to arrange, navigate, and use (particularly in the event you’re already acquainted with Gmail).
What Gmail Will get Proper – And What You Ought to Look For in an Various
Gmail does have plenty of nice help options that can help you filter emails, create labels to trace particular issues, handle priorities, schedule conferences, and delegate emails (as much as ~25 customers) in Google Suite. It’s additionally been round for many years. It’s acquainted and cozy.
Gmail will get lots proper as an electronic mail help shopper:
- You’ll be able to create a shared inbox (known as a collaborative inbox) inside Google Teams to work on emails as a group. Via any such inbox, group members can assign emails to coworkers, and observe duties all although a unified help electronic mail tackle.
- Gmail helps you to create ‘duties’ to remind your self of excessive precedence emails that require further steps to resolve. For instance, if it’s essential to contact your internet developer earlier than getting again to a buyer, you may create a activity from an electronic mail or inside your calendar.
- Guidelines assist filter all of your emails mechanically, whereas labels set up emails into classes based mostly round kinds of conversations. For instance, in the event you’re a B2C retailer, you may arrange your guidelines and labels to mechanically filter all conversations about “returns” to group them collectively.
Nonetheless, you most likely need a help answer that not solely optimizes workload, but in addition scales with your corporation because it grows by way of superior productiveness options. Elevated demand out of your help group is more likely to outpace the restricted options of Gmail.
There isn’t something inherently fallacious with the platform. It’s simply that whereas it may be tailored to buyer help, it’s not purpose-built for that use.
In distinction, listed below are among the widespread options in Gmail alternate options for buyer emails.
A Centralized Inbox
Whereas Gmail does an excellent job enabling collaboration, it nonetheless doesn’t present your group with a real centralized inbox. Omnichannel support is a giant deal in B2B.
Wouldn’t it’s good in the event you had been in a position to answer Fb Messenger, Instagram DMs, and dwell chat questions all by way of the identical inbox? It could actually save time. It additionally helps to foster a way of consistency throughout all of your responses.
Self-Service Choices
Gmail doesn’t present any choices for self-service useful resource constructing. Most electronic mail purchasers don’t. Then again, assist desk software program typically allows you to create self-service options similar to information bases.
As a group, you may construct your information base to be as intensive or simplistic as required. Tutorials are a good way to ensure customer success in the course of the onboarding course of. They minimize down on buyer help emails, and save your group from repeatedly answering ceaselessly requested questions.
Reporting Performance
Gmail and related platforms don’t present extensive reporting metrics. You’ll normally discover fundamental metrics like open charges. Past that, you received’t be capable to precisely gauge the success of your help group except you pay for extra instruments.
A high quality Gmail different ought to track key service KPIs mechanically, similar to common decision time and response time. That tells you what you’re doing effectively, and precisely the place it’s essential to enhance.
6 Greatest Gmail Alternate options for Buyer Emails
So, what’s the choice?
Let’s take a look at six instruments you may strive as a substitute of Gmail. We’ll speak about what core options they provide for managing customer support wants. And we’ll contact on their use circumstances, so you may resolve which may be the proper match to your small enterprise.
#1: Proton Mail
Proton Mail might be probably the most noteworthy electronic mail shopper on our checklist. It’s been talked about in each The New York Instances and The Guardian.
As a Swiss-based, end-to-end encryption shopper targeted on knowledge safety, Proton Mail is taken into account higher-echelon electronic mail help. Nonetheless, its enterprise plans are comparatively inexpensive, and supply integration with the developer’s safe suite of merchandise.
Proton Mail recurrently releases product updates, and options productiveness instruments that improve buyer help for your corporation. One of many newest additions, Proton Scribe, is an AI writing assistant constructed into the e-mail platform.
With this instrument, you merely write in what you need to reply with, and Scribe creates a draft that may be altered for brevity or formality. You’ll be able to shorten a canned response, tone it down for a casual shopper, or improve the language based mostly on generative AI.
On the subject of buyer help, Proton Mail has quite a few different helpful options to extend productiveness:
- Streamlined calendar view, offering a condensed weekly view that reveals any occasions you’ve been invited to by way of electronic mail. You’ll be able to examine availability and open the Proton Calendar in a single click on.
- Shared calendar view, to see the visibility and availability of all of your coworkers. Via the shared view, you save time you’d in any other case have spent coordinating conferences backwards and forwards.
- Fast electronic mail filters to automate message sorting in a number of clicks.
- ‘Proton Bridge‘, which funnels emails from Gmail, Outlook, and different electronic mail purchasers instantly into ProtonMail for enhanced end-to-end encryption.
- Scheduling choices so messages may be pre-triggered to ship at focused instances.
#2: Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail is a useful different to Gmail for buyer emails. That’s very true in the event you’re searching for a software program with its personal native integrations.
It claims to be the primary “context conscious” assist desk. As well as, the builders have constructed a complete suite of linked merchandise, akin to Microsoft 365 or Google Suite.
Zoho Mail prioritizes tickets based mostly on prior interactions every buyer has had along with your group. It additionally offers contextual data on every ticket, very similar to a CRM would.
We observed that tagging different brokers to assist out on a ticket works just a little otherwise in Zoho. Particularly, I used to be a giant fan of their group layouts, which strongly resemble X (previously generally known as Twitter).
One other helpful characteristic is the flexibility to create any type of content material (assembly, activity, be aware) from a part or tidbit of knowledge inside an electronic mail.
You need to use @mentions to usher in one other agent, then internally comply with up on particular tickets or clients. If it’s essential to attain out to different departments for collaboration, Zoho Mail helps you to do that simply by way of ‘streams’.
Wealthy workflow customization options are a core part of Zoho Mail. The one actual draw back is that it will probably take just a little getting used to in the event you’re coming instantly from Gmail. The person interface is just a little cluttered, and the educational curve is increased.
Zoho offers you with entry to its full suite of merchandise (at a further value per person), in addition to quite a few mail-suite built-in apps. Nonetheless, there isn’t native help for a information base or dwell chat widget except you’re okay with the added pricing.
#3: Shortwave
Shortwave is an AI-powered electronic mail assistant, constructed by ex-Google workers.
This software program builds a extra intuitive person expertise on high of your pre-existing Gmail inbox. We should always be aware that Shortwave is barely suitable with Gmail. You will be unable to make use of another electronic mail supplier, though it is accessible throughout iOS, Home windows, and Android units.
The desktop model is a progressive web app, not a devoted software. You’ll be able to consider it like a browser extension.
Shortwave is fairly clear about the way it desires you to make use of its product. Its focus is on ‘triage’, which implies assessing and pining solely the messages that should be responded to instantly. It suggests emails that don’t require pressing consideration needs to be ‘snoozed’, and ones that don’t require consideration in any respect needs to be ‘archived’.
The objective is to attain ‘inbox zero’ – a notion which may appear out of attain for even probably the most hands-on help group. I’ve discovered that irrespective of how attentive, in the event you work in buyer help with a gradual stream of incoming emails, you’ll at all times have one thing that requires a response. Instruments like Shortwave can scale back the litter, although.
It’s additionally a typically good plan of assault. However in the event you’re utilizing Shortwave as a enterprise, you most likely have pre-existing workflows. I don’t assume try to be confined to a selected technique, and any nice electronic mail platform needs to be versatile.
Shortwave additionally gives automation options. This consists of grouping messages into ‘bundles’. You’ll be able to remodel any label you’ve created inside Gmail right into a bundle. Sadly, you’ll nonetheless need to log in to Gmail and alter the settings there earlier than your organizational scheme synchronizes with Shortwave.
#4: Spike
Spike extra intently resembles a feature-rich assist desk (which we’ll speak about extra quickly). Nonetheless, it’s marketed as an “electronic mail and chat app” for enterprise messaging and inside communication.
Spike’s UI is exclusive when in comparison with conventional electronic mail suppliers. As a substitute of intently resembling Gmail, it’s extra akin to an amalgamation of Fb Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Slack.
Inside Spike, you may organize your ‘inbox’ in 3 ways: conventional despatched/obtained, topic, or individuals/contacts.
In Topic Mode, your inbox is sorted by subjects which can be grouped collectively. So as a substitute of messages being organized chronologically, they grow to be organized based mostly on the topic you’ve assigned to every dialog. Subjects are concentrated in a single place, so you may reply to quite a few related emails directly.
I personally discovered that sorting ‘by individuals’ didn’t make a lot sense for buyer help, particularly for companies that reply in a queued/sequential order. Nevertheless it may need extra relevance in a distinct segment that solely offers with a handful of choose purchasers.
Spike’s different noteworthy options as a Gmail different for buyer emails embody:
- Shared Inbox that means that you can handle shopper accounts or issues collectively, whether or not replying to widespread inquiries or cultivating leads.
- Channels that operate equally to Slack, and can help you simply arrange inside communication associated to a selected matter, marketing campaign, or shopper.
- Generative AI Assistant Software to assist create, edit, and remodel messages based mostly on tone, context, and brevity.
- Teams that can help you talk privately with individuals inside or exterior of your corporation, and are notably helpful for discussing orders, product growth, technical points, or troubleshooting.
- “Tremendous Search” is a robust search characteristic that allows you to crawl your total inbox, together with attachments, notes, and conversations, to seek out precisely what you’re searching for.
#5: Tuta
Tuta is a German-based Gmail different for individuals who need elevated safety with true end-to-end encryption. Whereas Gmail’s connection between the person and Google’s servers is encrypted, solely messages despatched between Gmail addresses are absolutely safe.
In the event you’d prefer to learn extra concerning the mechanics of Gmail encryption, we suggest this informative blog post over at Arcalea. And in the event you’d prefer to be taught extra about Tuta’s encryption mechanics in depth, we suggest testing this detailed article on its website.
In a nutshell, Tuta may be a good selection if your corporation offers with extraordinarily private or delicate data: finance, authorized, or knowledge switch. Even contacts and your calendar are encrypted. If a malicious third occasion intercepts the e-mail a buyer sends to you – let’s say containing banking data – they will be unable to entry its contents or attachments.
With that being mentioned, it is a area of interest platform and isn’t as well-supported as different Gmail alternate options for buyer emails.
When you can create a free account, you received’t be capable to ‘search’ inside your Tuta inbox except you subscribe to a paid plan. Enterprise accounts are fairly inexpensive, although, and supply plenty of storage.
Tuta may be just a little impractical relying in your area of interest, particularly in the event you’d prefer to take full benefit of its security measures. You’ll be able to’t assume your customers or purchasers will need to transition to Tuta to take full benefit of the improved knowledge safety.
If the recipient of your electronic mail is on an exterior electronic mail server, like Gmail, a password for encrypting and decrypting the e-mail will should be exchanged. On the plus aspect, you’ll solely want to do this as soon as – the identical password can then be used for any dialog with the identical contact.
Tuta’s UI is straightforward to navigate, and it’s similar to Gmail. Inside Tuta, you may:
- Create Inbox Guidelines & Filters to mechanically kind and set up emails into folders and subfolders.
- Create a Shared Mailbox that a number of help brokers can entry from inside your organization (sadly, Shared Mailboxes incur further prices per person, don’t help end-to-end encryption, and don’t help automated responses).
- Allow a customized area throughout an infinite variety of electronic mail addresses.
- Add Tuta Calendar integration to schedule or bookmark conferences with clients, purchasers, and enterprise companions.
- Entry your safe inbox from Android, iPhone, Linux, macOS, or Home windows. Tuta is supported throughout all standard browsers as effectively.
- Allow browser push notifications, Android & iOS notifications, and desktop notifications.
- Full-text search your encrypted mailbox, however solely as much as 4 weeks prior. This can be a large disadvantage for companies that must recall data from older accounts or orders.
Finally, Tuta feels most related for these addressing critical privateness issues. The concentrate on knowledge encryption has led to sacrifices in different areas.
It lacks plenty of fundamental help performance supplied by assist desk purchasers – collision detection and round-robin assignment, for instance. Automation options are additionally missing, and restricted to an out-of-office response. There’s no choice for integration with a information base, CRM, or dwell chat widget.
#6: Groove
And final however not least, we current our personal assist desk – Groove. It’s a assist desk answer constructed from the bottom up for the wants of small on-line companies.
First, let’s clear up the variations between a assist desk and a conventional electronic mail shopper. Initially, they might appear related. Groove’s interface, for instance, needs to be straightforward to navigate you probably have any prior expertise with a platform like Gmail.
With that being mentioned, a help desk is specifically designed for customer support. An electronic mail shopper has a really broad demographic. So whilst you can leverage the latter for buyer help, it would by no means be ‘optimum’ when in comparison with a assist desk.
That’s why assist desks are one of the best Gmail alternate options for buyer emails. Whereas all assist desks have their distinctive strengths, many key options are the identical: automation, omnichannel help, AI help, dwell chat performance, self-service instruments, and integration with third-party platforms.
As an illustration, Groove can integrate directly with Shopify, so you’ve gotten entry to all of your clients’ order particulars proper at your fingertips.
In contrast to electronic mail, a assist desk is a centralized platform for buyer help. It’s constructed for cross-functional collaboration between group members. It cuts down on response instances and automates vital processes. And most significantly, it considers the shopper as its start line and finish level.
So how does Groove allow a greater buyer help expertise?
Omnichannel Help
Inside Groove, communication throughout channels is funneled into one unified inbox. This simplifies your help efforts immensely. All the pieces it’s essential to reply to is multi function place. So your group can present the identical degree of service no matter the place your clients select to contact you.
For instance, Groove features a live chat widget that may be embedded in-app or instantly in your web site. You’ll be able to simply edit the widget inside Groove with none coding expertise wanted, and also you’ll see all of the modifications in actual time.
Different integrations allow you to pull in buyer queries from social media and even telephone help. No extra switching backwards and forwards between platforms – a assist desk is your command middle for customer support.
Self-Service Data Base
Groove comes with built-in knowledge base functionality. You’ll be able to create self-service sources externally (for patrons to troubleshoot issues on their very own) or internally (to your group to reference when responding to clients or coaching new workers).
Both means, you may push information base articles dwell proper inside Groove. These sources can then be used when responding to emails or dwell chat messages, linking clients on to the related pages.
You’ll be able to even alter web optimization settings and meta descriptions for higher natural visitors. Self service is a facet that many small companies overlook, however it couldn’t be extra essential. The extra clients are capable of assist themselves, the happier they’re, and the extra time your group has to sort out more difficult points.
Reporting & Survey Monitoring
Finally, the objective of any Gmail different for buyer emails is to enhance each CX and customer satisfaction. To know whether or not that’s occurring, you’ll want a solution to measure the affect of help on these key metrics.
Most conventional electronic mail platforms present little on the subject of analytics. With Groove, however, you may readily track team and agent performance from your Reports dashboard.
Groove additionally integrates with platforms like Delighted to observe survey outcomes, similar to your Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) rating and Net Promoter (NPS) ranking. This helps you gauge the effectiveness of each your product and your service.
And Extra!
These are only a few of the benefits Groove gives as a substitute for Gmail. And in the event you’re frightened concerning the complexity of transitioning to a assist desk, we have now you lined there as effectively.
Many assist desks are overcomplicated, constructed extra for enterprise use. Groove is designed as a midway level. It’s extra strong and purpose-built than conventional electronic mail purchasers, but extra streamlined and user-friendly than different standard assist desks.
In the event you’ve used Gmail, it is best to really feel at house in Groove nearly instantly. Setting it up and learning its core features is a fast course of. However don’t take our phrase for it – give it a try for yourself and see the way it compares with the opposite alternate options we’ve checked out.
Discovering the Proper Platform To Help Your Enterprise’ Rising Wants
There’s nothing inherently fallacious with a regular Gmail mailbox. It’s an ideal start line for freelancers and enterprise with a single help agent. Nonetheless, it’s not often manageable as soon as your solo venture turns into a group effort.
As you develop, it turns into increasingly more troublesome to navigate buyer emails and not using a Gmail different like a assist desk. Your help group wants options that customary mailing programs simply don’t have in place. They aren’t designed for buyer help.
Groove is! And in the event you’re nervous about switching to a assist desk, it’s designed to be immediately acquainted to any seasoned Gmail person. Sign up for a free 7-day trial to see if it’s the proper match to develop alongside your small enterprise.
