8 Best Email Collaboration Tools and Software

Are you planning to upgrade your email collaboration software? Looking for recommendations of the best tools on the market today?

You know – With 80% of customers saying they want quicker responses from companies, the key to delivering quicker responses lies at the heart of successful teamwork.

An email collaboration tool emerges as the cornerstone for fostering collaboration, enabling teams to transcend geographic boundaries, streamline workflows, and achieve unparalleled productivity.

In this article, we delve into the world of email collaboration software and explore its transformative potential for your business.

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What is email collaboration software?

Email collaboration software is a digital tool that customer support teams can use to enhance their internal communication and teamwork. It builds upon the foundation of email to create a seamless platform to manage incoming emails.

At its core, this software simplifies communication among support agents, allowing them to share information and updates through email threads easily. It goes beyond traditional email by offering features such as file sharing, which enables support agents to exchange essential documents like customer records, FAQs, or training materials directly within their email conversations.

Email collaboration software assists in task management, allowing support agents to create and monitor tasks within their emails. This feature helps them assign responsibilities, set deadlines, and ensure that critical tasks are completed efficiently.

Some shared inbox tools also enable collaborative editing, enabling support agents to work together on documents in real-time. Workflow automation capabilities provided by these tools help streamline repetitive tasks, such as email organization or inquiry assignments, saving valuable time.

Key features to look for in an email collaboration tool

Here are all the features the best email collaboration software must have:

User-friendly interface

Ensure the software has an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface to promote user adoption and productivity.

It makes life easier for everyone. When the email collaboration software is easy to figure out, your team can start using it immediately without much training. Imagine not having to spend hours learning how to use a complicated tool—instead, you dive right in and get stuff done.

A user-friendly interface also cuts down on mistakes. When things are straightforward with email collaboration tools, there’s less room for mix-ups and errors.

Plus, it’s less frustrating for your team, which means they’re happier and more productive. And when your team is happy, they’re more likely to work together smoothly and come up with cool ideas. So, it’s not just about convenience; it’s about making your team’s life easier, saving time and money on training, and creating a positive and productive atmosphere for collaboration.

Real-time collaboration

Look for features that enable real-time collaboration, such as chat, comments, and notifications, to facilitate quick decision-making and responses.

Imagine you’re working on a project with your team members. With real-time collaboration, you can chat with your support teams instantly, ask questions, share ideas, or give feedback in the same space where you’re discussing customer inquiries. No need to switch between different apps or wait for responses through slow email threads.

It’s also about comments and notifications. You can leave comments on documents or tasks, making it super clear what needs to be done or changed. And when someone mentions you or there’s an important update, you get notifications instantly, so nothing slips through the cracks.

The best email collaboration tools come with plenty of real-time collaboration features. It keeps everyone on the same page, making your teamwork smoother and more efficient.

Workflow automation

Automation capabilities in email collaboration software can streamline repetitive tasks, such as email categorization, data entry, or task assignment, improving efficiency.

Think about all those repetitive tasks that eat up your team’s time—like sorting emails, entering data, or assigning tasks. Workflow automation steps in and does these tasks for you like a pro.

For example, it can automatically categorize incoming emails, so you don’t have to spend ages organizing your inbox. It can also handle data entry, saving you from mind-numbing copy-pasting. And when it comes to task assignments, it’s like having a smart assistant that knows who’s best for the job and does the assigning automatically.

Instead of doing the same monotonous tasks, your support teams get more time to focus on important stuff, like helping customers or working on creative projects. Plus, automation reduces the chance of errors since it follows the rules you set.

Reporting and analytics

Access to analytics and reporting tools can provide insights into collaboration trends, helping organizations make data-driven decisions.

Analytics and reporting give you a clear picture of how your team is collaborating. You can see who’s sending the most emails, who’s resolving and responding to customer emails the fastest, and who’s lagging behind.

Having this data helps you make decisions based on real data, not just guesswork. For example, if you notice that some team members are overloaded with emails, you can redistribute tasks.

Analytics and reporting tools are like having a crystal ball that lets you see how your team is doing and where you can make improvements. It’s all about making informed, data-driven decisions that lead to better collaboration and productivity.

8 email collaboration tools

Choosing the best email collaboration tool can be difficult, especially with a growing number of options. We have picked out the best ones for you:

Keeping

Looking for the best email collaboration software for your growing businesses?

Keeping is the one.

Keeping is a shared inbox tool that supercharges email collaboration for your team. Our email collaboration tool serves as a centralized system for all your email communication, allowing support team to access and collaborate on emails from a single collaborative inbox.

A few key features that boost email collaboration offered by Keeping are:

Ticket assignment

Collaboration among multiple people in the team wouldn’t work smoothly without ticket assignment. The entire team can easily assign emails to the most appropriate agent based on the issue. You can also set up automated workflows in the Keeping shared inbox to handle ticket assignments automatically.

Private notes

Private notes allow your support agents to exchange thoughts, messages, and information privately, away from customer interactions. These notes enable technical support team members to work together, add context to customer messages, or discuss customer requests confidentially.

Tags and labels

Our email collaboration tool offers priority and status tags. Agents can create their own priority tags (like urgent or not) and change the status (solved or unsolved) for each ticket. This helps support teams focus on urgent issues and provide timely help to customers.

Shared templates

The shared email templates feature is a feature that allows teams to create, save, and share predefined templates for various types of responses, messages, or actions for effective collaboration.

Collision detection

Collision detection is a feature that stops multiple customer service agents from dealing with the same customer inquiry or support ticket at the same time. This prevents overlapping work, improves efficiency, and enhances team collaboration, ensuring customers get quick responses.

Hiver

Hiver is like a helper for your Gmail. This email collaboration tool helps you handle emails and provides support through live chat and voice channels, all conveniently from the left side of your Gmail screen.

Hiver’s shared inbox allows you to easily assign emails to team members and add internal notes. The Lite plan offers some extra benefits like collision detection, shared drafts, and the ability to tag conversations. However, it’s important to mention that the more advanced features are usually included in their premium plans.

Hiver also offers analytical features. Some of them are creating custom reports, automating leadership reports, and creating dynamic dashboards. Hiver integrates with popular tools such as Slack, WhatsApp, Asana, Salesforce and more.

Groove

Groove is a versatile tool designed for managing shared inboxes, encompassing emails, social media messages, and live chats.

Its key features include the ability to allocate conversations to specific team members for clarity, mention and notify support teams to keep them informed, and engage in internal discussions via private notes regarding customer inquiries.

Groove email collaboration tool also offers time-based Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to enhance customer service, automated conversation routing and categorization, and over 50 automation templates for efficient project management.

It provides 24/7 support through multiple channels, such as live chat and a knowledge base. Groove incorporates advanced AI features like generating conversation summaries, assisting with replies, providing explanations for conversations, and even creating instant AI-generated responses.

ZohoDesk

ZohoDesk is email management software that helps turn customer service into a competitive advantage. It allows multiple team members to use a shared inbox tool to keep tabs on customer requests from various sources, including different channels, brands, products, and departments.

When you visit the ZohoDesk website, you’ll find a variety of useful features. To start, ZohoDesk’s ticket management works across different communication channels. Here are some other ticket management capabilities in ZohoDesk:

• Connect your customer service with popular instant messaging platforms.

• Arrange your email management system into multiple departments for better organization.

• Collect important information to provide improved service experiences.

ZohoDesk also offers an AI bot named Zia, which tags key ticket details, performs sentiment analysis, alerts you to unusual ticket activity, and suggests relevant solutions from knowledge base articles.

For self-service, there are features like guided conversations, the ASAP plug-in, a multi-brand, help desk call center, and a knowledge base.

To boost team productivity, ZohoDesk provides a work mode, a reply editor, mobile ticket management, and the ability to create automated workflows for notification rules, ticket assignments, SLAs, escalations, and layouts.

Freshdesk

Another one our list of the best email collaboration software is Freshdesk. It’s a widely-used customer service software that offers a wide range of features to help businesses of all sizes provide excellent customer support.

Some users do find Freshdesk to be a bit overwhelming. For small businesses like yours, it might have too many features. This can make it difficult to handle complex tasks and also increase your expenses.

Here are some things Freshdesk can do:

• Set response and resolution deadlines for tickets based on business hours or categories.

• Automatically suggest how to classify and organize tickets.

• Make routine tasks easier through automation within team inboxes.

• Group related tickets to handle common issues efficiently.

• Break down complex problems into smaller, easier-to-handle tickets for quicker solutions for the entire team.

Google collaborative inbox

If you have a small team already using Gmail, Google’s Collaborative Inbox tool is a straightforward choice that’s easy for your team to set up.

You can start by creating a group that includes everyone in your Google account (or at least those who need access to the collaborative inbox). Then, enable the Collaborative Inbox feature. With this tool, you can:

• Assign specific conversations to team members. This helps ensure that each email or inquiry is handled by the right person, streamlining the workflow.

• Mark conversations as resolved when resolution is done. This helps keep track of which issues have been addressed and which are still pending.

• Use labels to categorize conversations, making it easier to sort and prioritize them based on different criteria, such as urgency or topic.

• Work together seamlessly within Gmail, sharing insights and information to resolve customer inquiries effectively.

Google Collaborative Inbox is a basic shared email solution designed for Gmail users. It’s a cost-effective option for teams that don’t require additional advanced features.

Front

Front simplifies agent communication by consolidating it into a single shared inbox, allowing you to provide outstanding service on a larger scale. Front offers a user-friendly interface and includes collaboration, workflow automation, integrations, a knowledge base, analytics, and live chat capabilities to enhance your operations.

Front comes with collaboration features such as collision detection, adding comments within email threads, and automatically sharing drafts.

To automate repetitive tasks there are capabilities like tagging and assigning emails, archiving messages, and automatically routing tickets. You can also incorporate data from other systems, like customer information from your CRM or order statuses.

With Front’s analytics, you can monitor your team’s performance and identify areas for improvement. This includes tracking metrics such as response times, resolution times, CSAT scores, and customer feedback.

Front also offers self-service options, including knowledge base management. You can design your own knowledge base with your branding elements like logos and colors. You can set permissions for authorized individuals to access or edit the knowledge base, and it supports the inclusion of tables, images, and even videos.

Kayako

Kayako is an email collaboration software designed to help your support teams deal with customer issues without any friction. This email collaboration platform enables teams like yours to manage customer emails to drive customer satisfaction.

By using custom views, tags, and assigning conversations, your customer service team can effectively manage ongoing problems and assign discussions to the right team members automatically.

Kayako offers a knowledge base that you can customize completely, and it’s accessible all day, every day, even when your team is not available. This means customers can easily find what they need and get instant suggestions as they type their queries.

This email collaboration software helps your team see real-time customer activity. You can view what items were added to cart, which pages were visited and much like this. Kayako also integrates with popular apps like Zapier.

Ready to transform how you work in Gmail?

Teams love Keeping because you can collaborate on a shared inbox without ever leaving Gmail. It's not magic, but it feels magical.

Find Out More

Wrapping Up

Keeping is email collaboration software that is the right fit for most small to mid-sized teams. Try it free for 14-days, no credit card required.