Whereas normally unintentional, communication failures within the office are comparatively frequent. Maybe somebody will overlook to fill in a co-worker on a choice made at a gathering they missed, or a supervisor would possibly assign a mission with out clear expectations. These conditions can result in workers filling within the blanks, and out of the blue, everyone seems to be transferring in numerous instructions.
One approach to fight communication pitfalls is to have a superb set of instruments to assist preserve everybody on the identical web page. For teams answerable for managing a enterprise’ incoming communications, similar to buyer help or gross sales groups, a shared inbox device like Missive could be a good selection.
What’s Missive?
Missive is a shared inbox resolution that goals to ease a number of the burdens that include managing communications as a crew.
Missive’s crew inbox is an enormous step up from dealing with buyer communications by means of a daily e-mail consumer. E mail administration is made simpler with the power to assign messages to teammates, use canned responses for frequent questions, and collaboratively draft responses when a extra detailed reply is required. The platform may deal with different channels from its crew inbox, together with stay chat, SMS, and social media messaging.
The large promoting level for Missive is its crew chat providing. When staff must sync over a buyer concern or an assigned activity, they will huddle up through chat from inside an e-mail or individually in non-public, crew, or organization-wide chat rooms. Protecting inside chats throughout the device saves time and brings context to the dialogue. Documenting collaborative periods can be useful for many who might not have been concerned and must catch up later.
Whereas Missive has lots to supply, it nonetheless has shortcomings:
There isn’t a local data base resolution. In line with Zendesk, round 63% of shoppers begin with an organization’s on-line assets once they have a difficulty. Having FAQs accessible as a part of a assist middle or exterior data base will save your crew work and assist clients get solutions extra rapidly.
There aren’t any reporting dashboards or analytics. Enterprise choices are pushed by information, and in case your assist desk can’t provide reviews, your crew might want to create and replace them manually. A scarcity of reporting will in the end price your crew money and time.
Decrease-tiered plans have limitations in performance. Missive’s Free plan solely shops 15 days’ price of message historical past, and the Starter plan solely ups that quantity to 6 months. As well as, they each lack vital options like rule-based automation and the power to combine with different platforms.
Provided that instruments like a data base builder and reporting dashboards usually come as normal with a ticketing system, it’s price your time to analyze a few of Missive’s competitors.
The 9 finest Missive alternate options for crew collaboration
If Missive isn’t assembly your whole enterprise’ wants and also you assume it could be time for a change, listed below are 9 nice alternate options for crew collaboration.
Assist Scout
DragApp
Zendesk
Helpwise
Entrance
Spark Mail
Helpmonks
Trengo
Rooftop
1. Assist Scout
Finest Missive various for crew collaboration.
Fast to arrange and simple to make use of, Assist Scout helps groups handle all their buyer and consumer conversations in a single highly effective platform that feels similar to an inbox.
Assist Scout believes in the advantages of constructing a customer-centric firm, that means that staff don’t simply construct or promote the product — they use it! All of Assist Scout’s workers take part in entire firm help periods, giving them a useful perspective on easy methods to construct and design a product that lends to collaboration.
Listed here are a number of the ways in which Assist Scout may also help your crew work collectively extra successfully:
A shared inbox
All your emails and stay chats stream into Assist Scout’s shared inbox, offering visibility throughout your total crew. As soon as they land in your shared inbox, conversations might be assigned to people or groups to supply accountability and to make sure that one of the best individual handles every request.
Assist Scout additionally lets groups use tags and customized fields to categorize messages. Utilizing organizational options like tags and fields make conversations simpler to seek out and report on sooner or later.
Saved replies
If somebody in your crew comes up with a terrific response to a query, it can save you the reply as a saved reply. Saved replies are quick textual content snippets you can insert into any dialog with a few clicks. You’ll be able to construct a library of saved replies in Assist Scout for your whole frequent questions, making it simple on your crew to ship fast and constant replies.
Saved replies are additionally useful when onboarding new staff or if somebody from one other division must cowl the queue. It provides these staff a useful, pre-approved response to allow them to hit the bottom operating.
Collision detection
It’s arduous to inform when another person is responding to a message in a daily e-mail account. Assist Scout has collision detection options that present color-coded visible cues so that you’ll all the time know when somebody is engaged on a dialog.
Inside notes
Keep away from complicated e-mail chains by conserving all buyer discussions inside Assist Scout. You’ll be able to depart notes on your crew instantly within a dialog, capturing the trade for future reference.
Gentle customers
Collaborate with colleagues outdoors of your crew by including them to Assist Scout as gentle customers. This position is free to Plus and Professional plan clients and is right for employees members who aren’t customer-facing however should profit from entry to the platform.
Workflows
Rule-based automation can take the burden of assist desk administration off your crew. Assist Scout’s workflows are easy conditional statements that may deal with duties like dialog assignments, tagging, and extra.
Docs
Assist Scout comes with a local data base builder that allows you to create a customizable assist middle in minutes with out understanding any code. Prospects profit from having FAQs posted the place they’re simply accessible, and crew members do too.
Protecting a assist middle can stop data silos from rising in your crew. Solutions by no means get caught with one worker and are available for everybody to entry and be taught from.
Reporting
Monitor dialog and channel quantity, dealing with time, crew efficiency, and extra with Assist Scout’s reporting instruments. After you have the information you want, use it to tell hiring choices and direct technique modifications.
Assist Scout additionally helps integrations with well-liked CRMs and ecommerce platforms and presents further instruments that can assist you higher talk together with your clients.
Value: Free trial obtainable. Plans begin at $22/person per thirty days.
2. DragApp
Finest Missive various for groups that use Google Workspace.
Drag is an attention-grabbing possibility for groups seeking to collaborate on e-mail administration. Whereas different instruments on our record are standalone software program platforms, Drag operates on prime of your current Gmail inbox through a Google Chrome Extension.
As soon as you put in the extension, your crew can entry highly effective collaboration instruments like shared inbox performance, crew chat, e-mail templates, e-mail and activity assignments, automations, and reviews. The UI additionally supplies the power to handle e-mail and duties visually through a kanban-style structure.
For groups on the go, Drag now additionally presents a cellular app, so customers don’t must depend on the browser extension. Nevertheless, some options are read-only when accessed through cellular.
In case your crew depends solely on Gmail and doesn’t want a data base or exterior stay chat performance, then Drag is a stable, cost-effective possibility to think about.
Value: Free trial and plan can be found. Paid plans begin at $5/person per thirty days.
3. Zendesk
Finest Missive various for a complete help resolution.
Zendesk is the chief of the pack within the enterprise help software program market, and for a superb cause. Zendesk presents nice crew collaboration options similar to ticket assignments, inside notes, macros, automations, gentle customers, and the power to construct a customized data base.
As well as, they’ve a characteristic known as “facet conversations,” which helps you to ship a Slack message or e-mail proper from the ticket window. Aspect conversations make it simple to collaborate with people in your crew who don’t use Zendesk whereas conserving a file of the communication throughout the dialog.
Zendesk’s strongest collaborative characteristic is its potential to combine with nearly any software program in the marketplace. You’ll be able to create Zoom conferences, view buyer purchases, and entry your organization’s mission administration software program with out leaving the ticket.
The primary draw back to Zendesk is that it may be a beast to arrange, and plenty of integrations would require IT or improvement help. It’s additionally an expensive alternative, on condition that some collaboration options are solely obtainable on higher-tiered plans.
Value: Free trial obtainable. Plans begin at $19/person per thirty days.
4. Helpwise
Finest Missive various for groups with restricted budgets.
Helpwise is a communications administration device providing a number of plan ranges to fit your enterprise wants. Their entry-level plan contains a number of useful options for crew collaboration, together with a shared inbox (for e-mail or stay chat), saved replies, inside notes/discussions, and a few primary automation performance. The free plan additionally contains primary reviews.
On the flip facet, the free plan comes with a number of constraints. The plan doesn’t help integrations or present a assist middle, teammates can’t share reply drafts, there are caps on contacts and the variety of saved replies and automations, and the shared inbox can solely deal with e-mail or chat.
Nonetheless, Helpwise could be the appropriate alternative for early-stage organizations that may improve to paid tiers as their contact quantity grows and extra strong performance is critical.
Value: Free trial and plan obtainable. Paid plans begin at $12/person per thirty days.
5. Entrance
Finest Missive various for groups that want to make use of private e-mail accounts.
Entrance is a shared inbox device whose most important differentiator is that crew members may use the platform to handle private e-mail accounts. Having all of your emails in a single place might be useful and stop the necessity to swap forwards and backwards between instruments.
Concerning crew collaboration, Entrance has a number of options that make managing help requests and incoming communications simpler. The device’s shared mailboxes, e-mail assignments, inside feedback, visitor accounts, automations, crew administration functionalities, and the power to collaborate on drafted replies make it a robust alternative.
The value of Entrance’s Starter plan is aggressive, although groups contemplating signing up ought to double-check the characteristic record earlier than committing. The Starter plan doesn’t embody analytics, crew administration options are solely obtainable as a part of the Progress plan, and Entrance doesn’t supply a local data base device.
Value: Free trial obtainable. Plans begin at $19/individual per thirty days (two person minimal).
6. Spark Mail
Finest Missive various for collaborative e-mail administration.
Spark is an e-mail consumer for the Home windows, macOS, iOS, and Android working methods. The appliance’s potential to snooze messages, mute threads, bundle non-priority messages, and prioritize emails from actual individuals makes it a good selection for these seeking to set up their private e-mail accounts.
Even past private accounts, Spark customers can create groups and invite others to collaborate with them on e-mail responses. Teammates can talk with one another through “shared threads” proper in an e-mail, eliminating the necessity for forwarded messages. Different crew options embody shared drafts, shared e-mail templates, and e-mail assignments with due dates. For these on the lookout for the final word collaborative e-mail workspace, Spark launched a shared inbox characteristic in 2021 that has comparable performance to others on this record.
Usually, Spark is an effective worth. The Free and Premium Particular person plans present primary crew performance for as much as two collaborators, however in the event you’re trying to make use of Spark for a complete division, you’ll must spring for the Crew Premium plan.
Value: Free trial and plan obtainable. Paid plans that embody a shared inbox begin at $6.99/person per thirty days.
7. Helpmonks
Finest Missive various for advertising and marketing groups.
Helpmonks is an all-in-one buyer engagement platform that provides instruments which are perfect for buyer help and advertising and marketing groups.
The product has typical help options similar to e-mail and stay chat administration, but it surely additionally presents the power to create e-mail campaigns and automations.
On the crew collaboration entrance, Helpmonks permits for e-mail and activity assignments, inside notes, workflows, and reporting, they usually plan to introduce a data base builder sooner or later. All plans supply limitless customers, permitting groups to carry extra staff into the device with out worrying about per-user prices. This flat-rate pricing method places even the highest-tier plan into attain for many corporations.
Whereas this pricing construction may appear good, add-ons can increase the worth tag. As every plan comes with just one mailbox, corporations with larger e-mail administration wants pays $29 per thirty days for every additional mailbox required. Further e-mail marketing campaign contacts (there’s a 10,000 per thirty days cap) and additional stay chat websites additionally come at an additional price.
Value: Free trial obtainable. Plans begin at $29 per thirty days.
8. Trengo
Finest Missive various for groups that require a chatbot.
Trengo is an omnichannel platform, supporting the administration of ordinary channels similar to e-mail, chat, and voice, in addition to messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram.
Very similar to Missive, Trengo presents crew chat performance, making collaboration round incoming requests simple. The shared inbox characteristic permits for e-mail assignments and workflows, and you should purchase gentle agent licenses as an add-on. Reporting analytics and a data base builder are additionally obtainable.
One characteristic which may curiosity some groups is Trengo’s chatbot providing. The platform facilitates the simple creation of a multi-channel chatbot by means of drag-and-drop flows. As soon as designed and launched, chatbots may also help deflect contacts or route clients to the right worker.
Value: Free trial obtainable. Paid plans begin at $18/agent per thirty days.
9. Rooftop
Finest Missive various for groups that worth privateness.
Rooftop is a platform that not solely presents shared inbox capabilities but additionally supplies instruments for activity and mission administration, creating an setting splendid for crew collaboration.
The product presents normal crew options similar to e-mail and activity assignments, tagging skills, inside notes, and reporting. The device additionally serves as a central level for file administration.
One Rooftop characteristic that may be a bit uncommon is the power for a crew member to set an e-mail dialog to non-public. Whereas most platforms supply restrictions based mostly on person roles, the constraints are sometimes broad (i.e., deciding what mailboxes a person can entry) and never on the particular person e-mail degree.
Although a bit atypical, this could be a helpful characteristic in case your crew doesn’t require transparency throughout all incoming messages.
Value: Free trial obtainable. Plans begin at $39/person per thirty days.
Choosing the proper Missive various for crew collaboration
Software program is barely useful in the event you use it, so it’s important to contain your crew and get their buy-in as you slim down your choices. Have discussions to find out what options they’re enthusiastic about, determine any price range constraints you will have, and join just a few free trials to check out every platform’s options.
The Missive alternate options above will all go a great distance towards sustaining readability, accountability, and transparency on your crew because it tackles buyer communications, so don’t be afraid to offer them a attempt.