Benefits of Gmail for Customer Service Teams

Businesses are faced with a multitude of options when it comes to choosing software that can handle your customer service emails. From simple email inbox tools to enterprise-level help desks, you may find it hard to narrow down to a solution that truly fits your needs.

There are a multitude of benefits of Gmail. Google Workspace (formerly known as GSuite) is a great way for your company to manage incoming customer support emails. If you’re looking for simple email inbox software, Gmail should be your top choice. With Gmail, you also get access to integrations with Google’s other apps that are linked with the same account.

Gmail is so much more than just email. You can store your documents in Google Drive and share calendars with Google Calendar. Google Docs and Google Sheets allows you to collaborate on documents directly within the browser.  And Google Chat allows you to send instant messages between team members and also allows you to securely store instant messages for later use.

When you use Gmail, it’s easy to keep things simple and avoid messing around with other expensive and complicated software. Your customer support team can focus on doing what they do best – helping customers.

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10 benefits of Gmail as your customer service email

1. Users are familiar with Gmail

If you’re asking your employees to use Gmail to manage customer service emails, the advantage of this approach is they won’t have to learn a new tool. The average employee is probably already familiar with the Gmail interface and doesn’t require any training to get up to speed. New hires can get started using Gmail straightaway and shorten the time it takes for them to reach full productivity.

2. Easy to install

With Gmail, there is no complicated software to configure or accounts to get set up. You simply sign up for your Google account, add your company email address and let Google handle all the technical requirements. You can start sending and receiving emails right away and offering a high standard of customer service. There’s nothing to install on desktop as Gmail is accessible through the web browser, although Gmail is available as a mobile app.

3. Gmail is specialized

Gmail does one thing, and one thing really well – emails. For extra functionality, Google integrates Gmail with lots of other apps like Google Meet and Google Calendar, but they are separate entities developed distinctly from Gmail. When you use Gmail, you know you are getting the best possible User Experience and the platform is very easy to use. It’s impossible to get lost inside of Gmail and its features are instantly discoverable.

4. High grade security and spam filtering

Gmail is a very secure platform for storing, sending and receiving emails. It’s built on top of Google Cloud Platform which offers the best standard of security available today. Google Workspace Admin lets administrators control how data is secured, see reports and manage the security of mobile devices. Gmail also encrypts your email in transit using TLS to prevent outside parties from viewing your email.

Gmail also has the best spam filtering in the business. This is an easy to overlook feature that is critical.

5. Extensive customization options

Gmail can be personalized to look how you want and make the interface a bit more interesting. Take advantage of Gmail’s themes to change the color or add a photo to the background of your email inbox. Change how messages are displayed including the density of the emails, inbox type and reading pane.

6. Lots of storage space

The free version of Gmail comes with a huge storage space of 15GB of storage for every user, while the Google Workspace Basic plan comes with 30GB of storage, making sure you always have enough space for your incoming mail and attachments. The higher paying plans offer unlimited storage for those companies who think they will have extensive amounts of data.

7. Integration with other Google apps

As we mentioned before, Gmail integrates with a wealth of other Google services and your Gmail login gives you access to Google’s entire suite of tools (called Google Apps). You can use Google Chat to have one-to-one or group chats with colleagues. Google Meet gives you high quality video conferencing with the ability to join Meet directly from a calendar invite or email invite. Google Forms enables you to gather information and feedback through customized surveys.

8. High uptime

When it comes to service quality, Google is extremely dependable. Google Workspace promises a 99.9% Service Level Agreement in which they promise to be available for that amount of time. You can rest assured that there will be no scheduled downtime and your business emails will always be accessible.

9. It’s affordable

The cheapest Google Workspace plan that includes access to Gmail starts from just over $5 per user per month. There are slightly cheaper options on the market such as Zoho, but the price includes access to Google’s suite of apps and custom and secure business email. Google Workspace definitely offers a lot of bang for your buck and is ideal for growing teams.

10. You can use a shared mailbox

In Gmail, you can turn it into a shared mailbox for your customer service team by creating a new Gmail account for the email you want to share, such as support @company.com. It’s as simple as going to the settings and granting access to your account. This means all your support emails will be forwarded to anyone’s account who you grant access and their replies will come from support @company.com.

There are some limitations to using Gmail as a shared mailbox, though, which is one of the reasons why we created Keeping. Read on to find out more.

Get extra Gmail benefits with Keeping

Keeping is customer support software that works right on top of Gmail to provide you and your customers with an unparalleled service experience. With Keeping, you can keep using all the features you love about Gmail while turning your email inbox into a help desk ticketing system.

Keeping allows a team to seamlessly manage all their incoming customer service emails. It turns your shared Gmail account into a collaboration tool with extra features that allow you to assign tickets to individual team members, and tells you when another team member is working on an email to stop you sending duplicate replies.

The benefit of Keeping is managing your emails directly within Gmail and no need to open an extra browser tab. Support emails are turned into trackable tickets which can be set to Open or Closed. You can collaborate more effectively with your team members by adding private notes to customer tickets, with the ability to create extra context or ask questions, all without leaving Keeping.

Keeping allows you to get set up in just minutes, saving time for your busy support team. Other time-savers include canned responses that team members can send in response to common customer queries. Automatically assign tickets, set priority and tags, or change the status based on the content of the support request.

Wrapping up

If you’re considering a customer support tool for your service team, look no further than Gmail. It’s a powerful platform that’s nevertheless simple to use and easy to set up. Your support team is likely familiar with using its interface so there’s virtually no learning curve when it comes to helping customers.

Extend the capabilities of Gmail with Keeping, a useful add-on which will take your email customer service to the next level. Keeping allows you to keep the interface you love while ensuring that you have all the features you need to effectively serve your customers. The best thing about Keeping is customers will never know that you are using third-party software to manage your emails. Keeping is totally invisible to customers, allowing you to keep the human and personal touch in your customer interactions.