How To Use Outlook As A Help Desk

Customer support has evolved dramatically with technology. From phone calls to live chat, businesses have adopted various channels to connect with customers. 

One significant contribution of technology in the CS world is helpdesks. Today, Helpdesk software has emerged as a centralized solution to manage support inquiries efficiently. But, while helpdesks offer robust features, they often require significant investments in software, training, and customization.

Wouldn’t it be simpler if you could leverage a tool you already use daily? A tool familiar to every employee? What if you could transform your inbox into a helpdesk?

With over 400 million users*, Outlook is a widely used email service provider by businesses worldwide. It’s accessible, user-friendly, and already integrated into daily workflows. 

But the real question is: Can Outlook replicate a fully functional helpdesk that streamlines customer queries? Let’s explore how to transform your Outlook inbox into a support powerhouse.

Table of Contents

• How to Use Outlook as a Helpdesk
  • 1. Shared mailbox 
  • 2. Rules and filters
  • 3. Canned responses/templates
• Limitations of Using Outlook as a Helpdesk
  • 1. No feature to assign emails automatically
  • 2. No visibility of the team’s workload and the status of queries 
  • 3. No feature to track agents’ performance
  • 4. No features to facilitate team collaboration
  • 5. Lack of proper reporting features to gauge customer satisfaction
• Hiver – A Helpdesk That Works Within Outlook
  • 1. Assign, track and get complete visibility of queries within Outlook
  • 2. Collaborate with your team without CCs and forwards
  • 3. Automatically enable skill-based and round-robin assignment of queries 
  • 4. Track your team’s performance and customer satisfaction metrics
  • 5. Almost no learning curve 
• The Way Forward
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How to Use Outlook as a Helpdesk

Using Outlook as a helpdesk might sound a bit unconventional. But its features are surprisingly effective for setting up a basic helpdesk. 

What you need is to know how to set it up and make the most of its features. Here are a set of features in Outlook that can help you manage your customer queries efficiently.  

1. Shared mailbox

A shared mailbox in Outlook is a centralized mail account that can be accessed and managed by multiple users. Shared mailboxes are designed to handle shared workloads, like that of a customer support team, where incoming mails need to be distributed and responded to by members of a team. 

For example, with the help of a shared mailbox in Outlook, you can create a common mail ID (ex: [email protected]) and give access to this mailbox to your team members. So,  instead of each team member checking their own inbox, they all have access to a shared “Support” mailbox.

Now, when you receive an incoming query, anyone on the team can jump in and respond promptly. This way, you ensure every customer gets a timely response, no matter who handles the email.

Here’s how to create a shared mailbox in Outlook and add your teammates. You can set different access permissions for your teammates, depending on their nature of work. But make sure everyone has the necessary permissions to read, reply to, and manage emails.

Key features of a shared mailbox in Outlook

To sum up, here’s how a shared mailbox can be beneficial for your support team:

• Centralized communication: With a single mail address, a shared mailbox mimics the functionality of a helpdesk by keeping all customer queries and conversations in one place. 
• Team access: Every team member can access, read, and reply to support queries. This saves you from the hassle of forwarding and cc-ing teammates. 
• Permission-based access: You can give your teammates different levels of access, such as read-only, send-only, or full-access – depending on their nature of work.

But, here’s something important to note. Although you may feel that Outlook’s shared mailbox can transform your inbox into a functional helpdesk, it may not be completely true. Users have found multiple glitches and limitations of using a shared mailbox in Outlook. 

To begin with, the shared mailboxes are not available in all versions of Outlook. Users have found that this feature is not available in the New Outlook interface. 

Users have also mentioned a couple of other inefficiencies of the shared mailbox in Outlook, like not being able to add signatures and the inbox taking time to sync up when switching devices. 

“I can see issues like mail sent doesn’t land in the sent folder of the shared mailbox, or no standard signatures for shared mailbox. I can also see issues with not updating enough if opening in Outlook app and users need real time with other users who access.”

–User review on reddit

So, to sum up, Outlook’s shared mailbox can be a practical solution for small teams, but it has quite a few issues that can hinder your support team’s efficiency. 

2. Rules and filters

Once you have a shared mailbox, you need to ensure that the inbox is properly organized so that no conversations are missed. That’s where rules and filters in Outlook come in handy. They help you sort and organize incoming emails based on certain criteria you set up. 

Let’s take an example. Suppose you get a lot of billing and invoice-related queries from your customers in your shared mailbox. And you want to forward them to your Finance department so that someone from that team can directly take over. 

With rules, you can automate this process without having tomanually forward them to the specific department. You can create rules to forward emails to the Finance department based on keywords like “billing,” “invoice,” “payment,” and more in the subject line or body of the email. 

Here’s a complete guide on how to create rules and filters in Outlook based on your specific criteria. 

Benefits of setting up rules in Outlook

• Automation: Rules are essentially automations. It helps you automatically categorize and priortize the emails received in your shared mailbox. This reduces the manual workload of your team. 
• Timely responses: You can flag important and urgent mails automatically with the help of rules. This ensures that important mails are quickly attended to, ensuring timely responses. 
• Organization: Setting up rules ensures that your inbox stays tidy and organized so that nothing slips through the cracks.  

Rules and filters in Outlook are quite functional. But, many users have pointed out their inefficiencies, especially when you set up rules in shared mailboxes. 

Users have explained that sometimes, rules in Outlook’s shared mailboxes don’t work properly. 

Users have also pointed out that you need to have full access to the shared mailbox to create rules. This means teammates with “read-only” or “send-only” permissions may not be able to set up rules. 

Another user has also mentioned that rules are not that easy to create in a shared mailbox. It takes a bit of learning to master it. 

“….Without the rules being directly on the shared mailbox, you will get lots of inconsistencies. Whenever I create a new shared mailbox I send a document to the users associated with it that shows how to properly create the rules, how to send on behalf of, etc.”

–User review on reddit

3. Canned responses/templates

Templates or canned responses are pre-written emails that can be used to quickly answer common customer queries. Using templates can improve your response time since you do not have to write the email from scratch every time. You can just customize the placeholders and hit send. 

Here’s an example of a template that can be customized as per user requirements

Subject: Your Order Status

Dear [Customer Name],

Thank you for your order with [Your Company]. We wanted to inform you that your order #[Order Number] is currently [Order Status].

The estimated delivery date is: [Date]

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to reach out to us.

Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Position]
[Your Company]

With Outlook, you can create and save templates that you can use later. Here’s a complete guide on how to create and save templates in Outlook. 

Benefits of using email templates in Outlook:

• Improves response times: As mentioned earlier, using stored templates to answer common customer queries allows your team to respond almost immediately. This improves response time since they don’t have to draft an email every time. 
• Ensures consistency in communication: Pre-written templates ensure that your customers receive high-quality information, irrespective of who responds to them. They also ensures a consistent and professional tone when communicating with your customers. 

Recommended read: First Response Time Explained

Limitations of Using Outlook as a Helpdesk

While Outlook can be a good starting point for managing incoming support queries, it cannot function as a helpdesk. It lacks the functionalities of a robust helpdesk which can hinder your support team’s efficiency to deliver exceptional customer customer support. 

Here are some of the limitations of using Outlook as a helpdesk:

1. No feature to assign emails automatically

Outlook doesn’t have a built-in ticketing system. So, it becomes hard to assign individual emails automatically. Sure, you can create rules to automatically send emails to your teammates based on specific criteria, but this can be done when you have a small team of 2-3 support staff. 

But when you have to assign large volumes of emails to multiple teammates, it gets rather complicated. Also, it’s almost impossible to assign queries in a round-robin manner with Outlook’s rules feature.

Recommended read: 7 Help Desk Automations Every Business Needs to Know

2. No visibility of the team’s workload and the status of queries

Outlook’s shared mailbox doesn’t have the feature to track the status of queries – if they are pending or closed. You’ll have to take updates directly from your team members or closely follow the conversation through email threads – which can be pretty time-consuming.

3. No feature to track agents’ performance

There’s no proper way to monitor the performance of your support staff. In order to track their performance you need access to important metrics like number of issues handled by each agent, response time, resolution rate and so on. Outlook doesn’t offer any way to measure these. 

4. No features to facilitate team collaboration

It can get particularly difficult to work in a shared mailbox without proper collaboration features. Since there’s no visibility, agents may not know which queries are being handled and which aren’t. 

Also, if two agents respond to the same query, it can confuse the customer. Similarly, if everyone assumes someone else is handling a query, chances are that the query will go unanswered. 

5. Lack of proper reporting features to gauge customer satisfaction

Outlook lacks the capability to measure important metrics like response time, resolution time, CSAT scores, and more. Without these metrics, you won’t be able to measure how satisfied your customers are and if there’s any scope for improvement. 

In fact, businesses often use CSAT surveys to measure customer satisfaction. However, there is no built-in option to integrate these surveys in customer emails. The only way to do this would be to integrate such survey tools with Outlook, which may cost additional money.

Alright! I get it! Outlook has a bunch of limitations. But getting a separate helpdesk means learning a new software myself and then training the entire team! It also means migrating all customer queries to the new tool. And I’m not even sure if the cost of all these would be worth it! What do I do?

I’m sure you must be thinking this! I cannot deny the fact that Outlook is a truly powerful email service provider, but honestly, it’s not equipped to handle the complexities of modern customer support operations!

But hear me out! What if I tell you there’s an alternative through which you won’t have to leave the familiar interface of Outlook and also leverage the powerful capabilities of a helpdesk? Here’s where Hiver comes in!

Hiver – A Helpdesk That Works Within Outlook

Hiver is a powerful helpdesk designed to work seamlessly within your Outlook inbox. It transforms your inbox into a powerful helpdesk and offers robust features like shared inbox, automation, reporting and analytics, and more—like any traditional helpdesk!

So, it’s the best of both worlds, isn’t it?

Let’s see how Hiver addresses Outlook’s limitations:

1. Assign, track and get complete visibility of queries within Outlook

Hiver offers a shared inbox functionality, just like Outlook, which creates a centralized location for all incoming customer queries. From the shared inbox, you can assign queries to your teammates manually or automatically. And it doesn’t end there. You can even track the statuses of the incoming queries within the shared inbox. 

Hiver’s integration with Outlook allows your team to keep track of the queries assigned to them on the left panel of Outlook’s interface. They also get a clear view of which emails are assigned to whom, giving complete visibility of the team’s workload. 

2. Collaborate with your team without CCs and forwards

Hiver enables collaboration both within teams and across departments. You can work on queries collaboratively with your teammates and also fast-track respondes without starting a new thread. 

Here are some of Hiver’s collaboration features:

–Notes and @mention – If you need to seek approval or share insights on a particular query, you can add a note right beside the email thread and tag the stakeholder involved. 

–Conversation followers – This feature enables managers and supervisors to follow an email thread to keep themselves informed about the conversation with the concerned customers. This is particularly useful in cases of escalations.

–Collision alerts – This feature alerts your teammates when they’re going to pick up a customer query that a colleague has already started working on.

3. Automatically enable skill-based and round-robin assignment of queries

With Hiver, you can automatically assign queries to your teammates. Hiver allows you to set up rules that automatically distribute emails to your team based on predefined criteria. You can automate round-robin assignments to ensure that the workload is evenly distributed in your team. 

You can also create rules to trigger skill-based assignment of queries, based on your teammates areas of expertise. For example, with Hiver you can automatically assign a technical query to an IT specialist. 

4. Track your team’s performance and customer satisfaction metrics

Hiver offers detailed reporting and analytics features that help you measure agent performance, response time, and other customer satisfaction metrics. You can identify your top-performing agents, and even make data-driven decisions to improve your business’s support operations

With Hiver, you can also send CSAT surveys within your email conversations. There’s no need to integrate a separate survey tool. This ensures that you get to measure your CSAT scores almost instantly. 

Recommended read: 18 Key Customer Service Metrics + How to Use Them

5. Almost no learning curve

Lastly, Hiver integrates with Outlook’s familiar interface. So there’s no need for you or your team to completely learn a new software. You can continue to use the interface you are comfortable with but with added functionalities – to make your job easier!

The Way Forward

Outlook’s features are quite functional. But when it comes to managing high volumes of customer queries – it falls short. Its limitations in terms of managing your team’s workload, tracking customer service metrics, or offering automation capabilities can hinder the efficiency of your support team.

Hiver addresses these limitations, by transforming your Outlook inbox into a powerful helpdesk solution. 

With its advanced collaborative automation and reporting capabilities, Hiver empowers your team to work smarter with absolutely no learning curve!

Interesting, isn’t it? Try it for free

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Can I use Outlook as a helpdesk for a small team?
   Yes, Outlook can be an effective help desk for small teams, especially if you leverage shared mailboxes and configure rules and filters to manage emails. However, as your team and the volume of support requests grow, you may encounter limitations that could hinder efficiency.

2. How do I organize emails in  Outlook’s shared mailbox?
   You can organize emails in a shared mailbox by creating folders and subfolders and using categories and flags to prioritize and categorize emails. Setting up rules to automatically move emails to specific folders based on criteria like sender or subject can also help maintain an organized inbox.

3. Can multiple users send emails from a shared mailbox?
   Yes, multiple users can send emails from a shared mailbox if they have the necessary permissions. Emails sent from the shared mailbox will appear as if they are sent from the shared email address (ex: [email protected])

4. Are there any storage limits for shared mailboxes in Outlook?
   Shared mailboxes in Office 365 come with a default storage limit of 50 GB. This limit can be increased to 100 GB, but you need to subscribe to a higher plan. In case you exceed the storage limit, you may have to archive old emails or upgrade your subscription plan.

5. Can I use Hiver with any email provider?
   Currently, Hiver integrates with Outlook and Gmail only. 

6. What kind of support does Hiver offer?
   Hiver offers 24×7 customer support through chat and email. Along with this, it offers various support options, including a knowledge base and video tutorials. 

7. What is the pricing structure for Hiver?
   Hiver offers 3 major pricing plans, starting at $19/user/month. You can check the detailed pricing structure here. 

* – https://financesonline.com/number-of-email-users/.