The problem with sharing one Gmail login
The quickest way to share support@ is to give everyone the password. It is also the worst: you cannot tell who sent which reply, two-step verification becomes awkward, and when someone leaves the team you have to change the password for everyone.
Google Workspace has two built-in alternatives, and a helpdesk is the third. Here is what each one does well and where it stops.
1. Mail delegation
In Gmail settings, the owner of support@ can grant other people in the organisation access to the mailbox. Each delegate opens it from their own account, and the emails they send show who sent them on the mailbox’s behalf.
Delegation fixes the password problem but not the coordination problem. Everyone still sees the same unread emails, there is no owner per conversation, and nothing stops two people replying to the same customer.
2. Google Groups collaborative inbox
A Google Group set up as a collaborative inbox lets members assign a conversation to a person, mark it as done and see what is still open. It is free with Google Workspace and enough for a small team with light volume.
It stops being enough when you need reporting, templates, automatic acknowledgements, fair distribution of new emails or a view of who is overloaded. Replying from a group also works differently from replying in the normal Gmail inbox, which agents need to get used to.
3. A helpdesk connected to Gmail
A helpdesk connects to the existing support@ mailbox and turns each email into a ticket with a reference number, one owner and a status. Customers keep writing to the same address and replies still go out from it, so nothing changes on their side.
Look for a tool that connects through the Gmail API with push notifications rather than checking the mailbox on a timer, and that signs in through Google’s consent screen instead of asking for the password. M-Reply works this way and creates a ticket in under 10 seconds.
Which one to choose
Match the tool to the size of the team and the volume of email.
- One or two people and a few emails a day: delegation is enough.
- A small team that needs to see who has what: a Google Groups collaborative inbox.
- Five or more agents, several addresses, or targets for response time: a helpdesk.