Outgrowing a shared Gmail inbox.

Where you are now

How teams share one Gmail address

• One login, shared. Everyone signs in to the same mailbox. Simple, but every reply looks the same and nobody can tell who sent what.
• Gmail delegation. The mailbox owner adds teammates as delegates, who can read, send and delete mail in it. Google allows up to 10 delegates on a personal Gmail account and up to 1,000 on Google Workspace, and the delegate's own address shows when they send.
• A Google Group. The address belongs to a group and each member gets a copy. Turned into a collaborative inbox, members with the right permission can take a conversation, assign it to someone and mark it complete.

Provider reference: Google: delegate and collaborate on email

Provider reference: Google Groups: take and assign conversations

The signs

Seven signs you have outgrown it

• 01Threads get lostA client's reply lands among everyone's unread mail. Someone reads it on their phone, it is no longer bold, and nobody comes back to it.
• 02Two people replyNobody can see that a teammate is already writing, so the client gets two answers, sometimes different ones.
• 03Nobody owns itLabels and stars say what a message is about, not whose job it is. The phrase you hear most is "I thought you had it".
• 04No history per clientTo see what a client asked for last quarter you search by sender, and miss everyone else at their organisation who wrote in.
• 05No promise you can keepNothing tells you a request has waited two days for a first reply until the client follows up to ask.
• 06Waiting on the client, from memoryWhen you need a document or an answer from a client, the only reminder is whoever remembers to chase it.
• 07The work behind it is invisibleThe hours spent on each client's requests live in a separate timesheet, if they are recorded at all.

If several of these happen every week, the shared inbox has become the bottleneck.

What changes

What a service desk adds

• Owner and status. Every request is open, in progress, waiting or resolved, and has one owner or is visibly unassigned.
• One reply, not two. Tend warns you when a teammate has the same request open.
• History per client. People are grouped into organisations by their company email domain, so a client's page shows every request from everyone there.
• Response targets. Each queue has a first-reply and resolution target in business hours, and late requests show how late.
• Document requests. List what you need from the client on the request. Tend shows it on their tracking page and chases it by email every 3 days until it arrives.
• Time against the client. Run a timer or log time on each request, then export it as CSV.

What to keep

Keep the address your clients already use

Step by step

Move to Tend without changing the address

1. 01Start a free trial. You confirm your email and name your workspace, and it opens with a Support queue ready to receive email.
2. 02Invite the people who answer clients in Settings > Users. Each one who answers takes a seat. Clients never do.
3. 03Decide how new requests find an owner. In Settings > Queues, a queue can land requests unassigned for the team to pick up, give them to one person, or use round-robin between agents.
4. 04In Settings > Email, copy your queue's private address from its card.
5. 05Forward the shared address to that private address. Use Gmail forwarding for a single or delegated mailbox, add the private address as a member of a Google Group, or ask your admin for a routing rule.
6. 06From an outside address, such as a personal account, email the shared address. Check the new request shows that sender as the requester, then reply from Tend and reply again from the outside account.
7. 07Agree one rule with the team: client email is answered in Tend, not in Gmail. A reply sent from Gmail never reaches the request, so nobody else can see it.

• Optional: in Settings > Email, verify Your sending domain so Tend's emails go out from your own domain.
• Share your client portal link when you are ready. Clients sign in with an emailed link, with no password to create, and see where each of their requests stands.
• Once Tend has run for a week or two, remove anyone from the delegation or the Group who no longer needs a copy of every email.

Honestly

When a shared inbox is still enough

• One or two people answer clients, and they can see each other's work at a glance.
• A handful of requests arrive each week, and most are settled in a single reply.
• Clients do not expect a stated response time, and nobody asks you to report on one.
• You never need to know how long a client's requests took, or what you are waiting on from them.
• A collaborative Group already gives you an owner and a done state for each conversation, and that is all you need.

If that is you, stay where you are and come back when the signs above start to show.

Good to know

Questions, answered

Do our clients need to change anything?

No. They keep emailing the address they already use. Tend's emails go out under your queue's name, and when a client replies, the reply comes back to the same request.

Will our old Gmail conversations move into Tend?

No. Tend does not import Gmail history. Leave the mailbox in place as the archive for everything before the move; new email, and replies to it, start in Tend from the day you forward.

Can we keep using Gmail for everything else?

Yes. Tend only receives what you forward to it, so you can forward the shared client address and leave personal mailboxes, calendars and documents exactly as they are.

Our support address is a Google Group. Does that work?

Yes. Add your Tend queue's private address as a member of the group and allow outside senders to post. The forwarding guide for Gmail and Google Workspace covers the settings.

Can clients see each other's requests?

No. Each client signs in to their portal with an emailed link and sees their own requests. You can choose to let an organisation's owners, or everyone at that organisation, see all of its requests.

What does it cost?

US$29 per agent per month, plus GST for Australian customers. Clients and portal users are free. Every workspace starts with a 14-day free trial, no card required.