Mail triage for the shared inbox

The situation

A 40-fitter installation company has one info@ and one service@. Both run as shared mailboxes in Outlook. Around eighty mails arrive on a normal day: pricing questions, fault reports, supplier confirmations, a few invoices, two applications, one complaint.

Three back-office staff are watching the inbox. Whoever reads first either picks something up or does not. The rest stays put and gets re-read later. Nobody knows at week-end which mails went unanswered, because "read" is not the same as "handled".

The director does not want a ticketing tool with deal stages and SLA reports. He wants a shared inbox that sorts itself.

What we did

Measure first. For one week we track what comes in and what happens to it: read, replied, forwarded, left sitting. That gives a factual view in place of a feeling.

Then a triage layer in front of the mailbox. Every incoming mail gets a label (quote request, fault, supplier, application, spam), a short summary at the top of the mail, and where the content is a question with a comparable answer from earlier mails, a draft reply beneath it. Nobody sends automatically. A human reads, edits, hits send.

Where it is genuinely routine (supplier confirmation into the right folder, invoice to finance) a plain rule can do it without AI. We use the model only where it is needed, not because it is possible.

What it delivered

What we usually see back: the Friday-afternoon catch-up disappears. Mail no longer waits a full working day because the label and summary are ready for the next reader.

Back office sees in a glance which mails still need action and which are already in hand. Applications no longer get noticed three days after the deadline. And the director knows at end of day whether anything needs his eyes.

What stays manual: every content decision. The model makes nothing easier where the work is content-heavy, that stays human.

What this wasn't

Not an autoresponder that sends replies on its own. It sorts and summarises, people stay at the controls.