Does your inbox receive dozens or hundreds of email daily?

As a front line representative does it feel like you have to pick through dozens of email and sort out the important ones prior to starting your shift?  Do you have time to do this?  Are you allowed to start earlier than your shift?

As a manager or supervisor do you feel inundated by the number of email sent directly to you?  Let alone email where you were copied for your information?  Are you cognizant of the number of email sent to the team?

Here are some tips and example subject line prefixes that we found were successful in my past experience.

Why use subject line prefixes?  If the team consistently uses the same prefixes then it makes sorting of the inbox easier, it also allows keyword rules to be created to customize how you handle, review, triage, or respond to email.

Some examples:

URGENT:
Caveat – if every email is marked “urgent” then none of them are.

RESHIP CHECK REQUEST:
PRODUCT CHECK REQUEST:
CANCEL REQUEST:
Operational in nature, must work with external teams to develop the process by which these may be used.  Ideally used as part of email templates (or knowledge base articles) to ensure instructional text and consistent data are clearly communicated.

COMMUNICATION UPDATE:
SCHEDULE UPDATE:
Associated with an established documented processes.  Simple notification of an update or change to said documentation and link to preview it (assuming it is accessible online or in file system).

RECAP:
MEETING RECAP:
TRAINING RECAP:
Post event recap, includes objectives, brief summary, link to more information, action items and owners etc.  In some training examples, we would also create a CSPAM: (see below) email chain where the team can bounce concepts/ideas back and forth of what was learned to check for understanding.  Also in the cooking category, training sometimes includes free samples to test so we would encourage sharing first hand experiences with product in the days following training.

CSPAM:
Notes – Catch all for non-primary email communication, see CSPAM post for more information.

PRODUCT FEEDBACK:
SHIPMENT FEEDBACK:
Notes – Collecting and sharing feedback is a primary function of the customer service team.  As feedback is solicted via customer inquiry, surveys, or via third party, if enough detailed and actionable information is gathered then feedback communication was frequently sent to internal business partners who could collect, review, and take action.

What other methods do you or your teams use to help make internal office email communication more efficient?  Please post and share ideas in the comments!