A hundred emails before ten
Your shared customer service inbox fills overnight and through the morning. A restaurant wants an extra lift on Saturday for a private event. A shop wants to switch its recycling day. A letting agent managing several flats above shops asks for a copy of last month's invoice. An office wants its bin moved to the other side of the building. A school asks whether you collect over the summer holidays.
Three people read the inbox. Each assumes someone else has dealt with the email they skimmed. Some requests get done twice, some not at all. The restaurant's extra lift never happens, and the owner rings on Saturday afternoon, angry.
Why a shared inbox fails
Email is where customers want to ask, but an inbox has no idea what is being asked or whether it has been done.
- Requests are written freely, often without an account number, and need reading to understand.
- Several people read the inbox, and marking as read does not mean done.
- Requests need action in different places: rounds, billing, the yard.
- Customers get no confirmation, so they email again or ring.
- Nobody can report on what is waiting, how old it is or who is on it.
What lost requests cost
A missed extra lift is revenue lost and a customer let down at an important moment. A day change that never happens leads to a string of not-presented lifts and disputes. Duplicate handling wastes time and sometimes sends two vehicles.
The team's time goes into rereading, searching and apologising. And customers who feel their requests vanish start looking for a provider who answers.
How we turn emails into tracked requests
What we build sits on your shared inbox and turns each email into a request with a type, a customer, an owner and a status.
- New emails are read by a language model, for example OpenAI or Anthropic Claude, which identifies the customer from the sender, signature or address, and classifies the request: extra lift, day change, container change, invoice copy, general question.
- The extracted details, such as date and container, are shown alongside the original email for a person to confirm with a click. Anything uncertain goes to a person unedited.
- Confirmed requests become jobs in the right place: extra lifts in the round schedule, container changes in the yard queue, invoice copies sent from your accounts package.
- The customer receives an acknowledgement that the request is logged, and a confirmation when it is scheduled or done, in wording you write.
- A request board shows everything open, who owns it and how long it has waited, so nothing sits unnoticed.
- Requests are recorded on the customer's account, so the next person who speaks to them can see the history.
| Request type | Where it goes | Customer hears |
|---|---|---|
| Extra lift | Round schedule for the date | Confirmation with date and charge |
| Collection day change | Round planner queue | Confirmation from start date |
| Container change | Yard movement queue | Delivery date |
| Invoice copy | Accounts package | Copy sent |
| Anything unclear | Person in the office | Acknowledgement, then reply |
The inbox on a Monday morning after the change
The overnight emails have already been sorted. The restaurant's Saturday extra lift is waiting for one click of confirmation; once clicked, it is added to Saturday's schedule and the owner receives an email with the date and the charge. The letting agent's invoice copy is sent without anyone opening the accounts package. The school's question about summer holidays is waiting for a person to answer.
The request board shows five open items at ten o'clock, each with an owner. On Saturday the extra lift happens.
Is your inbox where requests go to die?
- Several people read one shared inbox and nobody owns it.
- Customers email the same request twice because they hear nothing.
- Extra lifts and day changes have been missed.
- You cannot say how many requests are waiting right now.
- Requests have been handled twice by different people.