Eliminating Duplicate Customer Emails with a Collaborative Inbox
Ferienhausvermittlung Kröger+Rehn GmbH is a Hamburg-based holiday rental agency specialising in Danish holiday homes, with over 30 years of experience. Their team of 10 staff and partner agencies in Denmark handles a high daily volume of enquiries via phone, web, and email.
The Challenge: Two Agents Answering the Same Email
Customer email enquiries are the lifeblood of the business. Speed matters — every enquiry needs a fast response. But with a high volume of incoming requests across multiple shared email addresses, multiple staff members were sometimes opening and answering the same email at the same time.
During peak periods, customers occasionally received two separate replies from two different colleagues. Duplicated effort for the team, confusing communication for the customer. Managing Director Sebastian Rehn knew a better solution was needed.
Key criteria for the new system:
- Prevent multiple replies to the same customer email
- Clear visibility over which enquiries have been answered and which are still open
- Ability to review previously sent replies
- Reasonable cost
- Easy to maintain
The Solution: Google Workspace Collaborative Inbox
Kollaborateure assessed the requirements and designed a solution based on Google Workspace (then Google Apps for Business) — specifically the collaborative inbox feature, which gives the whole team a shared view of incoming mail with assignment and status tracking.
All criteria were met. As an added benefit, the team also gained access to the full Google Workspace suite.
Systems replaced:
Results
No more duplicate replies
The collaborative inbox ensures each customer email is handled by exactly one team member.
Full inbox visibility
At a glance: what's been answered, what's still open, and what was previously sent.
99.9% uptime
Google's infrastructure replaced an ageing, less reliable email server.
Mobile calendar
The Excel-based holiday calendar was replaced with a shared team calendar accessible on mobile.
"Google Workspace fulfils all our requirements for an efficient shared team inbox. And the best part: it's also cheaper than all the other solutions we considered."
— Sebastian Rehn, Managing Director, Ferienhausvermittlung Kröger+Rehn GmbH