Collaborative Capabilities in Google Workspace — What’s Missing?
Organizations that allow their customers and partners to interact with their teams and departments using email, instant messaging, phone and text messaging are much more attractive and competitive than those that only offer email and phone.
Current Collaborative Inbox Capabilities in Google Workspace
Companies that subscribe to Google Workspace services can use the Collaborative Inbox capability in Google Groups to interact with their customers and partners using email. The Collaborative Inbox allows companies to set up functional email addresses for specific processes, subject areas/topics or specific departments (e.g., sales, billing, support, etc.), and authorized team members can send and receive email messages using those functional email addresses, without having to disclose their own personal email addresses. With Collaborative Inbox it does not matter which staff members monitor which functional IDs on which day, and if a team is staffed adequately, someone will be able to respond to inquiries from customers and partners without customers or partners having to be aware of the schedule and without knowing who is covering what and when.
For example, a Billing department can set up a Google Group and use its functional email address (e.g., billing@example-corp.com) to send and receive email messages on behalf of their team so that customers can use that functional email address to contact the Billing team or receive email messages from that team.
It is possible to configure Google Workspace and Google Groups so that each member of the Google Group can
- receive all emails sent to the group’s email address,
- reply to received emails, and
- view emails previously sent out by the Google Group members on behalf of the team.
Companies that subscribe to Google Voice can use phones for interacting with their customers and partners, however the current Ring Group capabilities are limited to making and receiving calls only on desk phones, or computers and mobile devices that are connected to a LAN. Ring Groups currently do not support a way to make and receive calls using wireless/cellular service on their mobile devices, which makes it harder for a team of people to monitor calls unless they are located in an office or in an area with strong Wi-Fi connectivity.
Unfortunately there is no easy option for companies that subscribe to the Google Voice service to set up non-personal numbers that customers and partners can use for texting with specific teams or departments. For example, it’s currently not possible to send a text message to a sales team, a billing department, or a support organization. Texting is only available for individual users of Google Voice, which makes it possible to interact with one specific person (but not with a team), unless companies opt to share the same user ID with multiple people, which can introduce security risks as well as lack of traceability about who did what. In Google Voice there is no texting capability that is equivalent to a Collaborative Inbox in Google Groups. Which means that customers and partners will not be able to use text messaging to interact with departments or teams of companies that subscribe to Google Voice services, only with specific individuals.
The same is true for Google Chat. Individual staff members have their own individual user IDs that they can use to send and receive instant (chat) messages. However there is no easy way for customers and partners to use Generic/Functional IDs for chat messaging with a team or a department. Currently in Google Chat there is no capability that is equivalent to a Collaborative Inbox in Google Groups.
For example, there is no easy capability currently available for
- Customers or external parties to send an instant message to a functional ID of a Billing department (e.g., billing@example-corp.com);
- Billing department team members to send messages to external parties using their team’s functional ID — without disclosing their own personal user ID.
Google Chat — What is Missing?
It would be valuable to extend Google Chat Room capabilities to allow its members (1) to receive chat messages sent to the Group ID (e.g., billing@example-corp.com) and (2) to send messages using their Group ID as an identifier (so that the recipient would get a message from billing@example-corp.com).
To preserve the privacy of Google Chat Room members and make sure that the external parties (non-members) who interact with the group will not be able to know the identities of individual members, the Collaborative Inbox-like capability must be designed so that only Google Chat Room members can know which user is sending which message.
It would be even more valuable if a Google Chat Room could be automatically synchronized with a corresponding Google Group, which will make it easier for companies to maintain consistency in membership (and authorizations) across Google Chat Rooms and Google Groups.
Google Voice — What is Missing?
It would be valuable to extend Ring Groups capabilities in Google Voice to allow its members to
- Receive calls on a Ring Group number whether their device has Wi-Fi or Cellular/Wireless connectivity,
- Make calls using the Ring Group number’s Caller ID and CNAM from their device whether their device has Wi-Fi or Cellular/Wireless connectivity,
- Receive text messages sent to a Ring Group number, and
- Send text messages using their Ring Group number.
Similarly it would be even more valuable if a Google Voice Ring Group could be automatically synchronized with a corresponding Google Group and Chat Room, also making it easier to maintain consistency in membership (and authorizations) across Google Chat Rooms and Google Groups.
In Summary
Two individuals can interact with each other using different communication mechanisms depending on a number of circumstances — they can speak on the phone, text each other, send each other emails, or exchange chat messages.
The best mechanism is typically selected based on the factors related to how interactive or immediate a communication needs to be or how much content needs to be exchanged, such as
- Whether a communication needs to be synchronous or asynchronous,
- How urgent something needs to be communicated, or
- How much content needs to be communicated (short sentence, or paragraph, or multiple pages).
Having different options available make a communication easier and more effective.
However 1-on-1 interactions are only possible on a small scale. If hundreds of customers needed to interact with dozens of members of a billing team, or a sales team, or a support team, it would be much harder without adequate Collaborative Technologies.
We hope that Google with all its technological talent, unprecedented creativity and innovative capabilities (or their competitors) will recognize this need and will be able to respond to the market demand.
