What's the word for "keeping the shared inbox under control"?

December 8, 2020 11:21 AM

My partner is fantastic at jumping into the "info@[organization].com" email account and whipping it into shape - answering basic inquiries, forwarding things to the right people, sorting things into appropriate folders, setting up filters, setting reminders for recurring tasks, etc. What is the word for this? How do we describe it on a resume?
posted by sibilatorix to Work & Money (14 answers total)

"managing a shared inbox"
posted by hydra77 at 11:24 AM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

This function is called triage at my company, but on a resume I would definitely use that term plus briefly define it as you have here.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:30 AM on December 8, 2020

These are the responsibilities of an administrative assistant.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:30 AM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

I might even describe it as "mailbox management and triage" because the automated setup is as much of an art as the decision-making features of triage.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:31 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Triage is probably the right name for it but I call the goal "inbox 0" and I call the completion of that goal "vanquishing my inbox"

Edit - sorry, didn't see this was for a resume! I would also call it something like "tier 1 customer support"
posted by rebent at 11:33 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

2nd "managing a shared inbox" but don't include this on a resume unless you can back it up with volume - not worth mentioning if they can do this with 20 emails per day, but if it's 500, that's noteworthy.
posted by wellred at 11:43 AM on December 8, 2020

If they're scaling and automating this work over time (i.e. working to take themselves out of the process via filters/rules/reminders) you might put this in the "operations" bucket. Sometimes this role is called "program management" in tech. That role has a pattern of inserting themselves into a process, describing the "right" structure to run the process, automating bits of it and training those around them how to fit into the process effectively, and then stepping out and moving on the next hot spot.

But if it's mostly doing it yourself then it seems more like customer support to me.
posted by heresiarch at 11:52 AM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

When I did it I called it herding cats because no matter how well I managed "triage," and assigned the right things to the right people, many of them just ignored the items, and then I would have to deal with the things they wouldn't as customers, etc, got more and more frustrated ... Don't let you husband do this job if it is for a large organization.
posted by terrapin at 12:12 PM on December 8, 2020

This duty is assigned as “inbound contact triage” in my office.
posted by furnace.heart at 12:49 PM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

"managing a shared inbox"

Agreed, and I would also STRONGLY encourage them to use more detailed language like what you have in the OP that captures the magic of what they do in their cover letter (given that this is a big part of what they [want to] do, anyway. It would be weird to see it in a cover letter for a senior manager or what-have-you).
posted by capricorn at 12:59 PM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

If you're not sure what the word is, then you can't reasonably expect the resume reader to know either. So don't use a fancy term suggested here by itself - follow it up with words that you've used in your question.

Instead of:

..., Inbox triage, ...

Say

Customer support inbox triage - created and owned email filters, handled escalations, managed customer relationships, ...

Use less or more language depending on the position being applied to, of course. If you can point to an approximate number of emails managed, filtered, or managed, the better; also if you can quantify the amount of responsibility over this shared inbox. Saying shared inbox points towards the work of the team, which makes it vague how much work the applicant did towards the team's work. "Ownership" would be preferable if you can back it up.
posted by meowzilla at 1:22 PM on December 8, 2020

I would call it Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which is also a name for software that manages this on a corporate level.
posted by theora55 at 1:54 PM on December 8, 2020

I would describe this broadly as program or services coordination, and then describe.

I don't disagree that it's an admin assistant task, but unfortunately, in my experience people still think AA's make coffee and transfer phone calls unless you really specify :/
posted by nakedmolerats at 3:28 PM on December 8, 2020

Corporate Communications Wrangler
posted by at at 8:42 AM on December 9, 2020