Implementing a Group Mailbox or Public Folder

You find them on the Contact Us page of virtually every Web site—email addresses such as sales@mycompany.com, info@mycompany.com, and support@mycompany.com. You can put such addresses to work in your company or organization. You just need to add a mailbox to Microsoft Exchange Server and give various people access to the incoming messages.

In this article, I'll describe a plan for setting up such a mailbox for a customer support group and making it available to the staff through an icon on the Outlook Bar. I'll also look at an alternative approach, using a public folder. First, however, you need to make a key decision: How do you want the staff to respond to messages?

Types of Responses
Do you want the customer support staff to respond with their own email accounts, or behind the anonymity of the Customer Support mailbox? Or do you want a little of both options? You can let the customer know that the message reached Customer Support successfully and that a real human being is answering it. You must decide which response is best for your organization. . . .