Yablo is a customer communication platform natively designed for Microsoft Teams and the Office 365 suite. It essentially brings CRM-like capabilities to your email, and with the Teams integration, you can collaborate on customer emails directly from Microsoft Teams. Launched in 2020-2021, Yablo is the new kid on the block, as it were, but it could transform how you use Teams for customer communication.
The New York-based collaboration company, Tasks in Box designed Yablo. The company’s flagship platform enables task management capabilities inside Teams and other collaboration and meeting solutions. Large organisations like Microsoft, Marriott, Deloitte, and LinkedIn, among others use the Tasks in a Box platform. Yablo is the company’s newest venture and seeks to expand your collaboration reach beyond internal teams. Using Yablo, you can access all your customer information and communication trails from Teams, complete with built-in storage.
In addition to the standalone web app, Yablo is available for Microsoft Outlook, as well as for Microsoft Teams. In Outlook, Yablo classifies and prioritises customer emails, lets you create tasks and reminders, and facilitates task delegation. The Microsoft Teams integration brings similar capabilities to the Teams environment, with the added advantage of contextualised updates and collaborative customer support.
Let us review Yablo for Teams in more detail.
Inside Yablo for Teams
To install Yablo, visit Microsoft AppSource and download the company’s Teams integration. You could also download Yablo directly from the application store in Teams, but keep in mind that you will need an account to get started. Yablo’s plans start at $45 per month for five customer support agents, which include 25GB of built-in storage. You can upgrade the plan for more seats and/or more storage. Once you have signed up for your Yablo account, configure the inbox to send and receive customer emails. You can access these emails from Teams using the Yablo Teams app.
Here are its key features:
- Inbox access from Teams – You can add Yablo as a channel tab to enjoy shared access to customer emails. All channel members can view incoming communication, add emails to actionable lists, and follow the conversation without being marked as CC or BCC. When adding a Yablo channel tab, you will be prompted to choose a specific inbox to associate with the channel conversation. For example, the sales@yourdomain inbox can be linked to a channel dedicated to your bottom-of-the-funnel marketing team.
- Assign emails as tasks – One of the most significant advantages of using the Yablo Teams integration is that you can directly convert an incoming email into a task assignment. Every email thread will have an embedded button called “Assign,” You can click on this button to set clear ownership. Team members can view these assigned tasks in their Yablo account, in Teams, or on Outlook.
- Automated link unfurling – The integration ensures that your copy-pasted Yablo links are automatically unfurled. When you share a conversation from the main Yablo interface, it generates a link that can be pasted on any platform you choose. When you copy-paste the link in Microsoft Teams, the integration will unfurl it to reveal critical details like the person’s name, the email thread subject, etc. There’s also an “Open conversation” button that you can click to view the entire communication thread.
- Reminders by the Yablo bot – In addition to the Yablo app and Yablo channel tabs, you may also access its functionalities through the Yablo bot. The bot helps set automated reminders, so you are notified about the important events happening in an ongoing customer communication thread. Yablo will send updates on any communication where you are assigned as a task owner or if you are an involved stakeholder.
Why the Yablo App Makes a Difference
Yablo is easy to set up and use and gives you end-to-end visibility into customer communication without causing email fatigue. Team members can be assigned only the most relevant tasks and requests, and you can collaborate in an ongoing conversation. In other words, Yablo is an excellent alternative if you’re looking to replace shared inboxes with something more efficient.
What We Think
For only $45 per month for five agents and 25GB of storage, Yablo packs quite a punch. It allows you to modernise your email-based customer support function without completely retrenching systems.
Download it here.
