Using multiple tools for internal and external business communication can be not only expensive but also a silent killer of productivity and customer satisfaction. Teams often use separate tools for internal chat, such as Slack or Teams, website live chat (e.g., Intercom or Tawk.to), and email-based customer support (e.g., Zendesk or Freshdesk). Such an approach requires multiple subscriptions, complex integrations, and leads to lost context, slower response times, and a chaotic customer experience. Elastic Email Inbox solves this critical challenge by providing a single, unified platform that brings internal teams and customers onto the same page, effortlessly and affordably. This article aims to present you with 5 Elastic Email Inbox use cases on how to unify your business communication.
Table of Contents
- Why choose Elastic Email Inbox
- Elastic Email Inbox tools - Team Chat, Live Chat, and Help Desk
- The Elastic Email Inbox Use Cases
- Elastic Email Inbox use cases- the power of unified communication
Why choose Elastic Email Inbox
Unlike competitors that force you to pay for and integrate other services, Elastic Email Inbox offers its three core tools - Team Chat, Live Chat, and Help Desk - under one simple and affordable subscription. And the best part is you can use it for free, as we offer a very generous free tier. You can use all the tools without any limitations, but with a 90-day message and file history. Should you want to make it unlimited, you just need to upgrade your plan to $9/seat/month.
Having all the communication tools under one roof is not just convenient, but it’s a strategic advantage, ensuring that every conversation is connected and every team member has the full context they need. Let’s take a look in more detail at each of the Elastic Email Inbox tools.
Elastic Email Inbox tools - Team Chat, Live Chat, and Help Desk
Elastic Email Inbox is a powerful, all-in-one communication suite built on three seamlessly integrated products, each designed to optimize a critical aspect of business communication.
Team Chat
Team Chat is the dedicated internal communication hub for your organization. It eliminates the need for separate chat applications by providing a secure and centralized space for team discussions. You can send instant messages, create private and public channels, share media, get instant message notifications, and use a search function to retrieve past conversations and files quickly. When using Team Chat, your teams are always aligned and can collaborate in real time without losing context.
Live Chat
Live Chat is a customer chat widget that can be added directly to your website. It allows visitors to reach out to you instantly, turning curiosity into conversion by answering questions the moment they arise. Key features include user identification to recognize returning visitors, custom branding to match your website's style, and the ability to set up the widget in minutes. Live Chat is also a critical tool for sales, reducing cart abandonment and providing instant support when a potential customer needs it most.
Help Desk
Help Desk is a shared inbox that centralizes all incoming customer emails and messages, ensuring no request is ever lost. It transforms a chaotic support email address into an organized and collaborative workspace. The core feature of Help Desk is that you can easily connect it with your existing email inbox. When a message arrives, you can assign it to a particular team member to avoid double-handling, change the conversation status to open, snoozed, or closed, and collaborate in real time with others and discuss the issue without the customer seeing the internal notes. It provides a unified view of every customer interaction.
You can also use Help Desk as a shared email inbox hub to integrate all your inboxes so that you can gather and respond to your emails in one place.
The Elastic Email Inbox Use Cases
Let’s now take a look at some exemplary Elastic Email Inbox use cases of how growing businesses can use and benefit from such a unified communication tool.
Sarah - sales associate at an e-commerce company
Sarah is a sales associate at an online store selling sustainable home goods. Her primary goal is to reduce cart abandonment and convert hesitant shoppers. Her company decides to use Elastic Email Inbox and embeds the Live Chat widget on its product pages and checkout page. This way, when a customer pauses on the checkout page and hesitates, they can reach out to Sarah via Live Chat and ask about any doubts, e.g., about shipping and returns. This real-time interaction resolves uncertainties and may lead to an immediate purchase.
On Sarah's side, she sees and replies to all conversations from Live Chat in the Help Desk dashboard... Sarah and her team can see the full conversation history, ensuring a seamless and personalized support experience. Each team member responsible for customer conversations has a seat, a separate user slot that can be easily managed. The conversation ownership feature in Help Desk ensures that once Sarah assigns the conversation to herself and starts assisting the customer, no other agent accidentally double-replies, preventing confusion.
Mark - head of customer success team at a SaaS company
Mark is a head of the customer success team at a fast-growing project management SaaS platform, and he manages a small but busy support team. His company uses Elastic Email Inbox, specifically Help Desk. All customer support emails are connected to a shared inbox, which is visible in Help Desk in the external channels section. If a customer reports a problem that arose due to a critical bug, Mark can mention specialists from the engineering team to take a look at the problem. They can start a private conversation within the customer thread and discuss the technical details and a solution without the customer seeing the internal back-and-forth. Once the fix is deployed, Mark can update the customer directly from Help Desk, resolving the issues and keeping all internal and external communication tied to the original ticket.
Lisa - marketing project manager at a marketing firm
Lisa works as a marketing project manager at a fully remote digital marketing firm. She coordinates campaigns across different time zones. She uses Team Chat as the central hub for all internal communication. She creates separate group conversation channels for each client project and internal department. When the design team finishes a new set of ad creatives, they use the media sharing to instantly upload the files to the relevant project channel. When a new message appears, all channel or conversation members receive a notification about it. They can also use the search function to quickly pull up past decisions and shared files, eliminating the need to sift through emails.
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David - business development representative at a custom AI software
David is a business development representative at a B2B provider of custom AI software. His role is to qualify leads from the company website. His company uses the Live Chat widget on its contact sales page. They enabled user identification by asking for the name and email address of the visitor, for them to be able to start a chat. Owing to that, when a visitor starts a chat asking about, for example, enterprise pricing, David already knows their basic contact information and engages with them in a real-time conversation. He can also continue the conversation via email, even if the visitor leaves the chat. If the visitor asks a complex technical question that David can’t answer, he uses Team Chat to send a quick direct message to another colleague asking for a consultation. Once he receives an expert answer, David can relay it back to the visitor instantly via Live Chat, demonstrating a highly responsive and collaborative sales process.
Elena - small business owner
Elena is the owner of a small business selling custom jewelry. She handles all customer interactions herself. By connecting her customer service email to Help Desk, she centralizes all inquiries in one place. Whether it’s custom order requests or shipping questions, no message gets lost in her personal inbox. She also uses Live Chat on her website to provide instant support during peak hours. When a customer sends a follow-up email about a custom order they discussed via Live Chat last week, Elena can easily find this conversation in the Help Desk message history and recall the context of the request. She can provide a fast and informed response that delights the customer and reinforces the personalized nature of her small business.
Elastic Email Inbox use cases- the power of unified communication
The five scenarios above clearly demonstrate the transformative power of a unified communication platform. While other solutions require businesses to stitch together separate products, incurring high costs and integration headaches, Elastic Email Inbox provides a superior, all-in-one alternative. By eliminating the need to switch between disparate applications, the integrated Team Chat, Live Chat, and Help Desk empower businesses to deliver faster, more contextual, and ultimately more human customer experiences. This single-platform efficiency is the key to scalable growth, proving that you don't need a complex, expensive stack of tools to achieve world-class communication. Choose the simplicity and power of Inbox to unify your team and delight your customers. You can also use your account to access other Elastic Email products - Email Marketing, Email API, and Creator Suite. If you have any questions regarding Elastic Email Inbox, reach out to our Customer Support team via email or live chat in the bottom right corner of this page to get all the needed information.
Ula Chwesiuk
Ula is a content creator at Elastic Email. She is passionate about marketing, creative writing and language learning. Outside of work, Ula likes to travel, try new recipes and go to concerts.
