How School Outfitters Scaled Support Without Breaking Outlook

*“Emailgistics is a huge win when you are striving to provide really good customer service.” *—Kathy Gentile, Director of Operations Improvements

At a glance

CHALLENGE

• Training new staff or temps on email activity
• Gaining visibility into CS team’s shared mailbox
• Avoiding the disruption of new tools or workflows

SOLUTION

• Seamless Outlook add-in with no platform switch
• Full transparency into shared mailboxes and conversation history
• Built-in SLAs, tagging, and performance tracking

RESULTS

• 6h average close time, with 99% of emails closed within SLA
• Better accountability and training opportunities
• Increased flexibility to shift resources

ABOUT

School Outfitters

**Team Size: **51–200 employees

**Industry: **Retail

School Outfitters offers a broad range of flexible furnishings, collaborative arrangements, and technology integrations, delivered through more than 150 product lines. Since its foundation, the company has been on a mission to help students, teachers, and administrators Experience Positive wherever learning takes place. It has been voted as a Cincinnati Top Workplace for 12 consecutive years.

CHALLENGE

Providing exceptional customer service at scale

School Outfitters is known for delivering dependable, high-quality customer support. As the company grows, maintaining that standard — especially during peak seasons — is a top priority.

Every summer, the back-to-school rush brings a big spike in email volume. To keep service fast and consistent, School Outfitters brings in temporary staff to support the customer response team. But training new team members and handing off conversations smoothly was difficult. Microsoft 365’s native distribution groups routed emails to individual inboxes, making it hard to share context or track ownership.

*“It became increasingly difficult to train temps or cover for sick days and things like that,” *explains Kathy Gentile, Director of Operations Improvements. “One season, it felt like we were revisiting our backlogs and hunting through email conversation history every other week.”

Lack of visibility made it even harder to stay efficient. As Microsoft’s tools evolved, old workflows broke down. For example, when Outlook moved away from its original folder structure, some team members ended up relying on workarounds to keep track of past conversations.

Kathy says, “When Outlook switched from the old folder structure to OneDrive, it interrupted processes we’d built around those folders. A couple of team members had 40,000 messages sitting in their Deleted Items that they were still referring to for customer communications.”

These issues increased the risk of delayed responses — or worse, missed messages. Kathy saw the warning signs: “Eventually, our solid customer service would slip because of time spent trying to manage our shared mailbox.”

SOLUTION

Powerful email management features, zero disruption

Seamless Outlook add-in

Change management was top of mind as School Outfitters began to explore solutions. Kathy was looking for a platform that was easy to use and minimally disruptive. She demoed a lot of options, including help desk platforms and “all-in-one” alternatives.

“We demoed a variety of other platforms, but they just didn’t have that subset of email management that was cost-effective for us. There was also internal concern about going through different apps and programs. Our team uses Outlook and wants to stay in Outlook,”* *Kathy says.

Emailgistics, which feels more like layering in features vs. adopting a new platform, was the perfect fit. While other solutions require you to switch platforms or learn a new tool, Emailgistics feels like a natural extension of your Microsoft 365 environment.

“Being able to integrate Emailgistics right into Outlook was pretty seamless from a change management perspective. During onboarding, we showed our users the new features in Outlook — most didn’t even realize it was a new tool at first,”* *Kathy says.

Shared mailbox control and clarity

Kathy says that with Emailgistics, her team finally has visibility and control over its shared mailbox. Before, it was hard to see who had replied to what. Now, managers can track team email activity and response times.

“The biggest win is that you have visibility into everything each user is sending and receiving. Managers can do quality checks on those with a click, instead of requiring workarounds that duplicate multiple emails to multiple email addresses,”* *Kathy explains.

Key features, like Emailgistics Tags, have been especially game-changing for a team that prides itself on prompt customer service. When emails are assigned, tags help classify emails by content or correspondence type, enabling prioritization and faster response to urgent messages.

Automated response-time tracking

Emailgistics automatically tracks first-response and closed-response times. It also includes SLA monitoring and alerts. These features help managers find training gaps and give proactive feedback.

“Built-in dashboards and reports that show SLAs and response times are useful for managers giving feedback during one-on-ones,”* *Kathy says.

Managers also use internal notes and conversation history to leave context in threads and check quality in real time.

*“Emailgistics has significantly streamlined the process of managing a large volume of emails that multiple people need access to.” *—Kathy Gentile, Director of Operations Improvements

RESULTS

Better oversight, happier customers

School Outfitters now averages a 6-hour close time. In other words, the customer response team fully resolves most issues within a day, from their first reply to when they archive the email. They also close 99% of emails within the SLA window.

Managers also have more flexibility to reassign emails and shift team members as needed, making it easier to adapt to changing priorities without disrupting service.

“With Emailgistics, it’s easy to carry on a conversation. If we hire a temp or pull somebody into a different area, it gives us the flexibility to take their messages and reassign them,”* *Kathy says.

Having visibility into every conversation allows for better coaching and issue resolution. Managers can see the full context, provide targeted feedback, and ensure customers receive consistent, high-quality support.

*“Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a shift — our team can now handle more in-house, which is a testament to their growth and capability,” *Kathy says.

This kind of consistency helps School Outfitters protect customer satisfaction, even during peak seasons when email volume is high.

Results:

• **6h **average email close time
• **99% **of emails closed within SLA
• **100% **adoption by customer relations team

*We have multiple users managing multiple email addresses, both internal and external. Emailgistics brought order to that chaos and streamlined the entire process for us.” *—Kathy Gentile, Director of Operations Improvements

Turn exceptional customer service into your competitive advantage with Emailgistics.

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