Shared inbox triage rules that work

We standardized our clinic’s shared inbox with four Outlook categories (STAT 2 hours, Urgent 1 day, Routine 3 days, FYI) and a clear escalation path; in 6 weeks our call abandonment dropped from 17% to 6% and voicemail backlog is cleared by 10 a.m. daily. I can share the one-page SOP and the coaching checklist we use in Monday huddles — what tagging rules and SLAs are your teams using to keep throughput tight across shifts?

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We added an Outlook rule that auto-tags by keywords (refill, imaging, surgeon names) and a 15‑minute no-owner alert — a smoke alarm for the inbox — so ‘STAT 2 hours’ items never idle. Small caveat: we set ‘Urgent’ to 4 hours on clinic days because same‑day slots evaporate by noon; would that cadence break anything in your flow?

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