How to do it
Pick one address and stop using personal inboxes for leads
Every web form, every listing, every truck wrap goes to one address. Not the owner's personal mail. The moment leads arrive in two places, one of them stops getting checked, and it is always the one with the $8,000 repipe in it.
Add your dispatcher as a delegate, not a password holder
In Gmail settings, open Accounts and Import, find Grant access to your account, and click Add another account. Enter their address and send the invitation. They accept and the inbox shows up in their own Gmail. Nobody types a shared password into anything, and you remove access by deleting one line when somebody leaves.
Know what a delegate cannot do before you promise it
Delegates can read, send and delete mail. They cannot chat, cannot change your password, and cannot reach Google Account settings, Drive attachments, Photos, Tasks, client-side encryption, Gemini, Meet, Smart Compose or spelling checks in that account. For a dispatcher answering plumbing leads, read, send and delete is the whole job. For anything else, check the list first.
Build the emergency filter first
Click Show search options in the search box, put your emergency words in the has-the-words field, then click Create filter and apply a label. For plumbing that list is short and specific: burst, flooding, no water, sewage, backup, gas smell, water heater leaking. Add star as well so it is impossible to miss on a phone screen.
Add a quote-request filter and a noise filter
Second filter labels anything from your web form address as Quote. Third filter takes the suppliers, newsletters and software receipts and archives them with a label so they skip the inbox entirely. Never use delete as a filter action on anything that touches customers. Archive is reversible, delete is a lead you will never know you lost.
Use a label as your answered flag
Make one label called Answered and one called Needs Quote. The rule is simple and has to be said out loud: if you reply, you label it. Gmail has no built-in assignment, so the label is your assignment system, and two people replying to the same homeowner is how a shared inbox loses trust in week one.
Run the backlog by hand, once
Filters that forward only affect new messages, and label filters you create apply going forward unless you tell Gmail to apply them to matching conversations. Set aside 20 minutes and clear what is already in there. Do it once and the system is clean from that point on.
Route what has to leave Gmail with a Paths step
If a labeled lead needs to land in your field service software or a text to the on-call tech, that is a Zapier job, not a Gmail job. One Paths step with an emergency branch and a standard branch covers it, and you can add a fallback branch so an unmatched lead still pings a human instead of vanishing.
Where this goes wrong
The parts most guides skip, and the ones that actually cost you money:
- The delegate's own address shows on what they send. When a delegate sends from your account, their email address appears. Customers do notice. Either tell your people to sign with their first name so it reads as a person rather than a mystery, or use a proper shared mailbox product if you need the identity to be uniform.
- Gmail has no assignment, and pretending it does will bite you. Labels, stars and filters sort mail. None of them assign a conversation to a person or show that someone is already typing a reply. Two techs answering the same emergency at 6am, or nobody answering because each assumed the other did, are both normal failures here. Your process is the only fix.
- Delegate limits differ by account type. A personal gmail.com account allows up to 10 delegates. A work or school account allows up to 1,000, though roughly 40 work account delegates can access it at the same time. For a plumbing shop none of those are real ceilings, but know which account you are on.
- Forwarding filters do not backfill. When you create a filter to forward messages, only new messages are affected. So the lead that came in an hour before you built the rule stays put. This is the number one reason people think a filter is broken on the day they set it up.
- A shared inbox does not answer at 2am. Triage sorts what already arrived. It does not reply. If your real problem is that emergency calls at night go unanswered until 7am, a labeling system will show you exactly how many you lost, which is useful and painful, but it will not win one of them back.
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Common questions
Do I have to give out the password?
No, and you should not. Delegation gives someone read, send and delete access to the inbox without the password, and delegates cannot change it either. Removing a person is one click in Accounts and Import instead of a password reset that locks out everybody else.
Does this need Google Workspace, or does a regular Gmail work?
Both work. Delegation exists on personal gmail.com accounts with a cap of 10 delegates. A work or school account raises that to 1,000. If you are running a business on a gmail.com address, delegation is still a real improvement over a shared password today.
What should the emergency filter actually match on?
Words a panicked homeowner types, not words you would use. Burst, flooding, leaking everywhere, no hot water, sewage, backed up, gas smell, cannot shut off. Review the list every few months against what actually came in. The words your customers use are better than the words in any template.
Can I mark leads as handled so nobody doubles up?
Only with a label you enforce yourself. Create an Answered label, apply it the moment you reply, and make the shared rule that unlabeled equals unhandled. It is low tech and it works, as long as everyone does it every time.
Sources
- Add another person to manage your Gmail — Google Gmail HelpDelegation is set in Settings, Accounts and Import, under Grant access to your account with Add another account; delegates can read, send and delete mail but cannot chat, change the password, or reach Google Account settings, Drive attachments, Photos, Tasks, client-side encryption, Gemini, Meet, Smart Compose or spelling; personal accounts allow up to 10 delegates and work or school accounts up to 1,000 with about 40 simultaneous; the delegate's email address appears when they send.
- Create rules to filter your emails — Google Gmail HelpFilters are created from Show search options in the search box then Create filter, or from a message via More and Filter messages like these; available actions include label, archive, delete, star and forward; a forwarding filter affects only new messages.
- Add branching logic to Zaps with paths — Zapier HelpPaths route a record into different action sequences with custom rules, an always-run option and one fallback branch per group that runs when nothing else matches.
Related guides
- How to use Zapier to screen new leads
- How to use ChatGPT for after-hours leads
- Missed-call text-back for HVAC
- How to use ChatGPT for follow-up emails
- AI for plumbing quotes and estimates
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