Shared inbox for customer support teams
Sektra is an AI help desk for small business support teams, built into a shared inbox so that customers receive normal email replies. Every conversation is scored for priority, tagged by what it asks for and given an owner, and the same rules and service level targets apply to email, WhatsApp and website chat. A bot on your website answers visitors' questions from your help center and hands over to a person when it has no answer.
A shared support address in Gmail or Outlook lets the whole team read the mail, but nothing in the mailbox shows who is answering a message or which requests are still waiting. Two teammates can reply to one request while another goes unanswered, and response times have to be worked out by hand. As the business grows, questions also arrive on WhatsApp and through website chat, which spreads one customer's history across separate tools.
Sektra connects to the support address the team already uses and does the work of a help desk inside a shared inbox. Each conversation gets one owner by round robin or by rule, and replies leave from that address as normal email with no ticket number. A rule can also tag a request or answer it with a template reply. With an AI check, the rule recognizes a refund request however the customer words it. Service level policies, or SLAs, set targets for first reply, next reply and resolution, counted in your business hours, and analytics then report how often each target was met.
Live chat is added to your website with one short snippet, and chats arrive in the same inbox as email and WhatsApp. An optional bot answers first from your help center and hands the conversation to a teammate when it has no answer, or when the visitor asks for a person or sounds upset. The help center itself is published on a free subdomain or your own domain, with a weekly gap finder that drafts missing articles for you to approve. Chat, the bot and the help center run in the same workspace as the inbox, and the plans are set out on the pricing page.
What the inbox shows on a support conversation
“A teammate is typing a reply.”
The thread shows who is typing on every channel, so two teammates do not send separate answers. They can settle who replies in an internal note, which the customer never sees.
“SLA at risk. The first reply target is due in 25 minutes.”
The teammate assigned to the conversation is warned before a target is missed. The clock counts your business hours, skips the holidays you list and pauses while you wait on the customer.
“The bot handed this conversation to your team. The visitor asked for a person.”
A Talk to a person button stays in view for the whole chat, and the teammate who takes over gets a one-line summary and a drafted reply.
What your team gets on day one
Email, WhatsApp and chat in one inbox
Gmail, Outlook and IMAP mailboxes, a WhatsApp Business number and your website chat share one inbox, where each conversation is scored for priority and tagged by intent.
Rules with exact and AI checks
A rule matches on exact fields such as the sender, subject or tag, or on an AI check written in plain words, and can be previewed against the last 30 days.
Drafts and reply templates
The assistant drafts replies for a person to edit and send, and shared reply templates, which other help desks call canned responses, work on email, WhatsApp and chat.
Response and service level reports
First response and resolution times are reported as the median and the slowest 10 percent per teammate and inbox, with service level hit rates by policy, teammate and tag.
Questions before you connect an inbox
The questions this kind of team asks about setup, access, channels and the assistant before connecting a mailbox.
What is the best help desk for a small business?
A small business is best served by a help desk that covers, in one tool, the parts a small team uses every day. Those are an owner on each conversation, reply templates, response targets that respect business hours, a help center and reports on reply times. Sektra provides them inside a shared inbox for Gmail, Outlook, WhatsApp and website chat, and its plans are set out on the pricing page.
What is an AI help desk?
An AI help desk is support software in which AI does part of the work, such as sorting incoming requests and drafting replies. Sektra scores each conversation for priority and tags it by what it asks for, and the assistant writes a draft that a person edits and sends. On website chat, an optional bot answers from your help center, and each answer must cite the article it came from.
Is there a help desk without ticket numbers?
Yes. A reply written in Sektra leaves from your own support address and arrives as a normal email in the thread the customer started, with no ticket number added. Inside Sektra the same conversation carries an owner, tags, internal notes and a service level clock, and the customer sees none of them. The mail itself stays in Gmail, Outlook or your mail server, where a copy of each reply is filed in Sent.
How long does it take to set up a help desk?
With Sektra, a support team can answer from the shared inbox the same day. A Gmail or Outlook address connects in a few minutes through Google or Microsoft sign-in, and teammates are then invited and given access to that inbox. Auto-assignment, reply templates and a service level policy are set up next for that inbox. Live chat needs one short snippet on the website, and the help center can start with a few articles on the questions customers ask most often.
Sektra compared with the tool you use now
Each page states what the other tool is built for, what it costs and what changes when a team moves to Sektra.
Articles for customer support
First response time: email response time benchmarks, policy and tracking
First response time, response time and resolution time defined, with the reason the p90 matters more than the mean. Two published benchmarks with their sources, a one-paragraph policy by channel, and what tracking looks like in Gmail, Outlook and the tools that report it.
Read the articlePlaybooksHow to add live chat to your website in five steps
Live chat installs the same way on any website, with one short snippet. This guide covers the five install steps, the seven settings to decide before the widget goes live, and how to keep chats in the same inbox as the customer's email.
Read the articleCompareZendesk competitors and alternatives: 10 tools compared (2026)
Zendesk's Suite starts at $55 per agent and turns every conversation into a ticket. This guide groups ten competitors and alternatives by what a team wants instead, with list prices and AI billing checked November 2026.
Read the articleStart with your own inbox
Connect a Gmail, Outlook or IMAP mailbox and Sektra builds the record of your clients from the history already there, usually within the first hour.