Ask HN: Shared email accounts?

I noticed our startup is using a lot of shared email accounts. We have shared Gmail accounts for dev@, support@, contact@. We basically just share the pw.

I doubt this is a one-off case and I think a lot of small businesses are using shared email accounts.

While sharing pw is not that big of an issue. The whole procedure of handling mails is a bit clunky. What tools do you guys use to make this more efficient?

I'm not looking for a CRM/helpdesk tool yet. We love Gmail, just want the email handling to be more efficient. The collaborative inbox in Google Apps is absolutely atrocious, partially because it has it's own non-Gmail UI.