Customer support has traditionally been the province of ticket workflow apps like Zendesk or Remedy, but it also relies heavily on shared email mailboxes & chat apps. ‘Front’ acts as an improved email client that allows support personnel to share a support address & still have personalized conversations, assign messages to specialists, allow access to teammates’ Inboxes & automate workflows by setting rules. The latest release of Front extends similar functionality to text messaging, as well as messages from Twitter, Facebook, or to in-app chats.
According to Front’s creators, their goal is to make managing a team’s external communications as natural as having a verbal conversation. All communications channels are combined within the app so that they’re not tied to specific messages, synchronizing the messages so that they’re visible in chronological order. They claim that Front provides customer support “with a human touch” by eliminating ticket numbers and auto responses.
Among the most important features, as referenced in the product page, are:
- Assign messages so nothing falls through the cracks – by clearly indicating who’s responsible for taking the next steps
- Create rules to route support requests to the right agent – automate actions when predetermined conditions are met
- Keep track of a conversation & set reminders to follow up – set the exact time & date
- Create ‘canned responses’ for frequently asked questions – don’t need to manually respond to common questions & respond with 1 click
- Follow conversations of interest – currently keep updated
- Real-time collision detection so that no more than 1 teammate responds to the same message
Through its analytics features, Front also provides a set of detailed performance metrics to give visibility to your support inboxes. Things like response times, unresolved requests & handle times can be monitored, measured & analyzed. It’s also easy to make data driven decisions by keeping track of the most common issues that are encountered & knowing your busiest times of day or days of the week.
The company was originally created in France in 2014, but is now based in the San Francisco Bay area, USA. Front can be integrated with 3rd party apps like: Salesforce, Slack, Trello, HipChat & Zapier,& can also work with your own defined Webhooks. It comes with native apps for Mac OS 10 (v10.9+), MS Windows 7+, Android 3.0+ & iOS 8.0+. Pricing starts at US$12 per user per month for the ‘Team’ plan, which includes 5 team inboxes, collision detection, canned responses, access to the API & plugins. The ‘Premium’ deal goes for US$24 per user per month & adds native integrations with 3rd party apps, analytics & reports. Finally, you can ask for pricing for an ‘Enterprise’, (custom solution), too.
– This post is merely a startup profile based on publicly available information & not a review. –