How Cleverly handles over 1,300 customers and achieves inbox zero

Cleverly is a leading B2B Lead Generation Agency with over 750 5-star reviews. Nick Verity, Cleverly’s CEO, shares his experience with us on how his team unlocked more capacity to focus on their growing client base.

From inbox chaos to inbox zero

Before Front, Cleverly had 10 employees chaotically managing their own inboxes in Gmail. It was a challenge to get any visibility into the quality and speed of employee performance when it came to customer communication. Emails would get forgotten, customers would get frustrated, and tasks would fall through the cracks. 

When teammates needed help on client messages, they found themselves sending emails about emails or jumping into Slack for direct follow-ups. This was a huge waste of time that ultimately impacted the number of clients an account manager could service, because team members would get stuck in their inboxes for several hours a day, trying to stay on top of email.  

The Cleverly team started using Front in 2021 for every function sales, operations, account management, customer support, and the executive team. Cleverly has found that Front is a superior replacement for Gmail and parts of Slack. Their new email culture is inbox zero, which is now actually achievable for employees. They can tag or assign emails for the right person, or get the right context and support directly with Front discussion threads. 

Seamless collaboration with teammates and clients

Before Front, the team had a difficult time managing 500 customers due to the volume of customer service messages. Now, over 1,300 Cleverly customers are supported by a team of seven account managers and one support representative. The team has been able to achieve almost 3x employee efficiency, giving them the scale needed to match business growth.

Whether it’s tagging a message, reassigning a request to the right team member, or finding the right subject matter expert who can provide quicker support, the Cleverly team can easily save 20-40% of their time. Rather than account managers spending five minutes answering a billing question, the question now gets assigned to a billing specialist, who can do it much faster. The result? Account managers can now focus strictly on answering high-level strategy questions from clients, rather than burning 25% of the day on basic questions. The hours saved per teammate per week now equates to tens of thousands of dollars of more capacity.

Beyond message routing, the Cleverly team has found that native discussion threads are a game changer for team collaboration. Instead of jumping into Slack or another tool, teammates can seamlessly work together behind-the-scenes on customer requests. Additionally, the send and snooze feature automates follow-ups with clients when they need timely information. This is the level of customer experience and care that helps minimize client churn. 

Keeping talented employees laser focused 

For the Cleverly team, their business transformation with Front goes beyond efficiency metrics. Overall, employees feel less overwhelmed by their inboxes. They can now focus on messages directly related to their job responsibilities. 

The leadership team at Cleverly knows the value that their skilled employees bring and that their time is better spent on high-value, revenue-driving activities like strategy work rather than answering basic emails. The advice that Nick shared was to avoid being an email factory where employees spend all day in email, looping others in and repeating information. 

A lot goes into keeping customers happy, but Cleverly has certainly figured it out with all 750 and counting 5-star reviews. Front is excited to see that number cross into the thousands, and we’ll be so proud when the Cleverly team reaches that milestone!