From silo to powerhouse: how nurturing cross-functional partnerships can amplify support’s impact

Many of us have long contended with the idea that support teams are little more than “cost centers.” A necessary expense, yes, but not directly tied to growth or innovation. 

Thankfully, this narrative is changing. More organizations are waking up to the idea that support teams can be some of the strongest drivers of growth. The key is seeing and treating us as proactive, partnership-focused contributors. As Kenji Hayward, Head of Support at Front, recently shared in his Top-Tier newsletter, collaborating across functions like engineering, product, and marketing doesn’t just boost the customer experience — it drives business growth.

In my role at Front, I’ve championed many initiatives to connect our teams and boost cross-functional collaboration. Let’s dive into four specific partnerships that can elevate your support team from a siloed, reactive function to a strategic powerhouse.

1. Engineering: Support as co-creators, not observers

Support and engineering might seem to operate at opposite ends of a business, but the real magic happens when they work in harmony. At Front, we’ve broken down this barrier by embedding support within the engineering and product organization. This alignment has been a game changer in terms of how we share knowledge and solve problems together. 

So, how do you create those open channels to strengthen communication?

Use support as eyes on the ground

While engineering design and build the product, support has a front-row seat to how customers interact with it and where they encounter challenges.

This frontline nature offers an unrivaled view of the product, helping to identify bugs and quirks before they reach a broader audience. At Front, we leverage this by holding quarterly “FIX” meetings, where the support team presents key pain points (both their own and the customers’) to product managers. These sessions aren’t just about problem-dumping. They’re structured discussions that drive collaboration and real improvements. 

We collaborate with engineering in our daily work, too — one way we do this is through our “ownership matrix,” which enables us to quickly identify the people responsible for different components within the software, and loop them into conversations directly. When customer requests need to be escalated for more in-depth technical assistance, we leverage a required tagging workflow; where we tag tickets by component and the conversation gets auto-routed to the relevant engineering team.

Give feedback a direction and a destination

For customer feedback to actually make a difference, it needs a home. The customer conversations in support’s inboxes can be a goldmine for our engineering and product teams; if they know where to find it.

Here’s how we keep the feedback flowing:

• When a customer requests something that doesn’t yet exist within the product, support will guide them to our public ideas portal, hosted on Aha!, where they can submit new ideas and upvote the ones they care about most.

• We’ll also pass feedback on existing features directly to the people who built them. Once the customer’s request has been resolved in support, the conversation gets moved over to the relevant teams via shared inboxes.
  

• If something’s not working as intended, the information can swiftly be passed on to our engineers via internal Slack channels like #internal-tech-support or through Jira tickets, perfect hubs for flagging issues and brainstorming solutions.

Make it a two-way street

It’s not just about feeding issues upwards; collaboration between support and engineering is indeed a two-way street. One innovative approach is how the product team leverages support’s “category tags” to gain deeper insights. 

These tags, meticulously applied by the support team, categorize issues and feedback, providing the product team with a valuable roadmap of user experiences. By analyzing these tags, the product team can identify trends, prioritize features, and make informed decisions that enhance the product’s development. 

Support isn’t just along for the ride. We’re considered subject-matter experts and critical partners in making product updates come to life. By getting in the weeds with engineering, support teams know the new features inside and out — leading to deeper collaboration and more meaningful results.

2. Go-to-market teams: turning insights into action

Just like engineering and product teams, sales and marketing are constantly asking the same key questions: What challenges are our customers facing, and how can we address them effectively?

Support teams are uniquely positioned to provide the answers. Thanks to our daily, direct interactions with customers, we don’t just see the statistics. We feel the frustrations, hopes, and patterns that data alone can’t convey. 

This makes us an invaluable partner for both marketing and sales, so long as there’s an effective channel for sharing insights and provided those insights are used effectively. 

Make insights accessible to marketing 

The wealth of information support teams gather can be used to refine messaging, inspire campaigns, and shape content that speaks directly to customer needs. But this only works if the sharing process is intentional and structured.

For us, this meant creating a dedicated Slack channel, #support_content, where support and marketing can easily share ideas and brainstorm together. We’ll also hold regular 1:1s between marketing and support leaders to look into trends and topics that will resonate with our customers.

Refine sales handoff for faster resolutions

When sales and support teams can work together smoothly, everyone wins — especially the customer. 

Front gives us the ability to enable seamless handoffs from our account managers (AMs) to support, ensuring all customer issues are addressed without a hitch. This allows the AMs to focus on building and maintaining relationships with their customers, while support takes on the deep diving and troubleshooting needed to resolve the customers’ queries.

Using tools like our AI Assist, our go-to-market teams can quickly summarize customer concerns directly within the conversation, creating a smooth transition to the support queue. Here’s how it works:

1. The AM sends a holding reply to the customer, letting them know their question is being escalated to support

2. They add a comment summarizing the customer’s issue, complete with necessary links and context

3. The conversation is moved to the support Tier 1 inbox, where automations route it to the appropriate team and assign it to a support agent for resolution

This structured workflow goes beyond just AMs. It’s applied across onboarding, solutions, and other teams to ensure consistency in how customer issues are escalated and resolved. By keeping these processes efficient and predictable, we can step in quickly and effectively.

Position support a strategic partner

For this collaboration to really thrive, support teams need to be seen as more than just ticket solvers. At Front, this collaboration with our marketing team has redefined our role to include participating in go-to-market strategies and representing the company externally at industry events like SaaStock, Support Driven, and Customer Engagement summits.

In gaining this seat at the table, I and other members of our support team have been able to elevate our team’s influence and highlight the value we bring to other cross-functional teams. This approach doesn’t just improve internal alignment; it allows us to practice what we preach and showcase the strategic potential of support as a key driver of growth.

3. Education: transforming inquiries into opportunities

What if every customer question, no matter how “basic,” was seen as an opportunity to create positive engagement? By building an intentional partnership with education teams, support can transform everyday customer queries into opportunities for deeper connections and long-term loyalty.

For example, our support specialists are all active members of our Front Community — answering questions, sparking conversations, and offering insights. These efforts help foster a vibrant and engaged customer network, going beyond resolving individual concerns, and building a sense of belonging and trust within our customer base. 

We also play a vital role in helping customers unlock the full value of our products. By directing them to live training sessions or resources like Front Academy, we empower users to solve their own challenges, gain deeper expertise, and feel more confident in their journey with Front.

This isn’t just about reducing the volume of support tickets, it’s about turning every interaction into an opportunity for growth, for both the customer and the company.

Take your support partnerships to the next level

Customer support isn’t just here to put out fires — with the right framework in place, it can spark customer-centric growth, and be a proactive driver of business success. Building these relationships takes effort, and time, but the rewards are undeniable; stronger teams, happier customers, and a more resilient organization 💪

Ready to see cross-functional collaboration in action?

👉 Read our Head of Support’s newsletter article on how collaboration with engineering, product, and marketing has unlocked growth and improved customer experiences at Front.

👉Subscribe to his LinkedIn newsletter, Top-Tier Support, for more advice on creating a building a strong, cross-functional support team

Ready to take your customer support to the next level? Try Front.