One year after making Front’s support metrics public, I wish we’d done so sooner

This article was originally published in Top-Tier Support, Front’s Head of Support Kenji Hayward’s LinkedIn newsletter for customer service leaders. For more frontline advice and actionable insights, subscribe today to get them delivered to your inbox every other week.

Back in September 2023, Front made its support metrics public.

Inspired by Rippling’s call to arms, I felt the move was natural because transparency isn’t something we at Front talk about — it’s something we live (and is a core value that’s ingrained in Front’s culture). We were already transparent in the way we collaborate in our day-to-day work and internally communicate as an org, so the next step felt right to open it to current and future customers.

Luckily, Front’s Cofounder (and CEO at the time), Mathilde Collin, was also all-in on the idea. She sat down with Rippling’s CEO, Parker Conrad, back in February to pick his brain about why making support metrics public is worth the risk.

Once engineering, data, product, marketing, and support teams were on board, it took about six months to launch our Support Report — a publicly accessible page showcasing our team’s key metrics and how they compare to industry benchmarks.

Getting my team on board

I remember sharing the news with my team at our quarterly meeting that we were planning on making our support metrics public. There wasn’t any strong pushback, but the team was understandably apprehensive. It takes guts to be this transparent, knowing that we’d have to stay accountable whenever our metrics dip.

To get my team on board, I made sure to:

1. Communicate often and early, as I would for any other significant change within support

2. Highlight “the why” behind this bold move that’s driven by how proud I am of the team and the value this effort was going to bring

3. Set clear goals to get everyone on the same page and strive towards a shared objective

I worked with my team to come up with the goals together through open discussions in our meetings. I wanted to ensure that everyone felt ownership over the direction we were heading and had input into how we approached transparency. This collaborative process helped us align on what mattered most — not just for the company, but for each individual on the team. Here were our goals:

1. Transparency and accountability: By sharing metrics openly, we wanted to enhance accountability and encourage every team member to take ownership of their performance, knowing that their contributions were visible and valued.

2. Continuous improvement: By highlighting both our strengths and areas for development, we sought to drive constructive feedback and discussions that would lead to actionable improvements and higher standards of customer support.

3. Alignment and motivation: Public metrics helped us set and communicate specific targets, aligning everyone’s efforts towards common goals and celebrating successes together.

4. Customer trust: Another goal was to build and reinforce customer trust by demonstrating our commitment to openness and excellence. By making our performance data accessible, we can show our customers that we are dedicated to delivering high-quality support and be transparent about our performance.

5. Benchmarking and best practices: We sought to use public metrics as a means of benchmarking against industry standards and identifying best practices. By sharing our data, we hoped to engage with other industry leaders (comment what metrics you’re tracking!), exchange insights, and continually elevate our support practices based on what we learned from others.

Now, a year in, we’ve made significant progress on these goals. We’re consistently using these metrics to drive improvements, build trust with our customers, and further align our team around a shared purpose.

The biggest challenge for the whole process was actually choosing which metrics to highlight. There weren’t many other companies who were publishing their metrics and out of the ones who did, the metrics they focused on weren’t an exact fit for us. It made me realize that metrics are very personal to each company, and there isn’t a magic set of universal metrics to report on. The ones we chose for Support Report are the best reflection of our customer experience today.

Stop waiting for the “perfect time”

The one thing I would’ve done differently if I had to do it all over again would be to push harder to make our metrics public sooner. I didn’t know it would have such a positive impact on:

1. Driving brand awareness

2. Increasing our web traffic and conversion rates

3. Getting my team and the rest of the org pumped about the customer experience

We’re able to tell more compelling stories about service quality. The Support Report brings in steady web traffic that helps bring in leads. But more importantly, it’s brought my team closer together while improving the customer experience.

Making the customer experience a company-wide objective

Once the Support Report was live, the benefits went far beyond support. Everyone rallying behind the real-time status of our support quality underscored that our customer-first approach was company-wide. We’re all passionate about providing and empowering our customers with a great customer experience, so it became a no-brainer for other teams like sales, marketing, and product to leverage Support Report in their sales calls, campaigns, and product roadmapping.

Now, account executives are equipped with proof in their calls with potential customers that our product also came with great support.

Marketing uses Support Report to build credibility in the customer service market by tying our high service standards with our product that enabled our customers to get to the same level with their customers.

Support Report even inspired our product team’s roadmap, where we turned it into a feature for our customers to also publish their real-time service metrics.

From building trust with our customers to closing more deals to helping our brand stand out from the crowd, the proof is in the pudding. Public support metrics have helped my team stay accountable to continuously deliver the best experience for our customers. To be recognized for their hard work across the org. And as a company, be truly customer-first.

More tools for your support team

• Publish your own Support Report

• Wondering which support metrics you should be tracking? Check out the guide for a primer on 14 essential metrics every support team should track, plus tested tips for optimizing them.