Account management teams at HubSpot, Shopify, and Countsy use Front to deliver a better customer experience.
When you’re building a client relationship, timely responses and personal attention make all the difference. That’s why customer account teams of all sizes and industries use Front to deliver a better, more unified experience for every client.
Front is the shared inbox for client teams that unifies your email, customer communication channels, and apps in one platform. With Front, teams can collaborate on messages and gain more context and visibility into every client conversation. Read on to learn how account management teams from Shopify, HubSpot, and Countsy keep their customers happy using Front.
Shopify
Shared inboxes: 300+ | Response time: 24 hrs or less | Integrations & plugins: 20+
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that manages every aspect of the retail process — from products, to orders to customers, selling online, in retail stores, and on the go. More than 600,000 merchants use their platform to process more than $55 billion in sales. Their Merchant Success Team needed a way to manage and nurture client relationships at scale, without sacrificing the personal, timely experience they’re known for delivering. That’s when they sought out Front.
“Front adds value for any team that has to do a lot of collaboration. After we experimented with Front for our Merchant Success Team, we realized it would be perfect for other teams, too. So now we’ve rolled it out for our HR and Business Ops teams.”
- Samar Mirza, Business Operations Coordinator, Shopify
With Front, their team processes more than 200,000 inbound customer messages each month. Front allows them to respond to every message within 24 hours, with as little back and forth as possible. They’ve built out canned replies with necessary questions and links to resources, which enables merchant success managers to give clients what they need faster. Their replies per message have decreased by more than 10 percent every month since they started using Front.
With automated rules that direct messages into the right hands instantly, and more than 20 integrations and custom plugins, they’re able to get the context they need to give customers a consistent experience, without ever leaving Front.
“I’m so relieved that Gmail is gone, and we’re using Front to manage email.”
- Samar Mirza, Business Operations Coordinator, Shopify
HubSpot
Email accounts: 4,000+ | Response time: 2 hrs or less | Automated workflows: 33
HubSpot is the leading growth marketing platform for small and medium sized businesses. Their Customer Success Team manages conversations with 4,000 customers with Front.
With a team structured by expertise area rather than by account, they originally used Google Groups to manage their accounts, but found themselves struggling to establish ownership over messages. It was impossible to tell who was replying at any time, resulting in duplicate replies or missed messages.
“Front is mission critical to our customer communication strategy. We couldn’t go back to life before Front.”
- Lock Whitney, Manager of Customer Success, HubSpot
Using Front, their team saw immediate benefits by routing messages with rules based on keywords, categorizing messages using tags, and assigning messages to the right person for follow ups. They use 33 automated rules to automatically route messages and respond in 2 hours or less. Since they started using Front, they’ve measured consistently higher customer success scores.
“We experienced a lot of stress and uncertainty in Google Groups and struggled to deliver the customer experience we wanted. I knew there had to be a better way for teams like ours to manage email.”
- Lock Whitney, Manager of Customer Success at HubSpot
Countsy
100% of 100+ person team on Front | Shared inboxes: 200+ | Automated workflows: 13
Countsy is a cloud-based accounting service for venture-backed startups. They’ve establish and scaled HR and accounting operations for companies like Facebook, Asana, and Brit + Co.
Before moving their entire team onto Front, Countsy used Microsoft Outlook email distribution lists to manage high-touch client relationships. Clients could get in touch with them quickly by sending an email to an alias like [email protected]. This was simply for clients, but difficult to manage. Distribution lists required a lot of upkeep, and it was hard to get new teammates up to date on client conversations.
“In Outlook, we could only see what had happened since the point in time we joined the distribution list. With Front, we have access to al the client history we need.”
- Kathy Costillo, Head of Technology Service Center, Countsy
Now, their team of 100 consultants uses 200 shared inboxes, one for each client in Front. They can handle new requests quickly and see past conversations easily to get up to speed. They use tagging and assignments in Front to designate clear ownership and accountability over messages. They’ve been able to eliminate other tools beyond email to manage projects, because they’re getting all their collaboration done in Front. As a result, the team sends far fewer internal emails and can search for emails faster.
“With Front, the first person to read the thread can assign it to the right person immediately. When we assign emails to specific people in Front, everyone knows exactly what they’re responsible for at a glance.”
- Kathy Costillo, Head of Technology Service Center, Countsy
Written by Emily Hackeling
Originally Published: 17 April 2020