Fast customer support means providing customers with prompt, accurate answers — and pleasant experiences.
Sounds easy, right?
The pressure to respond quickly can lead even the best teams to sacrifice personalized service in favor of fast, automated solutions. But the goal of customer service is not to simply respond to your customers, it’s to build lasting relationships with them.
In this article, you’ll learn how to adjust your customer service strategy to prioritize speed and collaboration with the help of real-time collaboration tools, automation, AI, and more, so you can keep customers happy and loyal. Let’s get to it.
Why speed and collaboration are non-negotiable in 2025
In Front’s recent State of Service Expectations report, we found that fast response times were the most frequently cited ‘top service quality’ in both B2B and B2C experiences, with over 50% of customers in both sectors saying that the speed of their answer matters most to them. That means no matter what industry you’re in, if you’re reading this, speed matters.
Top “most valued” service qualities in B2B and B2C customer service experiences | ||
|---|---|---|
| B2B | B2C |
Fast response times | 55% | 52% |
Accurate information | 51% | 49% |
Efficient solution to inquiry | 52% | 47% |
Expansive self-service options | 47% | 47% |
Proactive support | 39% | 39% |
Empathetic support | 32% | 38% |
Personalized support | 24% | 28% |
“Okay,” you say, “we can do fast, but how fast are we talking?”
In that same report, we discovered that one-third of customers expect to hear back on their inquiry in less than two hours, regardless of the service or application they need help with.
But speed is just the start — customers also expect error-free, fact-checked, and legitimate answers. The reality is, not every support agent will be able to provide that on their own, so that’s where strong team collaboration comes in. And good collaboration starts with good communication.
Some tried-and-true tactics Front uses to ensure teammates communicate smoothly include:
Leveraging native Front features like in-thread comments and @mentions, which allow teammates to collaborate directly in context without switching tools
Daily stand-ups to highlight blockers, share information, adjust plans accordingly, and simply connect with one another
Weekly “think tanks" to share learnings from the week and to brainstorm together
“Peer think tanks," smaller scale weekly sync for specific groups of business development reps (BDRs) to highlight anything top of mind or wins and losses from the week
Weekly emails sent to sales, marketing, and operations leadership to share top wins, learnings, and progress on the team’s OKRs
Speed and collaboration aren’t just essential for happy customers, they’re essential for business growth. So how do you find that perfect balance? If both speed and collaboration are non-negotiable, how do you ensure customers are getting fast, yet thorough support?
It starts with removing barriers between teams and tools, making customer conversations and context accessible in one place.
Breaking down silos with unified support channels
Most companies are struggling with siloed systems that make support teams ill-equipped to serve customers. Customer data is spread across multiple sources. Tickets are isolated to specific teams. Business systems are disconnected. The thing is: your siloed systems aren’t just causing frustration for your teams and customers, they’re costing your business. Customers won’t tolerate poor experiences. In fact, 59% of customers will push their team to switch to a competitor after three (or fewer) bad experiences.
The customer experience takes a hit not just from disconnected tools, but also disconnected teams. If looping in a teammate is harder than it needs to be because different teams are on different platforms, the customer ends up paying the price with delayed help. That’s why a centralized workspace unblocks cross-functional collaboration, leading to better customer experiences.
Need proof that a unified platform makes a difference? Our support team at Front consistently outperforms industry benchmarks for reply rate, response time, CSAT, and more (and you can see that all here on our public Support Report). That’s all possible because we use Front to make it happen.
What is Front? Front is a customer service platform that unifies email, live chat, SMS, and social media, while streamlining agent and team communication so teams can manage all customer requests and collaboration efforts in one place.
[With Front,] team members manage both their individual email and the company’s shared support inbox within the same system — an absolute game-changer for us.
How leading teams speed up support
Our average response times for email and live chat are consistently lower than others in the industry. How do we do it?
Real-time collaboration
Industry leaders in the productivity tool space like Google Suite and Notion are popular because their products embody real-time collaboration. It’s become table stakes in productivity software, and is gaining traction in customer support software. Without collaboration capabilities, teams have clunky and siloed workflows, resulting in missed support requests, slow customer service, and unhappy customers.
Front is built to keep teams in lockstep throughout the whole customer journey. With essential real-time collaboration features like internal comments, shared drafts, and AI summaries, teams can work together seamlessly, increase transparency, and ensure no customer inquiry slips through the cracks.
Smarter routing & assignment
Manual routing and message assignment is a recipe for sluggish workflows, missed messages, and increased rates of human error. The result? Time wasted on easily automated tasks when higher value work like building customer relationships takes a backseat.
Front’s ticketing system makes it easy for teams to automatically route and assign requests to the right team member based on topics, priority, and customer data, so no agent is overwhelmed and workloads are distributed evenly.
Consistency across channels
Whether customers choose to communicate via live chat, email, or text, your team needs to be able to provide consistent experiences across all support channels. Seamless transitions across channels are especially important, since no customer likes to repeat themselves if they switch from chat to email. Front offers an omnichannel inbox that enables teams to manage all customer requests in one place that works just like the email interface they know and love. Rather than struggle with juggling multiple platforms and risk missing messages, teams can respond to emails, live chats, texts, and social media messages right from the Front inbox.
Cutting manual work with automation & AI
People still prefer humans, but there is a way to effectively use automation and AI while still providing customers with a personalized experience.
No-code workflow automation
Teams are vying to automate as much of their routine work as possible. Better yet? Automating without needing any developer resources.
With Front’s no-code, customizable workflow automations, users can automatically trigger messages or follow-ups, route and assign incoming requests, and execute other administrative tasks. Fast implementation has never been easier, now that non-technical users can build automated workflows on their own.
AI-assisted support
AI in customer support has historically gotten a bad rap (we’ve all had a less-than-ideal experience with an AI chatbot), but there are so many practical ways agents can use AI assistance to enhance their work, not replace it.
According to our State of Service Expectations report, 87% of customers expect support to be both fast and accurate — a standard that’s tough to meet without some AI-powered assistance.
With Front AI, teams get a jumpstart by leveraging capabilities that allow them to do things like summarize long threads, analyze conversation history to understand a customer’s reason for contacting, and provide faster answers with the help of real-time suggested replies.
Integrations
No one tool can do all the work alone, but connected with the right tools it can. Increase team and business efficiency by connecting all the tools in your tech stack to your customer service platform.
Front’s 125+ integrations and open API make it easy to connect your must-have tools, sync customer data, and reduce tool toggling. Whether a project management tool, CRM, or other third-party business system, users can seamlessly integrate their favorite tools with Front so their team has the context they need all in one place.
Metrics matter
If you’re going to see improvement in your team’s efficiency, tracking your key metrics is non-negotiable. Having these metrics in place not only keeps your team accountable, but provides clarity for your customers.
Getting started with your data tracking doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Here are a few important metrics we recommend starting with:
First response time (FRT): Measures the time it takes for support to acknowledge a customer request. Lower FRT reduces frustration and fosters trust with your customers.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): Measures customer happiness after an interaction. A quick, post-support survey is an easy way to capture customer feedback and track CSAT.
SLA compliance rate: Monitors adherence to contractual SLAs, ensuring you meet customer commitments.
Front’s detailed reporting and analytics — including metrics like response time, customer satisfaction, and SLA adherence — grants visibility into service metrics that were previously a black box with traditional email clients like Gmail and Outlook. Front Analytics informs support teams about targeted areas of improvement in their customer experience.
Achieving 75% faster resolution times with Front
Imagine this (or maybe it’s your reality): you use a CRM to manage client relationships, and Gmail to handle everything else — internal messages, team discussions, and other one-off communication that doesn’t involve customers. Conversations are incredibly hard to keep track of because you’re constantly switching between two platforms. Your team is frustrated, their work is inefficient, and collaboration is more complicated than it needs to be.
But then you find Front, and within a few months 800+ of your employees are quickly experiencing better visibility, smoother collaboration, and faster response times.
That’s exactly what happened for Numbr, a fast-growing, French accounting services company serving hundreds of customers. With the help of the Front team, Numbr was able to put together a clear roll-out strategy that would enable every client-facing employee to start using the Front Platform.
They ensured everything was set up quickly and tailored to each team’s needs, so when it came time to train, we were ready to hit the ground running. That level of partnership made all the difference.
Since rolling out Front, Numbr’s management of customer communications and internal collaboration has drastically improved. They saw an impressive 75% reduction in resolution times.
With Front, internal communication has become more transparent and efficient, making it easier for team members to share knowledge, insights, and up-to-date data.
Thanks to stronger collaboration between stakeholders, we can respond to customers much faster with Front.
Scaling without losing the human touch
Growth is good, but it can lead to some not-so-good outcomes, namely a burnt-out team, impersonal support, and frustrated customers. Support should be a value driver, not a cost center. When support is treated only as a cost center, the focus becomes closing tickets as quickly as possible — which leads to transactional, low-quality interactions that erode customer trust. But when companies invest in support and give the team a seat at the table, it creates critical feedback loops between the frontlines and product, engineering, and the rest of the business. With their deep knowledge of customer pain points and opportunities, support teams become strategic partners who can directly influence retention and growth.
Our State of Service Expectations report found that 77% of customers say they’re more loyal to businesses that turn support interactions into relationship-building moments — and loyalty translates directly into higher CLTV and recurring revenue.
That said, it’s important to first get the basics right. Empower your team with the right tools. Get them the right training and ongoing support. Integrate the established systems with other teams across the business. That’s how you build a support org that lasts, no matter how fast your company grows or how quickly AI reshapes the landscape.
Providing customers with self-serve support is an easy way to scale while still providing them with a great experience. In fact, in our recent survey, 64% say they wish companies offered more robust self-service options.
So that’s what we did. With Front, teams can enable (and easily customize) their customer portal, knowledge base, Support Report, and chat widget from the Help Center hub, making it easier than ever to quickly launch all the tools you need to deliver stellar self-serve support. Your customers get answers, and your team is freed up to help others with more complex issues.
Get speed and collaboration with Front
Customers want fast and accurate support, and meeting those standards will only get more difficult, especially when support teams are bouncing between tools trying to get an accurate picture of what their customer needs.
But with a tool like Front, it’s possible.
Front is a complete, AI-powered customer service solution that helps 9,000+ teams streamline behind-the-scenes work, cut response times, and provide exceptional experiences for customers. Unlike other solutions, Front combines the features of traditional customer support solutions with impactful AI-powered automation features built to increase efficiency without sacrificing quality. With Front, your team will have what they need to work fast, work together, and create happier customers.
See how Front has helped hundreds of customers deliver exceptional service at scale.
Written by Jordan Vanden Heuvel
Originally Published: 23 September 2025