If there’s one thing businesses continuously seek, it’s productivity. We’re constantly looking to find ways to do things better, in less time, for less money. This ambition dates back to the Industrial Revolution, and as far as we can predict, it’s here to stay.
At Front, we aim for efficiency and productivity each day in our company and our product — so we were thrilled to be recognized by Zapier as the #2 fastest growing business app of 2018.
On average, Front users save 6 hours every week. Front cuts down the time you spend managing email, so you and your team can spend time on work that really matters.
Reinventing productivity… with your inbox
Front has reinvented email specifically to help teams be more productive. With Front, you have your email, team collaboration, and access to 50+ other apps right in your inbox. When you need to work with your team, you can comment internally, right on the original email thread. And when you need context from another app about a customer, project, or issue, you can find it all in your inbox, right where you need it.
What about all the other messages you have to deal with every day? We’re glad you asked. Those all live in Front, too. That way you’re not switching around from app to app to answer live chats, tweets, or SMS texts. It’s all in Front, and you can collaborate on them just like email.
Front gives you two sections for your email: your individual inbox — for emails to individual work addresses like [email protected], and your shared inboxes — for emails to shared addresses like [email protected].
Your individual inbox works just like your regular email. It’s only for you, unless you share it with someone. What’s the benefit of the shared inbox? Here’s how it works. Spoiler alert: it’s magic!
If an email arrives to a shared email address, it goes to a shared inbox. There, everyone can view the same emails.
You can assign an email to a teammate and remove it from everyone else’s unread queue.
You can also set up automations to route emails to the right people instantly.
With a shared inbox, you never have to waste another minute reading an email you don’t need to see. Everyone has organized access to relevant conversations, feedback, and decisions, which improves your company’s transparency and makes everyone more effective in their own work. On top of that, when everything you’re working on lives in one place, you can cut down on context switching and get into the deep work that matters most.
More productivity hacks than you can shake a stick at
Beyond the core product, Front is packed with features that supercharge your productivity. For example, here are just a few of our favorite hacks that we use every day at the Front office:
📧 Send emails with built-in reminders to follow up if the recipient doesn’t respond, or schedule emails to send at a later time
📝 Add comments as personal notes in context right below the thread (for example, “send updated quote with edits X, Y, and Z next week” and then snooze the email – which will remind you to follow up later)
🐜Create tags to help keep track of important conversations – and even add emojis to your tags (we like to include 🐛 for bugs)
🥫Create personal message templates for emails you send often, such as weekly updates or an on-boarding process for new clients
🏎 Move through your inbox in a flash with dozens of keyboard shortcuts
✅ Customize tags to organize your inbox just how you like it (both personal and for your team)
💬Create internal discussions with teammates right in your inbox
📜 Set custom rules for anything from auto-tagging emails that contain certain phrases and archiving email alerts from document updates and event invites, to forwarding certain types of emails, and much more
These are just some of the ways Front allows you to spend less time managing your inbox. Since there are endless ways to customize Front, people in all roles and industries use it to work more productively. Check out how Front CEO Mathilde Collin uses Front to focus on scaling the business, not managing her email.
Front enables asynchronous work
We’ve all been there. You’re deep in the middle of an important task when you get hit with an “urgent” message from your teammate. You stop what you’re doing to check it out. Quickly you realize — not only is this request not urgent, but it’s now 45 minutes later and you’ve missed out on valuable time that could have been spent on more meaningful work.
Constant distractions like these are the biggest blockers to our productivity today. In fact, a survey we recently conducted on context switching showed that one-third of people say their work is interrupted at least 10 times a day. Many of today’s tools demand synchronous (or real-time) communication, but there are very few things throughout the course of a typical work day that truly require an immediate response.
Front recognizes that the vast majority of your work should and can be done asynchronously. You can manage email, other messages, and internal chat conversations with your team in your inbox — in one place. Which, again, leaves more time for uninterrupted productivity.
Front lets you cut down on context switching and get into deep work
Neuroscientists have shown that when you’re interrupted, it usually takes about 23 minutes (and 15 seconds) to get back to the task that you were originally working on — and in that interruption, most people switch to not just one, but two alternative tasks before getting refocused.
This context switching usually comes in the form of interruptions like shoulder taps (both literal and figurative, like through an internal chat tool), but it also can come from the need to switch tools while in the midst of a task or project. Most of the tools we use are siloed — sales data in Salesforce, tasks in Asana, chats in apps like Slack or Teams, and any kind of email feedback through a terrifying rabbit hole of CC’s and forwarded messages.
Whenever you are forced into a different tool to find information or send a message, you risk being distracted by the shiny new objects there. Your boss commented on a Google Doc? A task was added to a project in Asana? Funny cat memes are being shared in #random? There goes your afternoon.
Front keeps you focused by bringing all of the tools you’re using into one place. It integrates directly with over 50 apps like Zapier, Salesforce, Asana, Slack, Twitter, Facebook, and HubSpot. When your communication channels sit alongside the other tools you need to do your job, you can quickly access information without getting sucked into another system and distracted.
Less time on email, more time on what matters
Front allows you to spend less time wrestling with your inbox, and more time on the things that matter — whether that’s focusing on more meaningful projects at work, or recharging to bring your best self into the office. Front users save six hours per week — roughly one hour per day.
What would you do with an extra hour in your work day?
Written by Paul Chalker
Originally Published: 17 April 2020