Manda is a French real estate group, born from the merger in 2024 of Flatlooker and Hello Syndic. Together, they manage over 800 co-owned buildings as a co-ownership syndicate and over ten thousand flats for owners, ranging from small buildings with three co-owners to large complexes with hundreds. The combined company is already the ninth-largest real estate firm in France.
What sets Manda apart is its operational model. Unlike competitors who rely on individual managers, Manda organizes work through dedicated teams that handle projects across all buildings. The company is also one of the few originally digital players in the sector, making operational efficiency both a differentiator and a necessity. “Providing a very good customer experience is a lever to retain our clients, and part of our growth strategy,” said Chief Product and AI Officer Quentin Caillé.
With a mission to have a lasting impact on their clients’ real estate stories, Manda has an ambitious growth strategy requiring both acquisitions and operational excellence. To support their condominium management teams — about 90 employees handling more than 1,000 customer emails every day — Manda relies on Front.
Front empowers us to scale without scaling headcount. It fits the complexity of our business and supports the ambitious growth we’re driving.
Challenges
Adapting after a merger
After Flatlooker and Hello Syndic merged, they inherited different tools and workflows. Property management teams had long relied on Zendesk, while condominium management teams were accustomed to Front. In an effort to unify, the decision was made to standardize on Zendesk.
But the shift created problems for the new Zendesk users who struggled with the ticketing model, which is best used for closing inbound tickets quickly, not for the long, complex conversations that Manda’s condo management teams often handled.
Outbound-heavy communication
Nearly half of Manda’s communication on the co-ownership business is outbound: messages sent proactively to condo councils, often with multiple recipients included. Employees found it difficult to create outbound messages or include all stakeholders on equal footing. As a result, important updates risked being delayed or overlooked.
Danger of poorly routed messages
With about 1,000 emails coming in each day across shared addresses, routing was critical. The process was clunky and messages were sometimes misrouted, dragging down SLA compliance. For customers already frustrated by maintenance issues or suppliers waiting on payments, those delays only heightened dissatisfaction.
Employee frustration
The new setup for the co-ownership team didn’t suit as well as it did for their property management business. “Our frontline team faces some tense moments,” says Caillé. “Services are costly, non-payments are common, and buildings can be old with constant maintenance issues. When messages are delayed, customers get very unhappy — and our employees are the first to hear it.”
The interface felt clunky, and workers struggled to track their daily tasks. Morale dipped, and some even began openly pushing to return to Front, which they remembered as more intuitive and better aligned to their day-to-day reality.
Our co-ownership users were literally begging us to come back to Front. They couldn’t find their to-dos anymore, and the interface was counterintuitive compared to what they were used to. With Front, they knew exactly what to do.
Solutions
A clean slate with Front
When Manda returned to Front, they scrapped the legacy setup — seven years of cluttered inboxes and outdated rules — and rebuilt their instance from scratch. With support from Front’s technical experts, they integrated APIs and designed new workflows using application objects.
The onboarding was smooth, thanks in part to Front’s intuitive interface and Manda’s in-house expertise. “It was very helpful to have our developers talking directly with Front’s technical experts,” says Caillé.
Employees noticed the difference immediately. On the very first day back, one user showed up in a homemade Front t-shirt and mug to celebrate the switch.
Supporting outbound, one-to-many communication
Condo councils often include multiple stakeholders who expect the same visibility. In some cases, all want to be listed as primary recipients, not just CC’d. Front allows Manda to handle these one-to-many threads seamlessly, while also tracking long, ongoing discussions that rarely “close.”
“We handle long, ongoing conversations; we’re not always trying to close tickets fast,” says Caillé. “Front fits that reality very well.”
Results
Automating shared inboxes at scale
Manda’s condominium management team receives roughly 1,000 emails per day across shared inboxes, and with Front’s rules, APIs, and application objects, combined with AI-powered topic and sender detection, about 90% of those messages are now routed automatically. That equates to 850 out of 900 messages assigned without human intervention, leaving only around 50 that require manual assignment.
Boosting SLA performance and employee focus
This automation ensures faster replies and stronger SLA compliance. Today, 90 employees rely on Front every day to focus on solving customer problems.
Preparing for the future
Looking ahead, Manda plans to expand its FAQs beyond the 50 articles already published, train a chatbot to offer more self-service support, refine and deepen our rules workflows, and consolidate AI features directly within Front to reduce reliance on third-party providers. These gains both improve daily operations and fuel Manda’s broader ambition.