For over five years, Scratchpad has been making Salesforce easier to work with and simplifying workflows for sales teams through simple, intuitive, and user-driven experiences.
As the company evolves, they’re continuing to empower sales teams to work more efficiently by monitoring and enhancing CRM hygiene and improving sales team performance. “We’re excited about where we are going with AI agents to give sales teams an edge in winning deals, operations impeccable CRM hygiene, and leaders’ perfect predictability,” says Head of Operations, Diane Garcia.
Since day one, Scratchpad has relied on Front to manage customer interactions — primarily on the support and success teams, with close collaboration across sales and operations. A unique aspect of Scratchpad’s workflow is the emphasis on teamwork rather than individual ownership of responses. Front’s ease of use, combined with its ability to foster this type of seamless collaboration, has made it an irreplaceable part of Scratchpad’s operations.
Front makes managing inbox zero possible. I’ve built a seamless workflow to handle recruiting, ops, billing, customers, and AP all in one place — it’s that well-built.
Challenges
The struggle to collaborate and stay aligned
Scratchpad’s mission is rooted in collaboration, visibility, and speed of response — key principles for growing a company focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences. However, this was difficult in the early days when the company relied on Gmail for communication. “While Gmail served as a functional starting point, it quickly became apparent that it lacked the functionality necessary for delivering an exceptional customer experience and fostering real-time collaboration, visibility, and alignment across our internal teams,” says Diane.
Scratchpad’s leadership recognized that these weren’t just operational hurdles but foundational elements needed to support their vision of a company built around the voice of the customer and fast, seamless communication. To achieve this vision, it was critical to unlock transparency across teams and enable real-time collaboration on customer communications.
A lot of what we do in Front just wouldn’t be possible in Gmail. Conversations used to get really messy, but now we’re all aligned and can easily search customer threads to see everything in one place—with the end goal to deliver exceptional service.
Solutions
Centralized workspace for visibility and efficient workflows
Front now serves as the central hub for Scratchpad’s communication and workflow management, streamlining how the team handles customer requests and internal operations. Every customer interaction — whether it comes through email, chat, or even text — is routed into Front, centralizing all communication in one place. All interactions remain within one thread, providing a clear record of what’s been addressed and what still requires attention. The team efficiently manages multiple inboxes, quickly searches for related contexts, and merges conversations when needed. Third party integrations, such as Front’s Salesforce integration enables Scratchpad to ensure emails are logged properly, maintaining visibility across teams and further driving alignment.
Front has allowed us to consolidate tools and streamline workflows, making it even easier for customers to communicate with us. By simplifying our processes, we’ve been able to focus more on delivering excellent service and ensuring our customers feel supported every step of the way.
On the operational side, Front supports multiple workspaces tailored to specific needs. For example, Scratchpad’s customer and operations workspaces help manage tasks like accounts payable, legal, and security communications. Notifications about outdated records or other action items are centralized and easy to manage, helping the team maintain inbox zero — both for customer-facing communications and internal operations. “In Front, it’s really easy to see what needs to be addressed,” says Anji Patel, Product Knowledge Specialist at Scratchpad. “I can take action quickly and clear it out of my inbox.”
Front helps me keep a bird’s-eye-view across the business, tagging teams and setting reminders to ensure everything stays on track and nothing slips through the cracks.
Real-time collaboration to leverage collective expertise
Thanks to its shared visibility and powerful team features, collaboration thrives with Front. “There are people who have a lot of context on specific customers, users, or initiatives,” says Diane. Front makes it easy to loop relevant team members into a conversation, ensuring visibility and inviting different perspectives. “We’ll have one customer thread with 10 team members on it, so everyone can see what’s happening and contribute where needed.”
Shared drafts also play a pivotal role in this process. “Sometimes, our head of sales has a different approach than I do,” says Diane. “I’ll draft a message and ask, ‘Is there a different way you’d word this?’” The ability to collaborate on emails in real time was especially crucial for us, as it allowed us to respond faster and more effectively to customer needs.
By pulling multiple insights into a unified response, Front allows the team to present a single, consistent face to customers while leveraging the collective expertise of the group. It’s a streamlined approach that ensures every interaction is thoughtful and well-executed.
Front’s shared drafts are great for collaboration — whether to refine a message or ensure that even with multiple contributors, the customer sees one seamless, professional response.
Seamless handoffs and automation for fast resolutions
Front’s automation features play a key role in Scratchpad’s workflows. SLA warnings help prioritize urgent, time-sensitive requests, while tags categorize responses, making it easy to determine when no further action is needed. This ensures they can efficiently triage inboxes, including routing, billing, or contract-related inquiries, to the appropriate team members for quick resolution.
Automated drip campaigns are sent from the Scratchpad CEO and managed via a shared inbox, making these communications feel personal while maintaining operational efficiency. The shared inbox allows the marketing team to oversee campaigns, the support team to assist with user inquiries, and the CEO to remain involved in key touch points — all within the same platform. This unified approach optimizes internal workflows while delivering a cohesive and engaging experience for Scratchpad’s users.
This trust in Front’s collaborative features is at the core of how the team operates. “For us, it’s about making handoffs easy and ensuring the right person answers. I know that when I tag someone in Front, it’ll be handled,” says Diane. If they need to loop teams outside customer support, they just share a link. “Front makes teamwork seamless — even for those who don’t use it regularly. We can simply share a link to a specific message, which is a game-changer for keeping everyone aligned,” says Anji.
Front’s shared inboxes and the ability to tag team members into a message have been so impactful. It ensures everyone is on the same page and can respond quickly.
An evolving product to meet the needs of the business
As Scratchpad’s business has evolved, so has Front. “We chose to partner with Front—and continue to do so—because it consistently meets our needs and evolves alongside us,” says Diane.
The team recently rolled out Front Chat after realizing their previous tool was too complicated for their needs. Although the team worked with an onboarding specialist, they found it was still difficult to manage chat and corresponding workflows, necessitating many dedicated hours to manage the chat tool. “Front Chat accommodated our core workflows seamlessly, was easy to use, and integrated as just another channel for our team to respond to customers quickly and effectively,” explains Diane. “It aligned perfectly with the simplicity and collaboration we value.” Within a few days Anji was able to transfer multiple workflows into Front Chat, and it was off to the races.
Front has continued to add new features and functionality, all while maintaining the simplicity and collaboration that initially drew us to the platform. It’s exciting to see how the product and the company have grown, and it’s been a great experience to collaborate with them as they innovate and deliver even more value.
Results
100% CSAT and 40-minute response times
By integrating Front into every facet of their workflows, Scratchpad achieves exceptional efficiency. The team set a goal to respond to customer inquiries within 24 hours and currently averages an impressive 40-minute response time. A Scratchpad customer (Strategic Account Executive at Sonar) shares, “I love the lightning fast responses from you. I imagine it takes a lot of attention to follow up so quickly. It’s not overlooked from the customer side!” With a customer satisfaction rate of 100%, they are delivering faster, more consistent service while keeping customers delighted as can be seen in direct feedback from customers. “You guys are incredible,” shares another Scratchpad customer (Director of Enterprise Sales at Greenhouse Software). “It makes every other support/customer education team look bad. Thank you for your help on this one!”
The team’s reliance on Front underscores its impact. From managing inboxes to ensuring timely and accurate responses, Anji and Diane say they can’t imagine working with any other platform. “Front’s integration into daily workflows has improved efficiency and strengthened the customer experience Scratchpad is committed to delivering,” says Anji.
The team has not only addressed gaps in visibility and response speed but also established the foundation for their company workflows and communication processes. This allows them to focus on fostering a culture where customer needs and efficient communication are always at the forefront, setting the stage for long-term success.
