sennder is the leading digital European freight forwarder that gives shippers unprecedented visibility of the transportation process through load tracking and digital management capabilities. The team’s mission is to leverage data to create an efficient road freight network. They do this by connecting the best shipper experience with a carrier platform that enables trucking companies to run their businesses more profitably and with lower emissions. With more than 1,000 employees, the sennder team manages more than 40,000 trucks across Europe.
Eight years since the company’s founding, they’ve grown exponentially, allowing them to become one of the 20 largest full truckload players in Europe. Today, the team uses Front to achieve their goal of staying hyper-focused on improving efficiency of customer success and operations teams.
Challenge
sennder has grown rapidly since its inception; it’s acquired two companies and added four new offices in 2020, resulting in a variety of communication processes. Each team was using different software and had varying procedures. Some offices were working on Zendesk, some on Gmail and Google Groups. Many used Slack, where collaboration was disconnected from customer communication.
Daniel Mota Pereira, Program Manager of Operations Tooling at sennder shares, “We had teams working with different tools that were not integrated into each other. We realized there were a lot of repetitive tasks that could be streamlined or completely automated. Through Front, we could optimize collaboration between teams.”
We had teams working with different tools that were not integrated to each other. We realized there were a lot of repetitive tasks that could be streamlined or completely automated. Through Front, we could optimize collaboration between teams.
When the company first considered Front back in 2020, they were looking to improve data on team performance, gain visibility between teams, and increase customer satisfaction. Their team runs thousands of loads daily, and communication must stay on track so that customers’ loads get picked up on schedule.
sennder first implemented Front with 400 teammates in its seven offices across Europe to serve as their single source of truth for communication. Since then, the team saw impressive onboarding and engagement, leading them to expand their work with Front to >700 teammates (appr. 70 % of the entire team) across 11 offices. The challenge today lies in scaling even faster, enabling collaboration across a bigger team, and providing more shippers and carriers the highest level of transparency and flexibility.
Solution
Integrations save 3,500 hours a month
The sennder team created a 360-degree view of customer data and communication by using Fronts integrations with Salesforce, Asana, Slack, Aircall, and Looker. Teammates can see all data from these systems within Front; they no longer have to manage multiple tools to find the specific information they need. For example, with Front Analytics and the Looker integration, they have 16 dashboards that include performance and engagement metrics, allowing the relevant audience to analyze and take appropriate actions accordingly.
The team also created an integration with their internal operations system using Fronts API. With this integration, an agent can immediately see load times, who’s responsible for each load, and search for loads, all through Front.
Newer integrations include a messenger app and knowledge base, along with a core project management tool — enabling the team to have easy access to all information needed in one central place.
“The integrations with Front have reduced the number of touchpoints needed to access information, saving our team time,” said Daniel Mota Pereira. “The integration capabilities also encourage data hygiene and use of only the most up-to-date information through a single source of truth synced within Front. This has greatly improved collaboration and efficiency.”
As a result of Front features and integrations, sennder saves an average of 3,500 hours a month, which they now use to work on revenue-generating tasks.
Tags automate communication to ensure loads stay on track
sennder uses tags to route customer messages to appropriate team members as the requests arrive. For example, a shipping partner cancellation request gets tagged, and it moves to the inbox of a team that handles it immediately according to a service level agreement (SLA). They quickly arrange another shipping partner, so the customer’s load gets picked up as scheduled.
The team set out to categorize 95% of all incoming requests in 2023 with the help of the tagging functionality in Front, which they started experimenting with in 2022. With successful categorization of the large majority of incoming requests, they can either provide the required information and reply in an automated fashion, or they can automatically route each request to the right point of contact at sennder.
And there’s more to come: AI tagging was a request of theirs that we’re developing at Front and will make this categorization process even smoother.
Personalization drives growth
Pereira says that personalization has been key to the company’s growth. Sennder uses Front message templates and personalizes them to each customer, and the team uses Front analytics to look at the performance data associated with each shipper to identify where they need to make improvements. They can see outliers and easily determine net promoter scores (NPS). He also says that being able to highlight their performance data in 6-month reviews with shippers has helped establish a sense of loyalty.
Front’s AI Summarize and Compose features also make it easier to spend more time on personalization, with AI taking control over the easier parts of drafting responses and allowing teammates to spend time on the complex. With AI draft assistance, sennder can focus their efforts on polishing, personalizing, and refining their customer communication, rather than starting from scratch.
Collaboration capability leads to drastically improved response times
sennder has different teams working with carriers and shippers, but the teams work on the same loads. Front’s shared inbox and collaboration capabilities give them complete visibility into load status, and enable them to immediately alert their partner team when something happens with a load using comments.
Now, 81% of all messages in the Front are answered in less than 45 minutes. sennder sees an average handling time of 2 minutes for >700 users. Teams can collaborate freely and quickly, leading to drastically improved response times.
In an age of many tools, Front stands out
Pereira has said that a recent internal sennder survey found that >80% of interviewed teammates feel confident with Front and find it extremely easy to use. He said he usually only hears about tools when they aren’t working — and Front rarely falls into that category!
Pereira has advice for other teams using disconnected tools or an inefficient communication process: don’t wait until your team is in a growing phase, implement Front even if you’re early-stage to set your team up for success.
What’s next for sennder? The team has set ambitious automation targets for its inbound support function — and its strong collaboration with Front gives them a lot of confidence that they can deliver on those targets.
We’re excited to see what’s ahead!
