Front is a communication hub for customer operations, designed to help teams build strong customer relationships. It centralizes all incoming conversations from email, SMS, chat, phone, and other channels in one collaborative inbox, and routes messages to the right team members. With built-in collaboration and AI-powered features, Front enables teams to respond quickly to customers and deliver exceptional service at scale.
The company has raised $204 million from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Battery Ventures, and PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada, with an aggregate valuation of over $1.7 billion. As of June 2022, Front has more than 8K customers in 100+ countries, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises (including notable brands such as Dropbox, GoDaddy, Cisco, and Carvana). Front’s customer satisfaction metrics are highly positive, with over 98% CSAT, and 130%+ net retention.
Unlike standalone customer support software providers such as Zendesk and Intercom, Front offers a broader range of collaboration tools and integrations to enable teams to manage the full lifecycle of conversations with customers. This includes a universal inbox with omnichannel messaging, smart inbox organization and search, and automatic summarization of messages based on keywords, subjects, times, or teammates. Additionally, the platform allows for internal discussion capabilities, collision detection for duplicate replies, and the ability to loop in non-Front users to a conversation as a guest.
While Front has gained traction in the customer success and support space, it has ambitious plans to evolve into a communication layer for all knowledge workers. While this strategy will increase its potential addressable market, it will require careful execution to avoid diluting product quality and functionality.