Not Quite Front of the Pack: Considering Support/HelpDesk Options
November 28, 2017

Not Quite Front of the Pack: Considering Support/HelpDesk Options

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Front

We use it for customer support for sub-branded websites. We share this responsibility across the Customer Success and Product areas of our business. Front primarily solves the problem of multi-branding of our support needs, as these websites are branded differently from our corporate domain and we do not want our corporate brand to be visible in our responses.
  • The setup for multiple inboxes is simple and flexible -- no additional costs either.
  • Their support team is extremely responsive and tries extremely hard to help out should problems arise.
  • They took a suggestion and implemented a new feature based upon my input within 6 weeks of initial notification.
  • Front's reliance on being a better way to handle support email rather than a more traditional support ticketing system has its practical limits. For small outfits with low support volumes and relatively simple workflows, Front is probably a good option. I fear that we're outgrowing it quickly.
  • It's confusing how to manage ongoing support threads because everything looks like an email and it's not always clear to our agents as to when the issue should be "closed".
  • Templated responses and rules are OK, but some of the rules are not easily configured -- there is a learning curve as some settings aren't well documented and/or are not intuitive.
  • They don't have any sort of FAQ solution, meaning that canned responses cannot be reused in a knowledgebase or similar resource elsewhere in our solutions -- another reason why we might need to consider other options in the future.
  • Very easy to get set up initially and add agents.
  • Can become expensive compared to other more full-featured support ticketing solutions on the market, especially when you grow beyond 3-4 agents.
  • Lack of more advanced workflow features should be a consideration; you may need to switch down the road.
  • Lack of ticketing forms and intelligent FAQ/knowledgebase integrations with canned responses has caused us to invest in other areas (becoming harder to justify long-term).
Zendesk is by far the market leader here and offers a tremendous solution. It is, of course, very expensive -- especially if you require multi-brand support. Many of the other solutions (except Groove) offer some flavor of multi-brand support but they are not as good as Zendesk. For example, the HappyFox multi-brand solution breaks down when it comes to FAQ setup -- the setup is extremely cumbersome and not worth the effort. The other area to watch out is with mobile support. Zendesk offers a clean and intuitive design on any device automatically out-of-the-box. Others, like Cayzu, are solid, but lack mobile support at this level -- probably a deal-breaker for most.

We started using Front before we realized how important a live, robust FAQ resource would be for each site that we support. As we've learned firsthand, it would have been much better to integrate these features from the outset -- and hence we should have chosen something other than Front. If you are just supporting your customers with a single email address and don't have an extensive FAQ or knowledgebase, then Front could be a great option for you.


Front is great when you have a relatively simple support workflow and do not need any sort of knowledge base or similar functionality. If you map out commonly-asked questions well and turn those into canned responses, Front makes it easy for an agent to respond quickly. However, since Front is completely based upon an email concept, automation of such responses is limited to subject line matching or similar. You can have different sets of responses for different mailboxes, though that's not a common solution for most businesses.

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