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We’re an e-commerce business and use Front for communication with high value clients looking to order multiples and other operational concerns (not general customer service). 

 

The problem:

-My main problem deals with my high value clients. When we need to reference their specific order requests, delivery dates, or other specifics, we have to scroll back up in the thread and as we approach our busy season, this is very inefficient. Once the order is placed, we would track this information in Shopify or Google Sheets, which we use for invoicing on our more complicated orders. I typically drop a link to the relevant invoice/Google sheet as a Front comment, but this still involves a lot of scrolling as these email chains get very lengthy. We don’t currently use a CRM. We’re a small business and just never had the man power to leverage one enough to merit the cost. We are open to one, but I am hoping for a low cost solution. 

 

The ideal solution I envision:

-The absolute most ideal solution would be AI-powered, so that we didn’t have to manually input the information. However, manual input is acceptable. Copilot does not appear to be pulling the most relevant summary information and I don’t see how to train it? 

-The solution I envision would be a notes style plugin accessible through Front with fields for key information like delivery date, items of interest, payment status, etc. I am hoping we could create the note, name it with the client’s project name, and then attach it to any relevant email exchanges so it was readily available for all team members to access and reference. 

-We would also like some way to check off if the customer has had key questions asked like where they heard about us and if they are comfortable with certain marketing material being included.

-A Google Doc or Form could potentially work as long as we could access their specific file from the any conversation with any of the contacts associated with the document, but I did not see that it was possible to keep a Google doc or form readily accessible from anywhere within a Front thread and did not see that I could get it so I could access one through the Plugins section of the Front interface.

-We would like this to be easily viewable outside of Front as well and printable and sharable among team members. 

 

Any ideas for solutions? 

Hello, 

Thank you for posting your question! Annika here from Front Support and happy to help 😄

It sounds like you are talking about an Application Object. This would let you attach the order number, customer information, conversations etc. and link it back to a third party application, potentially like Shopify. 

Application objects allow you to transform text or URLs found in comments or messages into structured Orders, Shipments, Itineraries, Tasks etc. that are easy to access right from a conversation in Front.

You can find more information on this by checking out our article here: How to create application objects

Please note, this is only available on our Enterprise plan,

Could you please let me know if this may be a possible solution for you?

​​​​​​​Looking forward to your reply! 

I agree with Annika’s suggestion to use Connectors to both bring external context into Front as well as make updates to your external systems.

 

There are two types of Connectors:

  • Application objects: instantly display data from external systems (e.g. customer records, shipments, orders) directly in conversations.

  • Application requests: trigger actions in external systems (e.g. update an order, create a record, change a status). We have upcoming improvements to app requests that will make it even easier to push updates to external sytems.

 

If for whatever reason you need a more elaborate UI and deeper control than what Connectors provide, you can explore plugins, but you will need a developer to build it for you. Connectors, on the other hand, are no code.

 

 

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