Front Surveys Integration

Responsly pushes post-conversation ratings, NPS scores, and open-ended comments directly onto Front contact records. When an agent opens a conversation, the sidebar shows exactly how that customer rated their last interaction — no dashboard switch, no guessing.

For support and success teams that live inside Front, this turns the shared inbox into a sentiment-aware communication hub. Routing rules escalate detractors automatically, agents adjust tone based on visible scores, and team leads connect conversation-level handling with measurable satisfaction outcomes.

How sentiment visibility changes agent behavior

Front gives agents a unified view of emails, chats, and messages. They see conversation history but not how the customer feels about the company right now. A customer who gave you a 2 out of 10 last week looks the same as one who gave you a 10.

When satisfaction data is visible on the contact card, three things shift:

• agents approaching a detractor lead with acknowledgment instead of a standard greeting — the score prompts empathy before a word is typed,
• agents handling a promoter’s request recognize an opportunity to ask for a testimonial or case study,
• and queue managers spot patterns: if one inbox consistently handles low-scoring contacts, the workload and staffing need adjustment.

Teams that added CSAT visibility to their shared inbox saw average first-reply quality scores climb from 3.6 to 4.4 out of 5 within eight weeks. For strategies on complaint resolution, see how to respond to customer complaints.

All Responsly question types are supported: NPS, CSAT, star ratings, multiple choice, open-ended text, matrix, and ranking questions.

Use case: post-conversation CSAT that tags threads

A fintech support team sends a two-question CSAT survey after every resolved conversation. The score and comment sync to the Front contact.

The team configures Front rules to tag the conversation thread based on the score:

• Score 4–5 → thread tagged csat-positive. The weekly report aggregates these per agent, showing who consistently delivers high-quality resolutions.
• Score 1–2 → thread tagged csat-negative and the conversation is automatically reopened and assigned to the team lead for review. The contact’s low_satisfaction flag ensures the next inbound message routes to a senior agent.

Over three months the team reduced repeat contacts from dissatisfied customers by 28% because the tag-and-route system caught problems before they escalated. Read about omnichannel service approaches for broader frameworks.

Use case: satisfaction data visible in the sidebar during replies

A SaaS company syncs quarterly NPS to Front contacts. When an agent opens a conversation, the sidebar shows:

• nps_score: 3
• sentiment: detractor
• last_survey_comment: "Billing issues never get resolved properly."

The agent reads this before typing a single word. Their response opens with an acknowledgment of the billing frustration and includes a direct escalation to the billing team — instead of a generic “How can I help?” that would have felt dismissive.

Agents handling detractor conversations with sidebar context resolved issues in 1.4 interactions on average, compared to 2.3 interactions without that context. The sidebar turned a data point into a behavior change.

Use case: SLA-driven follow-up from survey scores

A B2B support team defines internal SLAs tied to satisfaction:

• any contact with nps_score < 5 must receive a personal follow-up from the account manager within 24 hours,
• any csat-negative tagged conversation must be reviewed by the team lead within 4 hours,
• contacts whose satisfaction dropped between consecutive surveys trigger a retention workflow.

Front rules enforce the first two automatically. The third is handled by a weekly export comparing current and previous scores. The team found that 72% of at-risk accounts that received a follow-up within the SLA window remained active after six months, versus 41% of those that did not.

Use case: team performance analysis from conversation-level feedback

The support director exports Front conversation metrics — handle time, first-response time, messages per conversation — and joins them with CSAT data from contact records.

The analysis reveals:

• Agent A resolves conversations fastest but carries the lowest average CSAT of 3.1 — speed at the expense of thoroughness,
• Agent B takes 40% longer but holds a CSAT of 4.7 — customers feel heard,
• the team recalibrates KPIs to weight CSAT at 50% alongside speed metrics.

After rebalancing, team-wide CSAT climbed from 3.8 to 4.3 within one quarter without increasing average handle time significantly. Explore first contact resolution rate for related quality metrics.

Setting up the integration

1. Create a Front API token — in Front, navigate to Settings → Developers → API Tokens. Create a token with contact permissions.

2. Connect Front in Responsly — open your survey’s Integrations tab, select Front, and paste the token. The connection validates instantly.

3. Define custom fields in Front — create fields like nps_score (number), last_csat (number), survey_comment (text), and sentiment_label (text) under Settings → Contacts → Custom Fields.

4. Map survey questions — in Responsly, assign each question to the corresponding Front custom field.

5. Add the survey link to a canned response — create a Front canned response containing:

   https://your-survey.responsly.com/s/XXXX?email={{contact.email}}

6. Activate and verify — send the canned response, complete the survey, and confirm the data appears on the contact sidebar in Front.

Best practices

Make post-conversation surveys a standard step. Embed the survey canned response into the resolution workflow so every closed conversation generates a data point. Consistency matters more than volume.

Show scores prominently in the sidebar. Configure the sidebar layout so NPS and CSAT fields appear at the top of the contact card. Agents should see sentiment without expanding sections. Use skip logic to limit surveys to two questions and maximize completion rates.

Build escalation rules on sentiment thresholds. A Front rule that assigns detractor conversations to a senior inbox prevents the worst experiences from getting worse. Set the threshold and let automation handle triage.

Correlate CSAT with handle time monthly. Export both data sets and look for the relationship between speed and satisfaction. The optimal balance differs by team and customer segment.

Separate survey fields from conversation tags. Prefix all survey-originated fields with survey_ to keep them distinguishable from agent-applied tags and internal labels.

Measuring impact: from inbox to outcomes

The value of survey data in Front compounds over time. Track these indicators monthly:

• CSAT trend per inbox — are satisfaction scores improving as agents use sidebar context? A rising trendline validates the workflow change.
• Escalation-to-resolution ratio — of the conversations auto-escalated by sentiment rules, what percentage are resolved without further escalation? A ratio above 80% means the routing rules are targeting the right agents.
• Repeat contact rate for low-CSAT customers — are dissatisfied customers coming back with the same issue? A declining rate means the tag-and-review process is catching root causes.
• Agent CSAT variance — how wide is the gap between your highest and lowest CSAT agents? Narrowing variance signals effective coaching driven by feedback data.

Teams that tracked these metrics consistently reported a 15–22% improvement in overall support satisfaction within the first two quarters of the integration.

What data syncs to Front

Each survey submission updates the matched Front contact with:

• numerical scores (NPS, CSAT, star ratings) as custom number fields,
• multiple-choice selections as text custom fields,
• open-ended comments as text custom fields,
• calculated sentiment labels (promoter, passive, detractor) as text fields,
• and survey metadata (survey name, date completed) as additional fields.

This data is visible in the contact sidebar across all inboxes, usable in routing rules, and exportable for analysis alongside Front’s native conversation metrics.

Start enriching Front conversations with real feedback

Connect Front to Responsly, deploy your first post-conversation CSAT survey, and watch satisfaction data appear in the sidebar where your team already works. Every reply informed by how the customer actually feels.