A complete guide to Front automation for customer service

Let's be real: customer service teams are buried. The number of tickets keeps going up, and customers expect answers faster than ever. To stay afloat, many businesses are looking at automation to handle the simple, repetitive tasks, freeing up their agents for the conversations that actually require a human touch. This is where the idea of "front-office automation" comes in, promising to make every customer interaction smoother.

Platforms like Front have built their entire brand around this promise. But before you dive in, it’s important to understand what Front automation really is, what it does well, and, just as importantly, where it falls short. This guide will give you a straight-up look at Front's automation tools, their limits, and a more flexible way to bring smart AI into your workflow without having to switch platforms.

What is Front automation?

The term "Front automation" can be a little confusing because people use it in two different ways. To get what's going on, you have to separate the general idea from the specific product.

Front automation and the idea of front-office automation

At its heart, front-office automation is all about using tech to streamline any process that involves the customer, whether it's sales, marketing, or support. The goal is pretty simple: make customers happier, help your team get more done, and cut down on costs. A guide from Creatio puts it well, noting that this frees up people from boring tasks so they can use their brainpower on tricky issues that build real loyalty.

The platform: An overview of Front automation

Then you have the platform itself. Front is a "customer operations platform" built around a shared inbox that pulls in messages from email, chat, and SMS. When you hear people talk about Front automation, they're usually referring to the AI and rule-based tools inside the Front platform. These features are meant to help teams manage the constant flow of incoming messages. And while it's a popular choice, Front is just one of many tools trying to solve this problem.

A screenshot of the Front shared inbox, a key component of Front automation.

A look at Front's automation features

To figure out if Front is right for you, you need to know what's actually in its automation toolkit. Here’s a breakdown of the main features, based on what they advertise.

AI-powered analysis with 'Topics'

Front's "Topics" feature uses AI to automatically scan and categorize incoming messages. The idea is to give you a quick overview of why customers are contacting you, without you having to manually tag everything. This helps with automatically routing messages and gives you a better sense of common problems or questions.

Agent assistance with 'Copilot'

Copilot is Front's tool for helping agents. It suggests replies by looking at past conversations and your help center articles. The agent is still in control and can edit the AI's draft before sending it. It's a handy way to speed up responses to common questions. The catch? This feature is only included in their most expensive Enterprise plan; for the other plans, it's a paid add-on.

An illustration of the AI-powered compose and suggestion features in Front automation.

Automated resolutions with 'Autopilot'

Autopilot is Front's fully automated AI agent. It’s designed to resolve customer issues by itself across email, chat, and SMS, using your conversation history and knowledge base. You can choose which types of messages Autopilot gets to handle, which gives you some control. The main thing to watch out for here is the cost. Autopilot is a paid add-on that charges "$0.89 per resolution", which can lead to some seriously unpredictable bills.

Rule-based workflow automation

Beyond the fancy AI, Front also has good old-fashioned, rule-based automation. You can set up workflows to automatically tag conversations, send them to the right team, or assign them to a specific agent. This is a standard feature for most help desks, but the limits are buried in the details. The Starter plan only gives you 10 rules, and the Professional plan gives you 20. If you want unlimited rules, you have to upgrade to the pricey Enterprise plan.

The hidden limitations of Front automation

While Front offers a neat, all-in-one package, relying only on its tools for automation comes with some real downsides. These limitations can end up creating new headaches, which is why it's smart to look at other options.

The closed-off knowledge ecosystem

The biggest problem with Front's AI is that it’s stuck in its own little world. It mostly learns from data that lives on its platform, like your past Front conversations and its own knowledge base. But where is your company's actual knowledge? It's probably scattered all over the place: in Google Docs, Confluence, Notion, and private Slack channels. Front's AI can't see any of that, meaning it’s often working with half the story and giving incomplete or generic answers.

That's a huge blind spot, and it’s where a different approach, like the one eesel AI takes, really makes a difference. Instead of locking your knowledge into one platform, eesel AI connects to over 100 sources. It pulls together your company's entire brain, from engineering wikis to marketing docs, to give both your customers and agents genuinely helpful and accurate answers.

The 'all-or-nothing' platform switch

To use Front's automation, you have to go all in. That means moving your entire customer support operation over to their platform. Anyone who's been through a platform migration knows it’s a massive project. It costs a lot of money, takes months of work, and requires retraining the entire team. It’s a classic "rip and replace" job that can throw your whole workflow into chaos.

A much smarter way to go is to add power to the tools you already use. eesel AI is built to be a flexible AI layer that plugs right into your current help desk, whether that's Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, or something else. You can get it running in minutes, adding powerful AI to your existing process without the pain of a full migration.

Complicated and unpredictable pricing

As we mentioned earlier, many of Front's best AI features cost extra. Copilot, Autopilot, and their Smart QA/CSAT tools are all expensive add-ons. The per-resolution pricing for Autopilot is especially tough. It leads to bills that swing up and down, basically penalizing you for having a busy month. The more customers you help, the higher your bill.

This is a big contrast to eesel AI's straightforward pricing. With eesel AI, you get predictable monthly or yearly plans with no per-resolution charges. This lets you grow your support without worrying about surprise costs hitting your budget.

A more flexible alternative: eesel AI

Instead of locking you into a single platform, eesel AI gives you the freedom to build the best support setup for your team. It directly solves the problems of closed systems like Front by focusing on integration, speed, and safety.

Connect all your knowledge: A key advantage

The best thing about eesel AI is its ability to connect to your knowledge wherever it is. It easily integrates with the tools your team already uses every single day, like:

• Confluence

• Google Docs

• Notion

• Internal chat tools like Slack

This means your AI agent can find answers in technical product docs, engineering notes, and internal team chats, not just pre-written help center articles. The result is a much smarter AI that gives complete, relevant answers that actually fix customer problems.

Go live in minutes: A faster alternative

eesel AI was built to be incredibly easy to set up. You can sign up, connect your help desk with one click, and have a working AI agent ready in just a few minutes. There are no mandatory sales calls or complicated setup projects. Unlike all-in-one platforms that make you change your entire workflow, eesel AI fits into what you're already doing and starts helping right away.

Test with confidence using simulations: A safer approach

Bringing in AI can feel like a bit of a gamble, but it doesn't have to be. eesel AI's simulation mode is a huge help for taking the risk out of the process. It lets you test your AI on thousands of your own past tickets in a safe environment. You can see exactly how the AI would have answered, check its responses, and get real forecasts on how many tickets it could solve before you ever turn it on for live customers. This lets you build confidence, tweak the AI's behavior, and roll out automation slowly and safely, a level of control that most all-in-one platforms just don't give you.

Front automation pricing in 2025

To give you the complete picture, here’s a simple breakdown of Front's pricing, based on their public page from late 2024. Just remember that the listed price per seat is only the starting point.

A summary of Front's pricing plans, which is a key consideration for Front automation.

Front Pricing Plans

Front AI Add-ons

As you can see, the total cost for a full Front automation setup can be much higher than the base seat price, especially once you start adding the features you actually need.

Why an integrated approach beats the all-in-one model

While all-in-one platforms like Front are convenient, they often come with big trade-offs: you're locked into their system, they can't access all your company knowledge, and the pricing can get expensive quickly. They make you bet everything on one platform, which can really limit you as your company grows and your needs change.

A more modern and agile way to work is to use a dedicated AI layer like eesel AI that makes the tools you already have even better. This strategy gives you the best of both worlds: you get powerful automation that uses all of your company's knowledge, and you keep the freedom to use the best tools for the job without being stuck in one place.

Ready to see what truly flexible AI automation looks like? Connect your help desk to eesel AI and get started for free in minutes.