When to use tags vs. empty inboxes

Prior to using Front you probably used folders to organize conversations in Outlook, or labels to organize in Gmail. Now that you're in Front, your team can use tags and empty inboxes for your organizational needs!

This article will help you organize your inbox in the best way, by providing guidance on when you should use tags and when you should use empty inboxes.

Tags allow you to categorize and organize conversations within your inbox. One of the best part about tags is that you can gather analytics on any of these categories!

When you're ready to create a new tag, follow the steps in our Understanding tags article.

Here are some ways we recommend using tags to optimize your workflows: 

Customer type

Use tags to identify the different types of clients that contact you. We recommend using tags to identify priority clients, specific industries, or geographic location. You can then run analytics on the volume of these tags. Some popular ways to categorize and report on your customers are:

• Geographic location (LA, EMEA, Midwest)

• Company name (Front)

• VIP

Tip: Use nested tags to organize your tags. (West Coast and East Coast can nest under your USA tag just like you did with folders/labels!)

Topics

Use tags to identify the types of inquiries your team receives. This allows you to gather analytics on how often you get these types of questions, helping you make informed business decisions. Here are some ideas on the topics you can tag:

• Feature Requests

• Bugs

• FAQs

Prioritization

Use tags to alert the team when a message needs to be prioritized, based on the urgency of the message. Here are some ideas:

• SLA warnings

• SLA breaches

• Urgent messages

• Star or Flag emoji

Tips: To draw extra attention to your prioritized emails, use highlighted tags. Use SLA rules to automatically apply an SLA Breach tag when your SLA is breached.

Event

Use tags to categorize upcoming events. Here are some ideas:

• Campaigns

• Promotions

• Conferences

Actionable

Tags can be used to trigger a rule. This means that a series of events can automatically be triggered when a specific tag is added. Here are some ideas:

• Auto-reply: If you are hosting an event, you can use a Yes, No, and Maybe tag. Based on which tag is applied, an auto-reply can automatically be sent to your invitees. The rule would look something like this:

  • WHEN: Conversation tagged with Yes

  • IF: Inbox is Events

  • THEN: Reply with Attending message template

• Auto-tag certain clients: You can automatically apply tags to conversations from specific customers and allow your team to prioritize these conversations. The rule would look something like this:

  • WHEN: Inbound message is received

  • IF: From field is in domain @clientdomain.com;@otherclientdomain.com

  • THEN: Add tag Client Name and assign to teammate

Tip: You can add multiple email addresses or keywords in the If conditions by separating them with semi-colons (;).

An empty inbox is an inbox that does not have a channel linked to it. This means that this inbox does not have emails, texts, chats, or social media accounts funneling into it automatically. This is purely an organizational space into which you can move conversations from other inboxes.

See here for steps to create a new shared inbox.

Here are some ways we recommend using empty inboxes to optimize your workflows: 

Escalations for specific teammates

Use this when teammates have specializations that they focus on, or when messages are being escalated to another team. Here are some ideas:

• Escalation tiers: Many support teams create escalation tiers to ensure that teammates can focus on the messages that are within their technical level. You can have empty inboxes for Tier 1 Support, Tier 2 Support, Tier 3 Support, etc.

• Process specialization: Some teams have individuals who are focused on specific parts of the client journey. You can create empty inboxes for these processes so that teammates know which conversations to focus on.

Inbox access

Create empty inboxes to make sure that teammates have access to only the inboxes that they need to view. For instance:

• Sensitive topics: Create an empty inbox with limited teammate access for conversations that only specific teammates should have access to, such as HR or finance questions.