If you want your brand to be a household name, you need a solid customer service strategy besides actively marketing it. After all, you cannot drive your business without happy and loyal customers. In fact, a business’s customer support quality influences the purchasing decisions of 4 out of 5 customers, says a Salesforce survey.
When it comes to handling customer complaints/queries effectively, Hiver vs Front have been in constant battle that has garnered huge attention.
Hiver’s customer service software enables support teams to use shared inboxes, and access and monitor conversations exchanged from these accounts. In contrast, Front arms support agents with real-time collaboration and automated workflows to better serve customers.
Both sound good, but which one should you go with? To help you find the proper fit for your customer service team, we have rounded up this comprehensive comparison between Hiver and Front.
Let’s get started!
Hiver is a multichannel customer support software that helps your agents assign, monitor, and collaborate with each other on inbound customer requests (mostly via emails).
You can create a shared inbox where you can team up with your agents on various tasks, including categorizing customer issues, assigning them to the right person, and fixing them. Unlike conventional emails, where users have to cc/forward emails to keep each other updated, shared inboxes are completely accessible to all relevant users.
What sets Hiver apart from other solutions is its smooth compatibility with Gmail; it is the world’s first customer service software designed for Google Workspace. As such, your staff can deliver exceptional support using Gmail – which they are already familiar with – in real time.
Besides, companies using Hiver’s customer service platform already experience an 80% improvement in work efficiency and save 250% hours every month.
Hiver lets you assign/re-assign customer emails to the right support agent in just two clicks. Additionally, you have end-to-end visibility into every customer email in the shared inbox and which agent will take up the complaint/query. Further, the feature enables you and your agents to check the resolution status of every customer email anytime, anywhere.
Hiver Notes reside alongside shared inboxes to add more context while assigning customer emails and collaborating with other team members minus CCs and forwards. Use @Mentions in email notes to collaborate with particular support agents whenever necessary. These notes are always confidential; hence, no internal team discussion will go to agents beyond the shared mailbox.
This feature keeps your support agents from responding to the same customer email and sending different solutions. When one agent is already working on an email response, Collision Alerts prevent others from working on the same query. They get a floating notification of the agent’s activity in real-time.
Using natural language processing (NLP) algos, Harvey – Hiver’s AI bot – accurately identifies the context of customer-facing conversations and equips your support agents with smart suggestions.
Moreover, the AI bot detects and closes interactions that get reopened due to non-actionable “Thank you” replies from customers. That way, your customer service agents can focus on more crucial tasks – engaging with more (high-priority) inbound emails.
Gather customers’ feedback and measure how happy they are with your resolution by sending short, personalized customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys at the end of emails. The collected feedback will help you analyze how well your agents are solving customer queries/complaints and spot improvement areas.
While Hiver is primarily an email collaboration platform, your support agents can communicate on customers’ channel of choice. That includes live chat, voice (only through integration), and WhatsApp messaging – all from the comfort of your Gmail shared mailbox.
Hiver is a go-to customer service software for small- and mid-sized companies operating in diverse industries – manufacturing, finance, travel, and business services. Added advantage for those already having their Gmail accounts.
Front is a customer support platform that drives at-scale engagement by centralizing conversations across channels – texts, emails, live chat, and social media – into a single interface.
At the backend, its automation capabilities eliminate manual tasks, and in-depth analytics across systems helps you boost agent productivity and customer relationships. You can route inbound customer requests to the right support agent based on predefined rules.
As such, your customer service staff can provide timely, accurate, and context-driven responses to customers.
With Front, you no longer have to enter the same response again and again. Instead, you can create response templates with attachments and save them for your support agents for future use. These templated responses or macros enable you to maintain consistent, accurate messaging, hit response time SLAs, and onboard new employees faster.
Front lets you define user roles based on a customized set of advanced permissions. You can decide what your support agents can see, allow certain agents to create rules, or restrict them from creating shared tags.
Optimize your decision-making with holistic insights into support agents’ performance, customer-facing conversations, and SLA breaches. You can build custom reports to monitor graph movements over time.
Automated routing guides customers to relevant agents based on their queries or complaints. In times when people want prompt and effective support, this feature connects customers with the right agent at the right time.
This feature lets you confidently manage shift transitions across multiple workplaces or time zones. As such, only on-duty support agents will be assigned inbound conversations to avoid missed customer requests.
Mid- and large-scale enterprises, especially those offering support via email, are Front’s primary customer base. The software helps businesses across multiple verticals – financial services, manufacturing, B2B technology, and logistics – with their customer service goals.
Setting up and getting started with both Hiver and Front is pretty straightforward. That said, some users find using one platform easier than the other. Let’s check it out.
Hiver
As Hiver runs within Gmail – which most people are already accustomed to – your agents can kick-start handling customer requests without extensive training. If you are comfortable with Gmail, there is barely anything to learn.
However, some users have faced slight difficulties when using Hiver. A Hiver user on Software Advice complained that “Automated rules are not available in basic plans which feels sometimes a problem.”
Overall, Hiver fits well into complex customer service tasks like monitoring conversations, agent performance, and KPIs. That said, you need to upgrade your plan to leverage those analytics features.
Even if your support staff is unfamiliar with Gmail, which is a rare case scenario, you would need minimal training or workflow change.
Front
Managing incoming customer inquiries with Front is as simple as Hiver. Features, including snoozing and internal comments, make email forwarding redundant. The fact that Front offers multiple features and integrations with its basic plan, unlike Hiver, makes it a better choice of customer service software among businesses.
However, the very benefit becomes an overkill if you are a one-human army as determining which and how to use a particular feature becomes overwhelming. The dashboard flashes menus and buttons you might not always need.
Since Front does not integrate with Gmail (shockingly), the learning curve becomes steep. A Front user on TrustRadius reported, “The feature-rich views and options take a little time getting used to when coming from a standard email system.”
Perhaps you already use myriads of tools to manage your customer service. Luckily, both Hiver and Front provide dozens of integrations.
Hiver
Hiver plays nicely with several third-party tools such as Zapier, Okta, Aircall, and Asana. Hence, your support agents can perform multiple tasks right from their Gmail inboxes without toggling tabs or apps. For instance, Hiver’s Salesforce integration lets you auto-assign customer-facing conversations to the right agent based on Salesforce CRM data.
Unfortunately, these valuable integrations are not available in the basic plan. You need to increase your budget to unlock them in the higher-end plans.
Front
With almost 100 integrations, Front lets numerous tools, including CallHippo, WhatsApp, and Aide, blend with its customer service platform. For example, Front’s CallHippo integration facilitates VoIP customer support using CallHippo contacts from Front and vice versa.
What is more, you can unlock most of these integrations in its basic plan itself. However, Front does not go along well with Gmail. Some actions you do on your Gmail account might not reflect on Front’s platform like archiving, deleting, or tag a conversation.
Let’s compare Hiver vs Front in terms of their customer support options.
Hiver
You can access Hiver’s support via the following:
The best part, Hiver’s support staff is available 24/7 to address your inquiry across multiple communication channels.
Front
While you can access loads of resources to clear your queries, you can reach out to Front’s support team only through email. Chat support is offered only on the higher-end plans. Plus, you might have to wait for the agent’s response to your request.
Here is a breakdown of all Hiver and Front plans.
Hiver
These are the features and benefits you can expect from all Hiver plans for customer service:
All these Hiver’s plans for customer service come at a 20% discount if you choose to renew them once a year. Plus, you can activate these plans for a week at no cost after signing up.
Front
Front offers the following plans for your support operations:
Unfortunately, all the Front’s plans for customer service are only billed annually with a 7-day free trial. Also, you must have at least two users to unlock the benefits.
Considering the pricing, Hiver clearly wins over Front. However, the software plans of both providers outperform each other in certain areas.
For instance, Hiver’s Lite plan provides live chat, and email support, while Front’s Starter plan solves customer queries/complaints only through emails. On the other hand, the former offers only WhatsApp integration, while the latter offers numerous integrations (Jira, Asana, and Shopify).
Here is a quick overview of Hiver vs Front.
| Hiver | Front | |
| Features | Email management Email notes Collision alerts Multichannel support CSAT reports AI chatbot | Roles & permissions Analytics Multichannel support Response templates Shift scheduling Automated routing |
| Pricing | Paid plans starting at ₹15/user/month | Paid plans starting at US$19/user/month |
| Ease of use | Straightforward setup; cannot build custom reports with the basic plan | Simple setup; users will take some time to learn as it is non-integrable with Gmail |
| Integrations | With most popular tools, available only in the upper-tier plans | With most popular tools; available in the basic plan itself |
| Customer support | 24/7 live chat and email support | Only email support is available; live chat and video available in higher-end plans |
| Customer reviews | 4.5/5 on Capterra | 4.7/5 on Capterra |
That depends on your team size and customer service requirements. Both Hiver and Front edge out each other in various areas.
Front optimizes customer-facing conversation across multiple channels with its feature-rich plans. Hiver’s biggest benefit lies in its smooth blending in with Gmail.
Go with Hiver if:
Go with Front if:
But wait! What if you get the best of both worlds? Allow us to introduce ourselves: Helpwise – the customer service software that lets you optimally manage all customer communications from a single place.
Helpwise surrounds every conversation with team collaboration tools and contextual data to drive quick, accurate, and hyper-personalized responses.
With features like advanced analytics, premium integrations, robust security tools, and unlimited SLA rules – all at a pocket-friendly price – Helpwise outshines both Hiver and Front.
Don’t believe us? Read on.
Front’s hard-to-crack UI makes it difficult for users to manage tags and conversations. Helpwise is easy to use. Its UI takes inspiration from popular chat and email apps like WhatsApp and Gmail, streamlining your workflow.The ability to support your customers via calls and create help centers is denied in front whereas Helpwise offers full capabilties to do these things.
You will not face notification delays with Helpwise, whereas notifications are sometimes delayed by 0.5-1.5 hours in Front. You can contact Helpwise’s support staff via chatbot 24/7, which is not the case with Front.
Hiver compels you to respond on a conversation thread using your personal email. Worse, you cannot keep the interaction private. Helpwise respects privacy. You can either move conversations from the shared mailbox to your private inbox or create exclusive “From” names for your shared mailbox email ID.
When a particular support agent goes unavailable, Hiver does not re-assign customer requests to other agents. You have to do the hard work. Phew!
Helpwise at your rescue. The customer support software automatically reassigns requests to agents available at the moment to avoid keeping customers on hold for long.
Besides this brief comparison, Helpwise serves as an asset to your customer service team when it comes to:
Helpwise is pretty friendly with many go-to business tools like Google Calendar, Outlook, Zapier, and Slack.
Helpwise’s basic Standard plan costs US$12/user/month (billed annually). You do not need to have a min/max number of users. You can start off even as a solopreneur. Plus, you can request a quote for our highest-end Enterprise plan.
Clearly, you save a lot if you choose Helpwise. For instance, you can save US$2280 every year (10 seats) by moving to Helpwise’s Premium plan from Hiver’s Pro plan.
Our customer support agents go the extra mile to help you, from onboarding to any technical query. You can reach out to us via live chat and email. Moreover, we offer a dedicated support agent to offer you tailored training & onboarding and solutions.
More than 10,000 users use Helpwise to fine-tune their support operations for better customer satisfaction and retention. Here is what they say about us:
Try Helpwise for FREE today and see for yourself.
Hiver works within the Gmail ecosystem, so users do not have to toggle multiple tabs continuously. Front does not support native Gmail ecosytems, so getting used to the customer support software can take some time.
Hiver offers 24/7 customer support across email and live chat, alongside training & onboarding. Front provides support via chat, email, and video; however, users have to wait for a while to get a response. Besides, tailored onboarding is available in upper-tier plans.
Hiver’s basic plan costs nearly a sixth of that of Front when billed yearly. Moreover, you cannot pay for Front’s plans on a monthly basis and must have at least 2 users to enjoy the benefits. With Hiver, there are no such issues.
Hiver’s support agents are available round-the-clock to address customer complaints or queries, while people might not get immediate response from Front’s support staff when needed.
Hiver gels well with Gmail users, while Front is yet to provide integration with all Google Workspace tools.
So, if you are a solopreneur or a small team and want to save significantly on time, effort, and money, opt for Hiver.
Helpwise’s UI resembles that of popular apps like Gmail and WhatsApp so that users can manage their workflows with ease, without navigating a steep learning curve. On the other hand, managing tags and conversations becomes difficult with Front’s clunky interface.
Likewise, Hiver does not re-assign a customer-facing conversation from an unavailable agent to an available one. The onus is on the users. Fortunately, that is not the case with Helpwise, as it automatically re-assigns conversations to the agents currently available. Hence, customers do not have to wait for long for a response.
Furthermore, considering the price/number of features, Helpwise easily outshines Front and Hiver.
Hiver easily wins the race against Front when it comes to pricing. While Front’s basic plan starts at US$59/agent/month, that of Hiver costs significantly – about US$15/agent/month. However, Hiver’s basic plan lacks certain tools necessary to take off a customer service business.
If you want to save money without compromising on features, Helpwise offers an even more cost-effective basic plan at US$15/agent/month. That said, the basic plan itself is packed with important features required to streamline support operations, offering the most value for money.
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