Front expands its team working platform to include a collaborative SMS feature powered by Twilio

Front, a platform that helps teams collaborate by providing shared inboxes, has announced that users can also now access a team SMS feature.

Although not every business will need the SMS feature, it could prove to be useful for anyone that operates (or is a part of) a fleet of delivery drivers, Front suggests, or pretty much anyone with a phone support number.

“You employ drivers, and your team sometimes communicates with these drivers over SMS.  You’ve got a dedicated phone number, which is great, but how are you going to collaborate?  Who is going to respond?  How are they going to see the history of conversation?  Short of building an expensive custom tool, there wasn’t a good way,” Front said in a statement.

For now, the service is provided via Twilio integration, so all you need to get going is to create a shared inbox in your Front dashboard, link a phone number to Twilio and give the number a name (like ‘Phone Support’). Then anyone who has access to the SMS shared inbox can read and respond to messages.

In the longer term, the company intends to build its own system for the shared SMS feature, Front’s co-founder and CEO Mathilde Collin told TNW.

Since launching as a collaborative email inbox earlier this year, Front has also introduced tools to help teams collaborate across Twitter accounts too.

Featured Image Credit – Shutterstock