How MNX uses Front to project & fuel business growth

Kidneys. Cord blood. The engine of an aircraft. Some things are exceptionally difficult to transport.

That’s the kind of service MNX Global Logistics is known for. A premium logistics provider, MNX provides customized, expedited transport for the biopharmaceutical, life sciences, medical device, aviation, and entertainment industries in more than 190 countries.

MNX uses Front to manage email with clients and improve internal collaboration. Insights from Front enable them to project future demand, so they can continually provide clients with exceptional time-critical service and stay ahead of their competition.

Challenges

MNX provides 24/7 client service, 365 days a year. Their team is spread across multiple continents. Originally, they used Outlook to manage high email volume. According to Director of Aviation Services Douglas Kurtz, Outlook lacked a few necessities:

• Could not quickly triage emails and assign them to the right teammates

• Could not get insight into what’s happening in their inboxes

• No audit trail to track every message from start to finish

Solution

Now that MNX uses Front to manage their email, they’re working more collaboratively and efficiently. Front empowers their team to reply faster, gives them insights to make more informed decisions, and enables them to stay on top of demand.

Automated message routing to reply faster

To manage incoming requests, MNX has teams working shifts in Florida and the Netherlands, plus a 24/7 call center in Ohio. Each department (aviation, life sciences, etc) has a shared inbox in Front for inbound customer messages. They use rules in Front to ensure every time-critical message gets into the right hands, so they can reply quickly:

• Depending on where a request originated, every email is routed to the closest geographical team.

• When an email hasn’t been responded to in a predetermined length of time, it’s moved back to the shared inbox so another teammate can reply.

• Emails from VIP clients are automatically tagged so they stand out and receive special attention.

Conversations stay moving after each shift ends because MNX uses Front’s Out of Office feature. When one shift leaves for the day, their open messages get moved back to the shared inbox. That way, the shift that’s online can jump in and reply.  

Insights for better business decisions

Front gives MNX the insights they need to track business-critical metrics, set team benchmarks, and make informed decisions for the future.

With Front, we can predict business trends, better prepare for seasonality, and make appropriate plans for team members’ vacations.

– Douglas Kurtz, Director of Aviation Services, MNX

Setting and meeting response time SLAs

The MNX team tracks average response time, average first reaction time, and more in Front’s Analytics. Armed with this data, they can set realistic expectations for customers. “We tell our customers that we will respond within 15 minutes. Having the ability to measure that in Front was really important to us,” Douglas noted.

Projecting revenue based on email volume

Douglas is able to look at trends in email volume over time to predict revenue in future months and weeks. He looks at year-over-year growth in email volume and connected that to shipment counts and net revenue. With that information, he’s able to make the case for more resources or hiring more teammates.

Staffing to meet business needs

Prior to Front, knowing how and when to staff shifts was difficult, especially on nights and weekends. Now they have data to inform those decisions. “We have the data to say, ‘Okay, Sunday will be 1/4th of the volume of a weekday,’ so we can staff appropriately,” Douglas said.

Performance metrics to improve team engagement

Front enables Douglas and other MNX leaders to monitor performance, so they can empower their teams to do better work. Douglas provides a weekly overview, detailing their team’s busiest day of the week, highest hourly volume, and total volume each day. He also announces the team leaders in each category to reward their work and keep the team engaged.

“Everyone knows what’s normal, and what’s expected. That way, if we feel slammed on a given day, we can look at the metrics in Front and validate that yes, we got 1,800 messages that day,” Douglas said. If teammates are falling behind or swamped, Douglas can see exactly what they’re working on so he can understand how to help.

Audit trail to keep track of critical information

With Front, the MNX team can track any action on any message, from beginning to end. If something went particularly well, they can look into that workflow and replicate it. “Whenever we have a shipment where there’s question about what happened and when, we have to do a recap,” Douglas said. “Front enables us to do this easily because it builds a chronological timeline of events.”

“Before, everyone was accessing the same account. If one person accidentally deleted an email, there was no way of knowing who deleted it, or that it was ever there in the first place,” Douglas said.

Staying ahead with insights

“In our business, we have no time to spare. With Front, there’s no assumptions,” Douglas said. The MNX team is looking forward to scaling their global workforce through email insights they gain in Front.