One front desk for the whole business.
Track the deal, keep the account moving, answer the support request. OtterFront is the CRM and the support desk in one system, so the person writing in already has a record.
Built in Minnesota. Support for three of our own products runs on it.
Most small businesses keep customers in one tool and support in another. The CRM knows who the customer is. The inbox knows what they asked. Neither knows both, so every reply starts with a search.
Three jobs, one place.
The same customer record moves through all of it. No exports, no copy and paste, no second login.
The CRM you run deals through
Accounts, contacts, tasks, a lead funnel and pipelines. Pipelines are configurable data, not hardcoded stages, so a sponsorship deal and a software trial can run completely different boards in the same account.
Every account in one place
The people at the account, their deals, their tasks and their support tickets sit on the account's own page. Whoever picks it up next starts from the history.
Support that already knows the customer
Requests from your app and replies by email land on one ticket, linked to the customer's record. You answer from the ticket, and the reply goes out from your own support address.
From the question to the answer, in one thread.
Four steps. Every one of them writes to the same ticket and the same customer record.
A customer asks
From the Get help form in your app, or by emailing your support address. Either way it opens a ticket.
It lands on their record
The ticket links to the contact who sent it. Needs reply shows every ticket waiting on you, and nothing else.
You answer from the ticket
Reply, or leave an internal note for the team. Replies go out from your brand's own mailbox, under your brand's name.
They follow it
The customer replies by email or from your help site, and it threads back onto the same ticket.
The parts that usually cost extra.
Pipelines as data
Add a pipeline, name its stages, reorder them. Nothing about your sales motion is compiled into the product.
Embeddable capture forms
Build a form, drop it on any site, leads arrive scoped to the right pipeline. Rate limited and honeypotted out of the box.
One desk, several brands
Each product or brand gets its own name, support address and help site. Customers only ever see the brand they wrote to.
Your own mailbox
Connect the mailbox you already have over SMTP and IMAP. Replies send from your address, and answers to them come back to the ticket.
Get help in your app
Your product files a request through an API key, with the page the customer was on, and they get a link to follow it.
A help site for your customers
Customers sign in with an emailed link, see their own requests and reply. No password to create.
Notes the customer never sees
Leave an internal note on a ticket for whoever answers next. It stays on the ticket and never goes out.
Bookings when you need them
A booking page on your own domain with real availability, service pricing and sales tax by ZIP. A module, there when the business takes appointments.
Our own products. That is the list.
Phan Ventures answers support for OtterFront, Cashlucent and LaceUp from one OtterFront desk. Each product has its own support address, its own help site and its own name on every reply.
We are not going to show you a wall of logos we do not have, and we are not going to round the story up either. The bookings module's payment and dispatch machinery is built and tested and has not taken a real card yet. You can read exactly where the line is on the right.
If you run a small business or a small product and answer your own support inbox, you are exactly who it is being built for. Get on the list and tell us what breaks in your setup today.
- Support for OtterFront, Cashlucent and LaceUp, each under its own brand, from one desk.
- Each brand's own mailbox sending replies and reading answers back onto the ticket.
- Get help inside each product filing straight into the desk, with a link the customer can follow.
- Card on file at booking held and then charged once the visit is finished.
- Provider job links with the checklist, completion photos and no app to install.
- Recurring visits, reschedules and late fees handled by policy instead of by argument.
There is nothing to buy yet.
OtterFront is not open for signup. No plan, no price, no card, because none of those exist. What does exist is a working system that our own products' support runs on.
Leave your details and you will hear from us once a stranger can sign up without us in the loop. That is the bar.
No newsletter. No drip sequence. One email when it opens.
Questions you were going to ask.
What does it cost?
Nothing yet, because you cannot buy it yet. Pricing gets set before signup opens, and the list sees it before anyone else does.
Who is it for?
Small businesses and small product teams that sell to the same customers more than once and answer them by email. If you still answer your own support inbox, you are the target.
Is my data separate from everyone else's?
Yes. Every record carries an organization id and every query is scoped to your organization at the database layer. That was the rule from the first commit, not something bolted on later.
Do I have to change email providers?
No. The desk connects to the mailbox you already have over standard SMTP and IMAP, so mail keeps coming from your own address.
When does it open?
No date, and we are not going to invent one. It opens when someone who has never met us can sign up, get set up and answer their first ticket without a single message to us.
Who is building this?
Phan Ventures LLC, a small Minnesota company that also runs a dodgeball league, a league platform and a few software products. Three of them answer support through OtterFront.