Subject areaProcess and organisation
Also known ascustomer-facing roles
The front office is the set of roles and departments in a company that deal directly with customers: sales, support, reception, customer care.
Its opposite is the back office, which works behind the scenes (administration, logistics, processing) and that customers never see.
The site's articles call for clear roles, responsibilities and cross-functional processes, so that every employee, from front office to back office, contributes to a coherent customer experience. The logical step is this: customers judge the company by what the front office tells them, but what the front office can say depends on how well the back office keeps it informed.
An example
In a bank the adviser at the counter is the front office and the department that processes mortgage applications is the back office: if the latter does not update the former, the customer hears at the counter an answer the process has already overturned.
Related entries
broader entriesthis entry and narrowertwo levels down← up · → down
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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