In this series, we present a business problem and offer a CRM software solution.

Automated Emails

Problem: I spend too much time in my software writing the same welcome email to my leads or customers

CRM Solution: Create an email template with merge fields that automatically sends a personalized email to your contact or lead based on criteria and conditions you set.

Example: Whenever you or your coworkers creates a contact whose language preference = Spanish, send the “Bienvenido” email the next day.

Auto Tasks

Problem: As my potential sale moves through its stages, there are different tasks for different people in the company. There’s a bottle neck because often times the person changing the status doesn’t immediately notify the person who needs to do the follow up work.

CRM Solution: Create milestone-specific Auto Tasks that will automatically create and assign ownership of milestone-specific tasks, triggered by the changing values of your opportunity records.

Example: Whenever the value of an opportunity changes to “proposal,” system creates a task to “draw up contracts” and assigns this task to the employee in charge of underwriting.

Webforms

Problem: I’d like to be able to collect lead information right from my company’s webpage

CRM Solution: Create a lead capture webform

Example: In the CRM, you create an HTML webform based on the lead fields that are important your company. The CRM will generate HTML for you. On your company website, you or your web designer includes this code on the pages you want to capture leads. Once live, site visitors input a few fields and click to submit. Instantly, leads are created in your CRM for you and your team.

Assignment Rules

Problem: I would like to establish rules in the CRM so that new support tickets are assigned to employees based on criteria I set.

CRM Solution: Create support ticket assignment rules

Example: You create a set of assignment rules based on custom issue types you’ve set up in the CRM. If the issue type contains “TV” or “television,” then assign the ticket to Fred. If the issue type field contains “computer” or “laptop,” then assign the ticket to Wendy. If none of these, then assign to any user in the “support team” group in a round robin manner.

Problem: I’m importing 10,000 contacts on a CSV. I want to distribute those to my sales team based on state.

CRM Solution: Create contact assignment rules

Example: You create a set of assignment rules so that states: CA, TX, UT, NV are assigned to salesperson Craig. States: NY, VT, DE, NH go to saleperson Lisa. Anything else goes to Gina. Next import the CSV via the contact import page, select the CSV, select this assignment rule and import.

These are just a few of the ways that automations can solve your repetitive task issues and tremendously speed up your workflow. There’s lots of busy work that the CRM is more than happy to do for you so that you can do the things you to do to win and retain business.

For instructions on how to set up a good automation, see this post on creating an automation.

 

Author Bio:

by Paul Rijnders

Paul Rijnders is the Product Strategy Manager for Benchmark Email, where his focus includes product development, research, technical writing, feature development, testing and launching of SaaS products and iOS apps that interact with our software via API. He is the human junction between the executive and marketing teams that request the product, the IT team that builds the back end, the design team that creates the front end, the content team that gives the product a voice and the eager sales and support teams who will eventually take delivery of the product. Paul is a product of the CSUF advertising program, He now rounds out his schedule teaching college level courses to multi-media undergrads on two California campuses.