You’ve worked hard to build out a bunch of awesome email alerts to keep your internal users and clients up to date on everything from changes in Case Status to requests for documents to move Opportunities forward. Your team is doing an amazing job updating records as they work, and emails are going out as planned. But herein lies the problem: as emails go out throughout the day, your clients are responding, meaning your team has to jump from their usual tasks to following up on emails and back over and over again, and all this task switching is lowering productivity. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to get email responses in bulk rather than as a steady stream? Well, there’s no perfect solution, but this little tip should be immensely helpful.
Instead of using email alerts that go out as soon as an update is made, consider using some sneaky time-based workflows. The first thing you’ll want is a new Date/Time field for each workflow you’re updating. Make sure you use a good naming convention so that it’s easy to find. Next, add a field update to your workflow as an immediate action on the relevant Date/Time field for the time you want those emails to go out (ex. DATETIMEVALUE(TEXT(TODAY()) + " 17:00:00") for today at 5pm GMT). Finally, replace your email alert immediate action with a time-based action based on your Date/Time field. Activate, test, and you’re good to go. Now your Case updates can go out at the end of business and after your team responds to the morning batch, they can go about their days until the lunchtime email requesting contract signatures starts rolling back in.
-Jared and the Salesforce Guys
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.