In our second WORK[etc] tips and tricks post, we go in-depth on automating the data entry process by using web forms, introducing your clients to your Customer Portal, and keeping your main dashboard updated with the items and work that matter most to you.
Plus, some of our clients weigh in with their own tips for more efficient searching, how to handle contact entries for people no longer associated with your company, and how to use the milestone billing feature for a more efficient billing process.
Automatically Turn a Web Form into a Lead or Support Ticket
Web forms are an easy way to make your CRM workflow even more efficient by capturing data without having to enter everything manually into WORK[etc].
They’re not just there for gathering names and email addresses, though. You can, for example, set up a web form for your website where potential clients can ask for quotes or more detailed information on your products and services. WORK[etc] can then automatically turn the information entered into a sales lead that you can start nurturing immediately.
You can also use web forms to let your clients submit detailed support tickets through your site. Web forms give you complete control over which pieces of information you require your clients to submit, meaning you get more detailed support requests compared to a simple email.
Same as with the sales lead example, the information entered into a support web form can also automatically be turned into a support ticket.
Here’s how to do it:
First, set your web form up by going to Settings > Web Forms. Once you’ve added all the necessary fields that you want your web form to have, click on the Form Settings tab.
Web form settings in WORK[etc].Scroll down a bit and you’ll find an Actions section with a checklist of what you want the web form to do with the data entered into it.
The web form Actions section.Checking “Create Sales Leads from Form” lets you add new fields such as Estimated Lead Value, a Referral field, and an Employee Picker that lets users assign the lead to a specific team member.
The same goes for checking “Create Support Case from Form”. You can add an Employee Picker field as well as let users set Ticket Status, Priority, and Category.
Introduce the Customer Portal to Your Clients Through Auto-Reply Messages
Want to get your clients to use your customer portal? Use WORK[etc]’s auto-reply messages to educate them.
WORK[etc] lets you set auto-reply messages that automatically lets people who email your support team know that their issues and concerns have been received.
You can also go a step further and give your clients access to the customer portal so they can see and update their tickets.
One quick way to tell your clients about the customer portal and how it works is to include a link to your customer portal knowledge base article in your auto-reply email itself.
It’s crazy easy: just create a knowledge base article about the customer portal and how clients can access and use it. Then, add a link to that KB article to the Support Case Auto Reply Message, which can be found at the bottom of the Support settings page.
Editing the Support Case auto-reply message.Use Saved Filters to Quickly See Important Tasks and Projects
You don’t have to slog through a list of all your projects every time you open the Projects module. By creating and saving filters, you can categorize projects by type, period, and who they’re assigned to, among others.
For example, let’s say you’re focused only on projects that deal with web development. You can easily create a filter that will show you only web development projects. You can also create filters that let you categorize all of your projects and tasks according to client.
This comes in especially handy when you have a lot of clients and projects, although even when you’re only working on a handful of tasks the filters will still help keep you laser-focused on what you have on your plate.
Better still, you can save these filters as links so you can view only the specific categories that you want to see with a single click!
Creating saved filters.The image above shows saved filters under the My Projects tab. The links stay persistent across all of the tabs besides My Projects. Click on Activity Stream, Priority, or any of the other tabs and the links will still be there.
More Tips and Tricks from Actual WORK[etc] Users
My favorite tip/trick lately is using the “inactive” tag when employees or contacts move on. My instinct when a contact changed employers was to dive into her record in WORK[etc] and update it with her new info. I had to learn to restrain myself and instead apply the “inactive” tag to her old contact info in order to preserve old activities linked to that record. I then create a new record for her with the new job/employer where new activities will attach.
This comes in handy at our University where we cycle through student employees who may spend only year or two with us before moving on. We apply the inactive tag to the departing student to maintain the contact/activities in the system, disable their access to WORK[etc] to free up a license and then add the new student employee.
William Mullane
TechHelp Idaho
A majority of our time is involved with the Support section in WORK[etc] and having to organize incoming emails into tickets/cases. A major tip that helps when organizing/moving/attaching items is that you can pull up parent items using their entity ID number instead of searching for them by name.
Instead of searching through the multitude of items being pulled through a word search, use the ID (without any hyphens) and it will pull up only the one item you need!
Christina Fowinkle
Now Digital
A lot of times we work on retainer so it’s good to create a project then outline the billing. At times, we’ll create a project that can last a couple of months. By using the milestone priced project field we can go ahead and label the item name for the invoice. Also, when we set a date on the milestone it will auto fill when creating the invoice and append unbilled charges of the client.
The other thing we use is project templates. We create mini sub projects that can be combined into one project. Sometimes we’ll have a campaign project for inbound marketing and a template that focus on general services that all campaigns use. But then there will be project templates we add into that main template that only pertain to that client such as email design or copywriting.
These templates will have adjusted time frames so we can show clients their project’s Gantt chart. This allows them to see an estimated time schedule of services and for us it’s just a click away to make.
COMMENTS
I could not agree more with Christina, we found that searching and using the ID is the most efficient way to filter down to the records you need. I hope that the web forms evolve a little more to allow for placement on an existing site rather than being tied into the Work[etc] platform.
Saving the filters as links is a great idea. We have a lot of clients, but I only really deal with one or two personally. It’s a hassle to have to manually get to the right section each time. Keep the good tips coming!
The Web Form for Support Tickets tip couldn’t have come at a better time. Our Support Co-ordinator just left the company last week and we are looking at distributing her work between other staff.. This could be one way we do it without having developers answering phones, which is always disruptive.
We use the Filter links /a lot/. Our support tickets have so many emails, that it’s useful to have a filter set up to show the Support cases, and then another to show Support + Email + Timesheets. I’m constantly flipping between the two. The Inactive tag, while we use it for clients, I never thought to use it for Employees. We’ve been just dumping our expired employee accounts into a ‘graveyard’ account reserved for our boss, ha! (Also, Thanks for featuring me!)
One thing to look out for Christina is any Tickets that were assigned to “expired employees” – be sure that there is at list one filtered view that includes their tickets in case an old one is re-opened.
We do not use tickets in our company, we actualy use web forms to generate Sales opportunities. This automates the process of sending quotations to new clients asking for new services. In the future we would like to send automated sales quotations based on their request. Any tips for this??
My favorite tip/trick lately is using the “inactive” tag when employees or contacts move on. My instinct when a contact changed employers was to dive into her record in WORK[etc] and update it with her new info. I had to learn to restrain myself and instead apply the “inactive” tag to her old contact info in order to preserve old activities linked to that record. I then create a new record for her with the new job/employer where new activities will attach.
This comes in handy at our University where we cycle through student employees who may spend only year or two with us before moving on. We apply the inactive tag to the departing student to maintain the contact/activities in the system, disable their access to WORK[etc] to free up a license and then add the new student employee.
These are good tips. I may suggest we introduce the customer portal to our clients as added value. Some currently use our customer portal, but only under request. I’ll have to see what my support team thinks of the idea. Thanks again for the tips!
I save filters as links all over the WETC system. Sales, ToDo List, Projects and Support Cases all have some filters that get changed based on what is hot right now.
Also, accessing and searching by item number is the way we communicate with each other. We use it any time we can in drop downs and search fields. Once we figured it out things in our conversations became “it is all under 46035” to make things short and sweet. We even just paste it in the url for quick access.
So far so good….what this app need is a louder voice making it existence known.
My tip of the day for clients that send in a mail with no number (so that it appears in unhandled support as a new ticket) but which you know should be in a project with a whole team assigned:
If you “move” the mail to the relevant project you can close the ticket – the mail will be in the right place (its project) and the ticket is buried, but the other employees assigned to the project are not updated of its arrival.
To get round this I open the ticket and go as if to move the mail by typing the first few letters of the project name via Move > Entry, check the project number in the list then close this popup without moving the email.
I then click instead “Forward” and forward the email back to the the dropbox. One only needs to change the address and overwrite with the correct number in the subject line.
One click on “Send & Close” and you are done.
This simultaneously assigns you to the ticket, closes the ticket, sends the mail to the right place AND all team members are updated.
It sounds complicated but in practice is actually quite simple and achieves all of the above with the fewest number of mouse clicks.