Venn Technology is a consulting firm specializing in Salesforce implementation. Based in Dallas/Fort Worth, the firm delivers solutions to organizations throughout North America such as the Livestrong Foundation, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, United Nations Global Compact and more.
They’ve helped hundreds of businesses be more efficient, but one of their most innovative creations came in response to a business problem they experience themselves: sales activity tracking.
Logging Leads: A Time-Consuming but Critical Process
Venn Technology uses Salesforce as its customer relationship management (CRM) and, as with any company, putting lead information into Salesforce is a business-critical activity.
“When it comes to using a CRM, you have to work with the fact that sales professionals are quite busy so it can be difficult for them to consistently enter the relevant data into Salesforce,” says Scott Hollrah, Managing Partner at the firm.
“I frequently found myself in that situation. I’d finish a phone call and unless a lead was super hot and ready to close right away, I wouldn’t log it in Salesforce because I was busy with other tasks,” he comments.
Not logging lead information right away made it harder for the team to follow up with prospects. “If the prospect emails us the next week, we may not remember all their details, so it’s important that that information be available in our CRM,” Hollrah says. It also hinders the ability to nurture that lead, which means leads that weren’t properly recorded won’t automatically receive follow up.
Chase Friedman, Managing Director at Venn Technology explained that this challenge isn’t unique: “Good quality, consistent CRM data is crucial to any growing company because it directly impacts how the sales team interacts with prospects and clients. Poor data logging means that leads can fall through the cracks more easily, which can negatively affect revenue.”
Related: Our definition of revenue leakage
Inspiration Strikes During Workato Product Hour
“We frequently connect Salesforce with other apps and services for our clients using Workato,” Friedman comments. And both Friedman and Hollrah often tune into Workato’s Product Hour—a weekly session where Workato’s integration experts educate users about platform features.
During a session about Workbot and Slack, Friedman had a realization: Venn Technology could leverage the Workato Platform, Workbot, and Slack to solve its lead logging problem. “Instead of relying on manual data entry, I could just automate the entire process in Slack!” remarks Friedman.
Venn Tech’s Bot Assistant: Seamlessly Enriching and Logging Leads with Workbot, FullContact, and Salesforce
Using Workato, Friedman built a workflow for managing and logging lead data. The workflow uses Workbot, a chatbot Workato created to allow users to do work in other apps directly from Slack, to seamlessly log crucial information in Salesforce with minimal effort.
Every five minutes, Workbot checks every sales rep’s calendar to see whether a meeting is about to end. If a sales rep is currently in a meeting that is about to wrap up, Workbot sends the rep a Slack notification reminding them that their meeting is ending. If the calendar event was sent to an email address that doesn’t correspond to an existing Salesforce contact, the Slack notification will prompt the rep to create a contact for that person.
The notification also features a “Create” button that sales reps can click to create new Salesforce contacts without leaving the chat console. When the rep hits “Create,” Workbot will query FullContact a contact management and enrichment solution, based on the new contact’s email address. Workbot will then serve any relevant information about the new contact back to the rep in Slack. If it identifies the company the email is associated with, you can create a new organization or update the organization with the click of a button.
From there, Workbot will continue to guide the rep through seamlessly logging the contact with information FullContact found. It will serve information it finds for the contact, such as their job title or role; the rep can choose to log this data in Salesforce as-is or they can edit it. See the flow in this video:
Once the contact has been created, Workbot will send a Slack message to the rep with key details about the contact, such as the Account ID and the date created. The message also includes the option to create a Salesforce opportunity for that contact; if selected, Workbot will guide the rep through the process of doing so.
Agile Integrations, Iterative Design, and Extensibility
Because Workato allows users to easily build and change recipes, Venn Technology continues to hone different aspects of the workflow.
Currently, the entire workflow involves 15 separate integrations—which Workato calls recipes—including the commands that invoke Workbot. The firm also offers a streamlined version of the workflow to its customers. “Throughout the process of implementing it internally, we’ve learned so much that we can reduce the entire workflow to just five recipes,” says Friedman.
The workflow is also highly extensible so Venn Technology can use it to automatically log almost any customer touchpoint—from Salesforce Cases to drafts—depending on future needs. “Anytime we have a meeting, Workbot can remind us to log the details—no matter what they are,” he adds.
Venn Technology already anticipates leveraging Workato’s agility and extensibility when implementing the workflow for its clients. “What Chase created,” Hollrah comments, “is a very smart automated process to add leads right from Slack that can be applied at any business.” It can even be adapted to log other important information, he notes. “For example, we could build a version of this workflow that automatically analyzes quality assurance (QA) recordings, sends you a transcript of the call in Slack, and lets you flag it if needed,” says Friedman.
Logging 60% More Data with Less Effort
The firm is already satisfied with the results of the original workflow. Hollrah remarks that it has markedly improved the data’s quality. “Integrating with FullContact helps us enhance leads without doing any extra work,” he says.”
But most importantly, the automated workflow has made it much easier for sales reps to add crucial information to Salesforce. “This automation has drastically increased the amount of data that gets logged in Salesforce,” says Hollrah. He and Friedman estimate that previously, only 40-50% of prospects were properly logged in Salesforce. Thanks to Workato, they say, that number is now 100%.
