Beyond its major features -- CRM software, project management, billing, time tracking, and help desk -- WORKetc has a large number of micro-features that help users create more efficient and effective workflows and processes. Take a closer look at four of these micro-features and how you can use them to supercharge your small business.
Today we’re looking at four little-known tips and tricks, ranging from speeding up the creation of targeted email lists to making sure that you get the feedback that you need from your team members. Read on for some helpful CRM software knowledge bombs!
Use tags to create mailing lists quickly
Tags are extremely useful when you want to segment and categorize your contacts into groups so you can organize them more effectively and efficiently. They also let you search through your contact list and create smartlists quickly.
That’s not all tags can be used for, though. You can also use them to automatically add contacts to an email list. This lets you create an email list with just a few clicks instead of having to go through your entire contact list and adding people manually.
When you create an email list, selecting a tag in the “Auto add from tags” field will add all contacts with that specific tag to the list. In the image below, for example, all contacts with the “Client” tag will be added to the email list.
Using custom tags, you can create mailing lists quickly with WORKetc.
This feature can be very handy when you’re sending out targeted email campaigns. A marketing company, for example, can tag all SEO clients with an “SEO” tag and all PPC clients with a “PPC” tag. If they want to send out an email to their SEO clients only, they can use the “SEO” tag to build a mailing list in three or four clicks.
The additional options you can see in the screenshot above give you finer control over when people are added to the list. You can set it so that only contacts that have all of the tags you selected are added or if they’re added as long as they have any of the selected tags.
A bit of a caveat, though: be very careful when selecting the “Person” tag. Make sure that if you do use it, use it in addition to another, more specific tag. If “Person” is the only tag selected, you may end up sending an email to everybody in your contacts database!
Create a WORKetc login form for your website
You can create a branded login page for WORKetc by adding a short snippet of code to any page on your website. All you need is a web form that includes “login” and “pass” parameters, such as in the example below (just replace “YOURDOMAIN” with your actual WORKetc domain name):
<form method="post" action="https://YOURDOMAIN.worketc.com">
E-mail: <input type="text" name="Login" /><br/>
Password: <input type="password" name="Pass" /><br/>
<input type="submit" value=" Sign In " />
</form>
Here’s an example of how one of our clients incorporated the login form into their homepage:
Create your own custom login screen simply using a WORKetc web form and a short piece of code.
The genius here is that the form works in two ways. First, you and your team can use it to log on to WORKetc through your website. This can be particularly useful if you require your employees to have their browser homepage set to your website.
Second, you can use the very same snippet of code to provide your customers with a branded access point to your customer portal where they can view and update invoices, projects, and support tickets. Your branding stays uniform, plus your customers don’t have to remember another URL for their customer portal.
Aside from setting your actual WORKetc domain, you don’t even have to fiddle with the code for this to work. It’s all automatic based on the login details entered. If one of your employees logs in through the form, they’ll be taken straight to their WORKetc dashboard. If a client who has customer portal access uses it to log in, they’ll be taken straight to the customer portal.
View the customer portal as a customer
Your branding can also be extended further to the customer portal itself. Aside from controlling what items your customers can see and access on the portal, you can set welcome messages as well as edit the colors and design to make the portal fit better with your brand. It helps you show a more professional image to your end customers.
Of course, you’ll want to make sure that the changes you make to the portal are exactly what you want your clients to see.
WORKetc lets you preview the portal as a specific client — you can see exactly what they’ll see when they log on. To do this, just open a client’s contact page, click on the Customer Portal tab, and click the “Preview as” button. When the customer portal loads, you’ll be viewing it as that specific client.
Preview your Customer Portal as if you were a customer to see what they’ll experience.
This feature is actually a pretty significant improvement over the old customer portal, which didn’t let users see it through a client’s eyes at all. It’s especially useful when you have very specific permissions for different clients on the portal.
For example, a marketing company might give their SEO clients access to SEO-specific knowledge base articles while keeping the PPC-specific articles available only to their PPC customers.
Viewing the customer portal as a client lets you quickly check whether or not the settings for particular clients are correct; in this case, you can make sure that the SEO clients see the SEO articles and the PPC clients see the PPC articles and not the other way around.
Use “Request” on discussions to make sure the right person responds to your post
Whenever you post a discussion, you can always choose to include and request a response from anybody in your team.
In the screenshot below, for example, you can see three names in the include field. Names in blue are included in the discussion; this is very useful for keeping people in the loop even if you don’t need specific feedback from them.
Names in red, on the other hand, will get a special notification asking them to reply to your post. This is particularly useful for when you need feedback from a specific team member, especially if what you need is time-sensitive.
The “Request” function in WORKetc discussions can make sure the right person responds to your questions promptly.
To request a reply from someone, first make sure that their name is in the “Include” field. When you add someone to the Include field, their name will first appear in blue. Click on the name of the person you want a reply from and their name will turn red, meaning a response has been requested of them.
As an example, in the screenshot above, the poster is asking for feedback from both Terry and Daniel so their names are in red. They’ll be notified of Lorraine’s request. Lorraine, who is posting the message, has her name left in blue since she’s still looped into the discussion thread.