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darkknight
darkknight
Expert ⭐️
July 19, 2016

Cockpit: Send an email to a group (powerlist) of users from Cockpit

  • July 19, 2016
  • 16 replies
  • 167 views
On today's Product Roadmap session Karl mentioned that the ability to send email from cockpit will be expected in the August release (yay!) but only for individual contacts.  Whomp whomp....

As part of our scalable engagement model, we send emails out to groups of contacts on an account.  Since these are signed by the CSM, our CSMs want a bit more visibility and control in what is getting sent out in their name.

We need to be able to predefine such emails that are slated to go to all or a subset of contacts on a particular account - in some cases the CSM may want to delay or cancel the sending of the email (depending on their knowledge of the account) or may want to alter the phrasing of the email before it goes out.

This will be especially critical for localization.  We can have standard templates in multiple languages but giving the CSMs the ability to tweak the language to make it more conversational and appropriate to the local area from their point of view will be important. 

This will help us to be more thoughtful in how we communicate with customers, as well as our ability to scale.

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      darkknight
      darkknightAuthor
      Expert ⭐️
      November 7, 2017
      Hey Dan! I was already pretty vocal on that thread ;)

      I don't like the idea of a mini-copilot - no way I'm giving CSMs access to creating their own powerlists - just too much can go wrong there, even if its just to their own customers.  One mistake and you lose credibility.  PL logic, template creation and outreach scheduling must remain admin functions.

      I liked Karl's idea in that thread though:  "What would you think about a button like we have with Gsnap that floats on the Cockpit page that you can use to initiate an email.  You select from some predefined set of template options and Power List (or a variation like the 'admin at this account' idea that Elizabeth proposed -- that is super cool).  Wouldn't get logged as a CTA Task, of course, but would as an Activity of Type email in our (forthcoming!) Notes, Activity and Timeline feature. "

      There just needs to be a way for CSMs to be able to quickly target a group of contacts.  But a mini-copilot would leave too much room for logic error.
      Jeff Kirkpatrick
        elizabeth_adams_c593ee
        elizabeth_adams_c593ee
        Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
        November 7, 2017
        I second Jeff on this one, too.  This has a lot of potential for our organization.
        Elizabeth Panska
        dan_ahrens
        dan_ahrens
        Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
        November 7, 2017
        Good to see you active on the community again, Jeff. :)

        "Mini Copilot" might sound a bit too scary. Essentially the idea was to allow selecting a group of customers and group of contacts for a single outreach initiated by the CSM (or end user). 

        Currently the CTA route requires a 1:1 relationship between individual outreach and customer/account record. 

        Where this gets challenging is if you want to email a number of customers (lets say 20) with the same message - you'd have to trigger 20 CTAs and email assist tasks. It would be great if that could be simplified such that you select the contacts (could be from different customer accounts) and then create the message. 

        Thoughts on that use case?
        VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
        elizabeth_adams_c593ee
        elizabeth_adams_c593ee
        Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
        November 7, 2017
        I agree that the use case has value - I would just be really thoughtful about how it's implemented. I loved Karl's idea, but was less crazy about something that functioned more like CoPilot does today. Glad to help more on this as needed as it's something we've been wanting.
        Elizabeth Panska
          darkknight
          darkknightAuthor
          Expert ⭐️
          November 7, 2017
          What Elizabeth said :)

          I agree that there is a need for a way to target a group of contacts, however I also think that if you provide the ability for CSMs to select contacts from multiple customer accounts in one fell swoop that could backfire with CSMs targeting the wrong contact or wrong account.  Wouldn't it be embarrassing if the CSM was trying to include contacts at Target in an email and he accidentally sends it to contacts at Walmart? 

          There is a certain level of safety in having the email assist task be 1-1 to a customer.  

          That said, as long as we aren't giving CSMs any sort of Powerlist-generating or Outreach-scheduling capability, I will keep an open mind. :)  

          Most CSMs will not be as skillful with Logic criteria as you most likely are, Dan 🙂
          Jeff Kirkpatrick
            elizabeth_adams_c593ee
            elizabeth_adams_c593ee
            Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
            November 7, 2017
            Jeff, I'm honored to be sympatico with you. :)

            I would also add that the ability to pull from a series of templates is important to us. While I'm not vehemently opposed to CSMs writing their own, the core concept is for them to pull something from a library, tweak it if needed and send to the relevant contacts.

            Elizabeth Panska
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