Spring has sprung and as the days start to get even hotter (and much more humid here in St. Louis), we wanted to give you a roundup of all the new features and improvements to LACRM we've made so far. Here are all of the new features we launched earlier this year in case you missed any!
January: Pipeline permissions for Teams
We know how important it is for collaborative teams to be able to see only what they need to, and not get caught up in things that they don't need to focus on. That's why we've expanded our "Teams" feature to include Pipeline access. You can now use Teams to easily determine which sets of users should see certain pipelines (and groups!), and hide irrelevant pipelines to them.
Now, your salepeople can focus only on their Lead pipeline, without needing to also scroll through the Customer Service Request, or Onboarding pipelines.
Who should use this? Anyone using one LACRM account together with multiple other departments.
The best practice here would be to create a Team for each department (e.g. a Sales team, a Customer Service team, an IT team etc.) in LACRM, and then set up permissions for pipelines and groups using these pre-determined Teams.
Here's a tutorial on how Teams work.
February: Starred contacts
When you're working with people and companies, it's often the case that there are a certain number of contacts that need extra attention. Whether they're your best repeat customers, or your most difficult-to-close leads, everyone working with people has their own "top 10 list".
Now, instead of having to keep them jotted down on a Post-It stuck to your monitor, or try to keep them all in your head, you just have to simply "star" them in Less Annoying CRM. All your starred contacts are easily accessible on your "Contacts" menu.
No need to think of a filter to pull up those contacts, or create tens of groups called "**MUST FOLLOW UP**". Just "star" a contact, and you'll be able to set them apart from the rest.
Who should use this? Anyone who needs to frequently check in with a specific set of contacts.
A tip here would be to make sure you don't let this list get too long! If all your contacts are starred, is anyone really starred? Cycle your contacts in and out of this starred list based on how important they are or how actively you need to follow up with them.
Here's a tutorial on how Starred contacts work.
March: Add a contact from the contact-link field & select users more easily
Contact-link fields allow you to...link contacts up with one another! But what if the contact you're trying to link to doesn't exist yet?
Instead of having to go create a whole new contact and leave the page you're on, this new feature allows you to add a contact directly from that field.
Who should use this? Anyone linking contacts/companies together.
Tip: this comes in especially handy when you're on the phone with someone, and they mention that they made a referral. You likely won't have the referral's information yet (and therefore not have them in your CRM yet!), and this contact-link field will allow you to add the link and create the new referral contact at the same time.
We also launched new user picker styles to make it easier for you and your team to link contacts and users to events, filter for a specific user, and create teams. You've likely already seen this since this was a design upgrade, but this is what the updated design looks like:
April: Assign companies together with contacts (and vice versa)
Contacts and companies are separate types of records in LACRM but there are many instances where the way you work with one is exactly the same as you work with another. For example, I might be working with Jane at ABC Company, but ABC Company is my actual client. As such, if I need to reassign ABC Company to another teammate to work on, it follows that they would also need access to Jane's profile in order to do their work.
In the past, this meant you had to do 2 reassignments: you would have to reassign ABC Company, and then reassign Jane to your teammate.
Not any more! This new feature we launched in April will allow you to assign all the contacts at a company along with the company in one fell swoop. And if you're reassigning a contact, you have the option to also reassign the company together with the contact.
Who should use this? Admins or managers who are reassigning contacts and companies frequently will find this most useful!
Keep in mind: this tool is only available when you're on a specific contact or company's profile page, and you hit the 'Assign to user' option on the top left corner of your page (under 'Actions').
And that's a wrap! For now.
One extra exciting thing about summers with LACRM is that we have lots of wonderful, talented interns joining us, and they are very prone to building awesome features 😉 We've got a ton more features on deck, so keep your eye out for more updates!
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