
Telegram reports: the heart rate monitor of your business!
I’ll tell you a story about how 2 years ago, we decided to set up a lot of reports in Zoho CRM and what we got. Here is how it was.
Sales in CRMiUM became systemic, and there was an obvious need to control them entirely.
Being super system guys, Rodion and I (the first employee of CRMiUM and now the COO) sat down and came up with 100-500 different sales reports. Not just came up, but customized them in CRM!
We felt so cool about ourselves. But do you know what the pain was? There were some reports intended for daily control, but we reviewed them at least once a week… Not because they are useless or not informative. We just did not have enough time for this.
We thought about how to receive these reports every day. One option was dashboards and an office screen. It was an excellent decision, but at that moment, top managers spent at least 50% of their time out of the office in meetings.
If the mountain doesn’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. At that moment, we already used Telegram as a corporate messenger and knew the capabilities of bots. The solution turned out to be as elegant as it was effective.
With the help of a bot and a CRM system, we began to automatically send mini-reports to the Telegram group of the sales department on a schedule.
For example, every morning at 9:00 AM, the bot sent a report with the following content:
Accounts with overdue payment dates:
———- Anna Petrenko (total: 2) ———-
Company: Ivanov and Partners
Account number: INV-000861
Amount: UAH 30,000.
Planned date: 20.01.2017
Company: Jupiter
Account number: INV-000869
Amount: 50 000 UAH.
Planned date: 27.01.2017
———- Yana Alekseeva (total: 1) ———-
Company: Trade Inform
Account number: INV-00083
Amount: 70 000 UAH.
Planned date: 25.01.2017
We made similar reports to monitor transactions with overdue tasks, calls, meetings, and many other operational indicators.
At first, Telegram reports were an experiment, but after a short time, they turned into the primary tool for monitoring the work of the sales department.
Their main advantage is that they are sent automatically! You just need to go to the necessary chat in Telegram and quickly view the report. Also, you can immediately ask the managers about it and get answers.
And there is also a side effect, but a positive one! Reports come to Telegram in the common chat of the sales department, and all managers always see them. If according to the report, you are well done, you feel pride, but if you fail, you cannot hide from shame.
In our case, after 2-3 weeks of using the report on overdue tasks, they practically disappeared and still arise only occasionally.
Reports have become a catalyst for order in the CRM system!
