Process progress of a request

As long as a request does not have potential, it remains only a request. Only if potential exists for a business opportunity, for example, a request becomes a case.

• The processing progress within the process chain, from the inquiry to the business opportunity and quote to the order, is determined by the main status of the follow-up cases and by the status of the most recent follow-up activity. To both, compression is applied to determine the progress.
• For this, the system checks all follow-up cases (projects) linked with the request, determines the main status from the most advanced process, and the status of the last follow-up activity, and shows this status in the request as an icon with a description (e.g. Prospecting).
  
  This way, you can distinguish between requests that are in the pre-sales process and those that have actu­ally been completed positively (successfully) or negatively (abandoned).

• Several request filters (on the BLOB names of the mail state icon) are available, for example “Successful”, “Lost”.

Requests are communication activities and usually have the status “completed”. When completing fol­low-up activities, the system checks whether the origin is a request. In this case, a main status query will appear. In the background, the request is set to “Follow-up completed”.

In follow-up activities, initiated processes are not considered automatically and must be manually assigned to the request. For this, there is the special “Determine follow-up cases” button function. It opens the case selection that is preset with the cases of the follow-up activities.

The function is always needed if the system cannot determine the follow-up case, e.g.:

• The case has been created from a follow-up activity of the request.
• The case has been created from a message that was generated from the request (email).

The source list is automatically preset with the cases that match the customer of the request. You can decide on the "right" case and assign it, so that it can be used for determining the main status. To be able to also view inactive cases (lost, etc.), don’t forget to deactivate the Active button in the selection dialog.

• The ESC list contains (since it can be filtered) all fields, however, in the standard, only the important ones are made visible.
• Due to the introduction of the necessary main statuses, you may need to make complementary assignments between process statuses and main statuses in the process definition.
• For making statements about the success of certain marketing channels (e.g., landing page, lead channel 1 … n, inventory customer inquiry, …), they can be maintained in follow-ups cases in a dedicated field via a selection menu. The new request filters can be extended to 1:n filters. For this, it is required that the case is specified as the main project at the request.

1. The recipient checks in an incoming email (e.g. document request), classifies it – e.g. immediately in the E-mail Connector - as request. This automatically sets it to "in post process", and it appears in the inquiry portal.
2. Marketing works with the request portal, which is monitored by a watchlist. The new request is visible here.
3. An agent processes the request in the request portal. They determine follow-up activities and follow-up cases. By means of the Determine follow-up cases function, they can select the correct case and assign it manually. The selection is preset with the cases of follow-up activities.
4. An agent processes the received request (email) directly by opening it from the sublist by clicking on the Subject. If the request has been replied to, the agent closes it by setting the email to the Follow-up completed sta­tus.

• There is a request list in sales (prefiltered by classification = Sales & Request) and one in marketing (prefiltered by classification = Marketing & Request). With the help of classification, the staff member who checked it in can route the request to sales or marketing.
• Automatic classification of info@ requests or requests coming in via web forms.
• The request agent can also filter requests by questionnaire answers without customizing (e.g. "In which requests was interest in product X expressed?"). The filter node "Activities with questionnaire responses" that covers both appointments and telephone calls with questionnaires can be found in the field selection of the filter.

To view privacy purposes for people from within the Lead Management Portal, there is a select function called "Show Persons in Form". The function opens all assigned external persons in the master form. There, you can navigate to the well-known person's privacy tab. For technical reasons, the function cannot open the privacy tab of the person directly.