READ TIME: 6 MINUTES
Smith.ai was experiencing high growth, but inefficient lead flow was slowing the sales team down and causing them to miss opportunities. They implemented Calendly Routing and immediately saw massive improvements.
Challenges
Hundreds of leads assigned to the wrong sales reps
Smith.ai’s mission is to help their clients win new business with responsive call and chat answering services.
The company is a long-time customer of Calendly. Maddy Martin, Senior Vice President of Growth says, “We have always relied on Calendly and recommend it to our clients.”
Calendly provides an easy way for Smith.ai’s virtual receptionists to book meetings directly on their clients’ calendars. The Smith.ai team also uses the same method to schedule calls with their own potential and existing customers. “Calendly provides an easy and fair way for our agents to book leads with our sales team,” says Maddy.
During a phase of high growth, Smith.ai experienced a strain on their workflows. Leads were coming in from all directions — from Facebook ads to text messages — and they weren’t always assigned to the right salesperson.
For example, a person booking from a Facebook ad would miss a confirmation email and inadvertently book two or three sales meetings. Without a system in place to screen for double bookings, customers received communications from multiple sales reps and became confused.
Leads also weren’t registering in Salesforce with complete information, so some were automatically routed to the wrong account executives. Leads from retargeting campaigns went to new sales reps instead of the previously assigned reps. And customers meant for partnerships went to direct sales.
Overall, reps spent a lot of time searching for information, coordinating hand-offs to the right reps, and rescheduling meetings. It slowed the sales process down, which was a red flag for Bryce, Sales Enablement Manager, who says, “Speed to lead can totally change a customer’s opinion of you and whether they see you as a trusted partner for their business.”
Smith.ai needed a way to boost sales productivity, while also making the customer experience as smooth as possible. All while its lead volume was doubling.
The team looked for a tool to help pre-screen leads and automatically send them to the correct sales reps.
Just as they were about to choose a different solution, Calendly introduced its Routing feature.
“Since we already used Calendly, we felt like it would be foolish to not explore their new feature,” says Maddy.
“We looked at other Routing options, and they required weeks of setup and troubleshooting,” says Bryce. “Instead, Calendly Routing took me about 30 minutes to set up.”
It paid off, too.
“Calendly Routing proved to be not only a robust solution, but something we could virtually plug-and-play,” says Bryce.
Smith.ai began using Calendly Routing, which improved speed-to-lead, ensured leads were rotated to sales reps more fairly and evenly, and unlocked the full potential of their sales team.
“We’ve been exposed to many scheduling solutions and we continue to choose Calendly. When it came time to look at a more complex routing solution, we knew we were going to put Calendly at the top of our list.”
Maddy Martin
Senior Vice President of Growth at Smith.ai
Calendly Routing makes it possible to qualify, route, and schedule meetings instantly from a website or digital campaign. The information prospects enter on a form automatically matches them with the right account in Salesforce, so customers can book meetings with the correct sales rep from the start.
“We adopted Calendly Routing to create a workflow for our team to qualify a lead and route them in the most efficient way possible to set up a meeting with sales,” says Bryce.
All it took was setting up a few new automation rules.
“Frankly, it was the easiest deployment experience I have ever had.”
Bryce Kropf
Sales Enablement Manager at Smith.ai
Routing leads from Facebook ads and website forms to the right place
The team set up Calendly Routing so leads coming from paid Facebook lead gen ads and website forms are instantly booked with the right sales reps.
Returning customers are now automatically linked to their pre-assigned sales reps, boosting consistency, and streamlining the customer experience.
When the lead is new, they’re sent to a Round Robin event for direct or partner sales, depending on their answer to an “Industry” question. Leads can access group calendars of multiple sales reps to maximize options, and choose a meeting time that best suits them. Round Robin events also ensure leads are evenly distributed among available reps.
Smith.ai’s implementation of Calendly Routing has led to more leads booking demos with sales reps.
