Reclaim Your Time

Love Your Work

Everyone wants to love what they do. In fact, many people spend their days doing work they love. However, you have to admit there's most likely a task at work you don't enjoy. Maybe there's a certain report you have to run and pass along once a month. Maybe you have to make a certain number of contacts each week, and the tedious task of sending the same text over and over again makes you wait until the last second.

The good thing about automation is that it excels at the things we tend to like the least—the tasks that are tedious, repetitive, and the same.

Core Values

The automation I am about to show you represents my core values in a few ways.

Time is Precious: The data that runs this zap is deep in the system. To get to it, here are the clicks required: (Login → Find Enrollment → References → Specific Reference → Reference Questions → Confirm Interest). Not only that, but the next steps are a bit tedious too: (Copy Cell Phone → Paste into Text → Paste Template Text → Add Personal Info → Send Text → Document in Salesforce). And how many references do we get again?!

Always on Support: This automation runs every day and gives potential volunteers the information they need. If they need help, they can reply to the text or simply complete the sign-up.

Quality and Consistency: The text that potential volunteers receive is the same across the board. It links directly to the resources they need for their next steps in the process.

People First: First, this benefits the potential volunteer. They get a follow-up in a timely manner. There's nothing worse than expressing interest in volunteering and the organization either never follows up or reaches out a month later. Second, this benefits the employee. This work is tedious; very few would enjoy these tasks, and they require some brain capacity. Employees get that brain capacity back and have more time to work on something more meaningful. It also prevents them from having to break the flow of reviewing references to send a text.

This Month’s Highlight: Reference Recruitment

Process

All of our volunteers are required to get references as part of our program onboarding. One of the questions on the reference form asks if they would like more information about becoming a Big themselves. In our office, when we are reviewing references, if we notice they are interested, we send a follow-up text. The unfortunate part is that this used to break our workflow. We had to stop reviewing references, grab their cell phone number, and send them a text. So, we automated it!

The Automation

My solution is simple. Every day, this automation runs a simple query in Salesforce looking for completed references from the previous day. It then filters for the question about interest, looking for various ways of saying yes (I bet I could add AI to this to make it even cleaner!). If they are interested, they get a text and an email about our next steps. These actions are then documented in Salesforce to show they were followed up with.

The nice part about the texting service is that it comes directly from the Enrollment team. So, if the potential volunteer replies to the text, they get a real person who is ready to help.

Tools Used

Zapier

Salesforce

Dialpad (Texting Service)

Outlook (Email)

Want to learn more about automating your workflow? Contact me for a free consultation!