Employee mobile email, CRM notifications. Hows yours set up?

[Rick Buffkin]

Guys and girls. I was wondering how most of you guys have your CRM notifications set up that goes to the sales rep?
This issue came up at one of my stores a few weeks ago. Currently we have all the sales reps set up with their own CRM email address. When an email is sent or received it gets passed through the CRM so all the communications with the customer is logged and saved in the CRM system. All of our sales reps have a CRM email address and everyone else in the company has a cooperate email address. If an email, read receipt or lead comes into the CRM system there's a notification that is sent to the sales reps mobile phone via text message and email. We have roughly 45 - 50 reps in the system that will get these notifications on their mobile device. To send the notification via email to the rep, we are sending the notification to their personal email address that is already set up on their mobile phone so they can be alerted on their mobile device.

I found a couple pretty major flaws in this. What would happen if that email account was to get hacked into? The hacker would have access to all the customer info that was sent to the sales rep. That was one issue. So I started asking the question, what happens when a sales rep decides to leave after 3 or 4 years. All the notifications are sitting in their personal email account. With a little digging on their part, they can go through their email inbox and pull all the customer data that was sent to them.

My question to you folks is are you guys sending notifications via email to the reps.
Does each rep have his / her own cooperate email address that the dealership manages set up on his / her mobile device or are you sending the notification to a personal email address?
How difficult is it to manage / setup the cooperate email accounts on all the diff mobile devices?

After realizing this flaw, I've looked at diff cooperate email providers and the simplest and easiest to roll out that works with just about all the devices is Google Biz Apps. Can you guys recommend any others that's been user friendly and easy to set up that works pretty much across all the devices?

Another question you may want to ask yourself is, with your current CRM provider, if the rep is getting the CRM notifications sent to their personal email so they can be alerted via their mobile phone, does the rep have to login to see the customer info or is the customer info in plain text in the body of the email or is it just a link and all they have to do is click the link and the webpage opens with the customer info without logging in.

 

[skutchhenks]

I get frustrated about this too, it seems like managing email accounts in automotive is 10x more difficult for some reason. You are on the right track with Google biz email though, that's the easiest I've found. I would setup a corporate email for everyone and then have them POP3 their personal email settings into the corp gmail account, just like on their mobile. Then they can switch between the 2 accounts as needed. Gmail also has some built in benefits with drive, docs, calender, sms notifications, that you can manage across the board pretty easily. HTH

 

[csabatka1]

Never, ever run any sort of business through or to a person's personal email address. EVER. Too many liabilities and risks in this.

Essentially you want all sales reps to just get notified of a new email? or the ability to send and receive emails from their personal device?

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Currently The rep is going to get notified with a new alert on their mobile device with the same info via text or email. The notification will contain verbiage saying you have a new alert in the CRM. Click this link to see it. Once that person clicks the link, it opens a browser window to view the info. The issue is, anyone with the link can open it and view the info with out logging in. I tested this earlier with one of our interns who does not have an account in the CRM or has he ever been to the CRM website. I forwarded him the text message and he opened it and read me the customers name, phone numbers and email address along with the message that was sent.

What I'm looking for is a simple way to set up and manage the accounts our CRM is sending these notifications to that works across most mobile devices. That way the rep isn't tied to a desk and can work on the go and it's a account that the dealership manages. With 40 - 50 ppl to set up, as you can imagine, there's almost every device under the sun roaming around throughout our sales staff. At the end of the day, I want to make this as secure as I can and keep the reps mobile with the least amount of headaches.

With the current set up, even if I stopped the notifications via email, the reps could save or not delete each of the text messages sent to them and if he or she decides to leave, they still have access to every internet lead they received while working at our store. Even if I delete their CRM account and remove them from the CRM system.

I'm just curious how most of you guys go about setting up the reps for mobile and really how secure you feel about your current set up if the person decides to leave. Do you guys provide mobile devices for your staff? If you are sending email notifications to an email address for the sales rep, is that email account an account the dealership manages and is it set up on their personal mobile device?

Currently I'm sending notifications via email and text. As most of us know, text tends to reach the rep alot quicker. There have been cases though (at least for me) where text wasn't quicker and the cell provider the sales rep was using was having issues delivering text messages. Sprint being the primary one and TMobile being another. In some cases the reps would get the text message a day or two later.

 

[skutchhenks]

With the current set up, even if I stopped the notifications via email, the reps could save or not delete each of the text messages sent to them and if he or she decides to leave, they still have access to every internet lead they received while working at our store. Even if I delete their CRM account and remove them from the CRM system.

I'm just curious how most of you guys go about setting up the reps for mobile and really how secure you feel about your current set up if the person decides to leave. Do you guys provide mobile devices for your staff? If you are sending email notifications to an email address for the sales rep, is that email account an account the dealership manages and is it set up on their personal mobile device?

Gmail for business is what you're looking for. All of the things you're wanting to do, or safeguard against can be accomplished. Start a free trial and look into it, I'm sure once you spend a few minutes in the interface you'll pick it up pretty quick.

In regards to personal email and mobile, I would POP3 their personal email into their new corp gmail account. On any mobile device (apple, android, windows) just download the gmail app add their corporate gmail POP3 settings and show them how to add their personal email POP3 settings in the gmail app as well so they can check that too if needed. Makes it easy for them to switch back and forth between business and personal email on their mobile phones. If they ever leave the company just deactivate their corp gmail account and that's it.

 

[Alex Magnan]

Rick right now my two BDC reps get notified on their phones via mobile alert from our CRM app (Vinsolutions). Everyone at our store has a " personal email " setup through gmail which is on our stores network. As of right now I have nothing going to those email accounts for the purposes of what previous posters have said regarding spam, hacking, etc. Everything is done through CRM and I get every notification email sent to my gmail acct when a text, internet lead, thirdparty, or website lead comes in so I can monitor daily activity.