We run an eCommerce website and I would like to track the fulfillment of orders after a deal is won. We're on a starter bundle.
Typically the customer will
- pay a deposit,
- sometimes pay in several installments,
- we then manufacture the product,
- ship, and
- confirm the customer is satisfied
Right now, we implement this as a few stages at the end of our main Deals pipeline. This has the advantage of being simple, but this means the deal is only counted as won after the shipping stage which can be months after the deposit has been placed (which should really be our won stage).
Q1. Should we be splitting this process across two pipelines, where deals are moved to the second pipeline when the deposit is paid?
+ better evaluation and forcasting
+ clearer separation of sales and operations
- more work to move the deals from one pipeline to the next
Q2. If yes, should I be using tickets or deals for the fulfilment pipeline?
For deals:
+ we don't need to pay extra seats for sales (our salespeople take care of fulfilment as well)
+ deals can be moved easily from one pipeline to the next (but would this mess up reporting?)
For tickets:
- Better separations and less confusion between sales and fullfillment.
The phases that you're describing (deposit, payments etc.) do sound like a ticket pipeline would be a good solution here.
The main problem with a second deal pipeline would indeed be the reporting. Once a deal is moved to another pipeline, it wouldn't appear in, for example, the funnel report of the original pipeline anymore. From that perspective, I'd recommend working with tickets.
When it comes to other advantages, the main one is really a better level of transparency and overview. Aside from that, a few more reporting options open up should you ever upgrade to Service Hub Pro.
(It might seem like a solution to create another deal for each closed won deal to track fulfillment. However it's not possible to associate deals with deals, so it would be hard to find the corresponding records and the right sidebar of contact and company records would probably become messy.)
Depending on which features exactly you'd be planning to use in Service Hub, the free tools might even be sufficient here (if one ticket pipeline is enough).
Hope this helps!
Karsten Köhler HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer
Thank you Connor, it seems like creating a ticket from an automation is not available for my subscription level. Still, it looks like tickets may be the way to go. I'll start experimenting, thank you both.
I may be wrong but I believe you have access to pipeline automation and workflows. If so then you could just make the pipeline trigger the creation of a ticket and auto-assign it to the owner. They may need to flesh out the ticket a bit depending on what you can pull in but that would automate most of it.
The phases that you're describing (deposit, payments etc.) do sound like a ticket pipeline would be a good solution here.
The main problem with a second deal pipeline would indeed be the reporting. Once a deal is moved to another pipeline, it wouldn't appear in, for example, the funnel report of the original pipeline anymore. From that perspective, I'd recommend working with tickets.
When it comes to other advantages, the main one is really a better level of transparency and overview. Aside from that, a few more reporting options open up should you ever upgrade to Service Hub Pro.
(It might seem like a solution to create another deal for each closed won deal to track fulfillment. However it's not possible to associate deals with deals, so it would be hard to find the corresponding records and the right sidebar of contact and company records would probably become messy.)
Depending on which features exactly you'd be planning to use in Service Hub, the free tools might even be sufficient here (if one ticket pipeline is enough).
Hope this helps!
Karsten Köhler HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer