HubSpot Ideas

evfishr

Workflow Round Robin - rotate leads evenly & in set order

Hi there,

 

We want the round robin to distribute leads to reps in a set rotation order that is even and predictable (not randomized).

 

Currently, we move reps in and out of the round robin based on vacation time and also at time to focus on other types of sales opportunities. With the current assignment logic, a rep that goes on vacation will then get MORE leads when they get added back into rotation. We want the rotation to be even from the point they are added back in. We also want it to be in a set / predictable order and not randomized.

 

 

 

48件のコメント
MeganLegge
HubSpot製品開発チーム

Hi everyone,

 

My name is Megan and I'm a product manager for the workflows tool. Thank you for your feedback and votes on this idea!

To start, I'd like to clarify a couple of things about how the "rotate owner" action logic currently works, as there is some confusion throughout the thread.  Also, when contact workflows were upgraded to the new workflows system at the end of 2019, we made a slight modification so that the assignment order would be more predictable/ordered. I'll illustrate with an example:

 

A "Rotate contact to owner" action is configured with 3 owners. 

If 3 contacts are enrolled in the workflow, each owner will be assigned one contact (if 6 contacts are enrolled, each will be assigned 2, etc..):

  • contact 1 > owner A
  • contact 2 > owner B
  • contact 3 > owner C

This pattern will continue, with each subsequence contact being assigned in this order and in an even distribution.

Assignment order: owner A, owner B, owner C, owner A, owner B, owner C, owner A, owner B, owner C... etc.

 

If you add or remove owners from the action after your workflow has been turned on, the assignment counts for that action will completely reset and the assignments will re-start. Newly enrolled objects will be rotated to all of the currently selected owners evenly, regardless of the previous rotation assignments.

 

Continued example: A new, 4th owner is added to the "Rotate contact to owner" action.  

  • contact 4 > owner D
  • contact 5 > owner A
  • contact 6 > owner B
  • contact 7 > owner C

This pattern will continue, with each subsequence contact being assigned in this order and in an even distribution pattern.

Assignment order: owner D, owner A, owner B, owner C, owner D, owner A, owner B, owner C, owner D, owner A, owner B, owner C... etc

 

This is what the original poster is requesting (ordered and even assignment), but I see themes for other feature requests in the comments: 

 

  • Handle owners being OOO - This is something that workflows won't specifically introduce options for at this time. There are other places in HubSpot where OOO handling would be helpful, so this would be better suited to be addressed at the account level than individually in workflows. For now, when an owner is OOO they should be removed/added to the rotation, and as outlined above, the rotation will adjust to ensure even distribution from there on out.
  • Distribute leads unevenly (ie. assign owner A 70% of leads and owner B 30% of leads) - This is a feature we're currently thinking more about! If you have feedback about this specific concept, please let me know how you'd like a feature like this to work/what options you'd like to see. 

Please let me know if questions remain, or if you have additional feedback about an uneven distribution option.

 

Best,

Megan

spogue
トップ投稿者

@MeganLegge Advancements in all of the examples already given are critical to advanced tools such as Hubspot. Not having this after all these years is shocking. Calendly weights leads in their product. Fairly simple too. You just mark any one person to get priority over another. Let the backend math handle it. 

 

Since this feature is not a priority to Hubspot, has anyone else figured out a workaround to weighing certain reps over others?  Use Zapier somehow? Third party? 

jaysonavani
参加者

@spogue - I was also needing this feature, but since there was no direct way to do this - I tried few workflows. You can try and see if that works in your case.

 

I have created a workflow, where I have put the condition for lead assignment country wise & budget wise. For this, I have figured-out which country leads are less potential for me & what budget of leads should I consider as potential. 

 

Once this is set, I added multiple if-else loops for different countries and budget selected by cleint, and based on this condition I have set the owner assignments for the lead. 

 

So basically when there is new sale rep who is just learing the processes, I put them into the loop (condition) of less potential leads and the one who are experts, I add them to the potential leads cycle.

 

Hope that makes sense.  But I agree, there should be a simplest & easy way to do this and hubspot should really figure this thing out. 

MeganLegge
HubSpot製品開発チーム

Hi @spogue - Thanks for following up. 

 

An update for those interested, the specific feature of distributing ownership unevenly in the Rotate Object action (ie. assign owner A 70% of leads and owner B 30% of leads) is currently in planning.

 

We hope to have a beta for this feature later this year. Stay tuned for updates!

 

 

mluke
投稿者

I would love to be able to distribute leads un-evenly, as this would help us ramp a new salesperson, being able to give a new person 30% of the leads. It would also be helpful on the other end as we phase someone out of day-to-day lead management and into other types of deals/management. 

mailclick
参加者 | Diamond Partner

That's really a great idea!

mperry
HubSpot Employee

This is something that I can see a huge benefit from, allowing for weighted users or pausing users within a rotation.

CPSCB
投稿者

Users, here are a couple of relevant links to Ideas submitted for User Out of Office handling you might want to go vote up:

 

@MeganLegge Thanks for your update!

It would be helpful for the HubSpot Product Teams to take more active ownership of passing over requirements that might be stacked up into one or "mis-categorized" by users in the Ideas Forum. Or at least provide links to Ideas already submitted that the users in this thread can go upvote.

Example:

  • Handle owners being OOO - This is something that workflows won't specifically introduce options for at this time. There are other places in HubSpot where OOO handling would be helpful, so this would be better suited to be addressed at the account level than individually in workflows
Simon_MyLeads
参加者 | Solutions Partner

@MeganLegge thanks for your feedback on this developing idea.

 

Do you have any update on the beta for distributing leads unevenly? As it's now mid-October and the last update regarding this was in June '20.

 

Do you think there might be a possibility that leads could be allocated to owners based on timestamps too? (such as Owner A works 9 - 3, Owner B works 12 - 6. Therefore, Owner A doesn't receive leads after 3, Owner B doesn't receive leads before 12?)

victoriadubinsk
メンバー

Definitely agree! This needs to be a feature we have control over and not a "professional" option.

mollyc123
メンバー

Hi @MeganLegge - any update on the specific feature of distributing ownership unevenly in the Rotate Object action, the ability to have "weighted users" in the Round Robin, or any updates to the Round Robin feature at all? It looks like you said this was in the planning phase and would hopefully go live at the end of 2020.

 

The round-robin feature is arguably one of the most important features to a sales team, and yet it has caused the majority of roadblocks for my team. I have come back to this thread and several others many times in hopes that I would be able to find an update or solution to the issues we have been facing with rotating leads, but have had no luck. So I would greatly appreciate any news on this. Thank you. 

WorkflowNinja
参加者

Some great Ideas and Feedback here.

 

So am I understanding the current behavior correctly: The Auto Assign Round Robin workflow will distribute leads evenly to Owners A, B, C in sequential order .... and is NOT distributing based on how many leads that rep has received? (For example... Owner C has fewer leads than anyone else... but that doesn't mean he'll be assigned more leads in the Round Robin logic... right?)

DGoldman3
メンバー

@hubspot, even in 2021 this is still an issue. I discovered this evening that one of our sales reps received four leads in a row. So naturally, I have a few questions:

 

1. Why did this happen?

2. If the contact is a repeat customer that has previously been assigned to a contact owner, will that owner always be assigned any leads coming from that contact?

3. Has there been any progress on improving the Rotate Contact Owner feature, including a way to rotate evenly between four or other number of sales reps instead of randomizing it, which clearly isn't dividing leads evenly?

Most of our customers using the pop-up form on our website that would dump them into the workflow in question are new. So unless by some weird coincidence we got four repeats in a row this evening, I'm pretty sure they're all new to our database.

 

Would rotating the leads deliver the results I'm looking for, or is it truly randomized?

MRivera
メンバー

I would love for this feature to be set up!

mollyc123
メンバー

@WorkflowNinja  - Correct. This causes issues for several reasons as many have mentioned throughout this thread.

 

Here is one example (of many) in my specific case: 

 

If a lead is distributed through the Round Robin system to a sales rep and has to be re-assigned to another rep (for whatever reason.. maybe that rep worked with this particular lead previously, etc.), then that rep who transferred the lead to someone else has just lost their turn in the Round Robin and will have to wait for the system to cycle through all other 9 sales reps before it is their turn to be assigned a new lead again. So now they are one lead down and the other rep is one more lead up. This same thing happens if a rep deletes a lead for any reason (maybe they are unqualified). They will have to wait for the RR to cycle through all the way again before it's their turn to receive a new lead. 

 

To recap, the uneven and unweighted distribution of leads is causing a problem for my sales reps to all have an equal chance at hitting quota each month. If a rep gets "unlucky" one month and gets numerous 'unqualified' leads or 'duplicate' leads that they have to delete, or maybe they get assigned several leads that someone else has worked with previously and have to transfer that lead away, then good luck getting to quota because with the current RR system, that means they will have many fewer leads. 

 

There needs to be a weighted system - a way to evenly distribute leads based on the volume of leads received thus far per rep. 

Wholesale-Solar
トップ投稿者

@DGoldman3 
I would contact support about this and dig into the mechanics.

Wholesale-Solar
トップ投稿者

@mollyc123 

 

Those are some good edge cases to consider. Cases that I'm pretty sure are not handled by round robin. 

Perhaps some workflow features that would us to "adjust" round robin variables based on events?

PeterW121
メンバー

@MeganLegge 

100% necessary feature. 

We have the automation where the lead is rotated between the owner (team) depending on the stage in the pipeline.

If a member of the team goes for a two week holiday the tasks and follow-up would be missed. 

Each user should be able to set his status as "out of office" or "on holiday" and be excluded for the holiday period from workflows.

Please see: 
- https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/HubSpot-User-is-Out-of-Office/idc-p/409293#M74709
https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Set-a-User-as-Out-of-Office/idc-p/409294#M74710

wmeyer
参加者

We have created a task queue for a specific group of targeted customers. We want the tasks to be assigned "round robin" style, but there is currently no way to do this automatically. We dont want to rotate contact owners, we just want to rotate task owners, as well as be able to create a workflow trigger based on a task queue. 

cheatoeSB
参加者

@MeganLegge Any update on the status of this? Still in planning?