13.2 Sell & Serve Release: Major Updates to Our Timeline Feature!

By now you may have heard about Sugar's Timeline feature or maybe even used it yourself! This helpful dashlet gives the user a 360-view of sales, customer service, and marketing activities for a specific customer or prospect. In this article, we'll take a closer look at SugarCRM's Timeline feature, exploring its benefits, recent enhancements, and its various applications for sales and service teams.

Timeline Overview & Benefits

SugarCRM's Timeline feature is a game-changer for sales, marketing, and service professionals. It offers a holistic view of customer and prospect activities, allowing users to gain valuable insights into their interactions. Here are some of the key benefits:

• Enhanced Customer Understanding: Timeline provides a complete chronological record of customer interactions and activities, enabling better understanding and segmentation of your audience.
• Improved Sales Performance: Salespeople can make more informed decisions, identify potential upselling opportunities, and tailor their pitches based on past interactions.
• Streamlined Communication: With a clear overview of customer activities, your team can have more meaningful and relevant conversations, fostering stronger relationships.
• Efficient Issue Resolution: Service representatives can quickly pinpoint and address customer issues, leading to higher satisfaction rates.

More Modules, More Insights

In the 13.2 release of Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve, SugarCRM has taken the Timeline feature to the next level. Now, it's even more adaptable to your unique business needs.

How? We've expanded the availability of the Timeline to include more modules. This means you can now pull in a wider range of customer information, including custom modules. Admins have the flexibility to select up to ten modules of their choice for their users while retaining the default modules as standard.

With Timeline incorporating custom modules, the options are endless. Need to pull in important insights from your ERP? Another system you have integrated? This new option makes it easy!

Things are Getting Clearer with Brand New Search!

The introduction of a search feature in the Timeline dashlet is a significant enhancement. It simplifies the process of sifting through a plethora of customer activities. Whether you're looking for a specific customer activity, case, or email (among other interactions) the search feature empowers you to find the information you need swiftly and efficiently. No more digging through endless records and activity cards – just search the name of the activity you're looking for!

Additional Change Tracking

Another new enhancement to the Timeline feature is allowing users to track even more changes for each record. This improvement brings a host of benefits to users:

• Granular Updates: Users can now access critical details about each change, such as who initiated it, the precise timestamp, and the specific modifications made. These updates provide an understanding of the nature of changes, ensuring transparency and accountability.
• Enhanced Visibility: With the ability to track an extended history of changes, users gain a comprehensive view of a record's evolution. This expanded visibility allows them to quickly grasp the sequence of changes or updates made over time, which can be invaluable for decision-making and auditing.
• Faster Issue Resolution: When discrepancies or issues arise, having a clear timeline of changes at your disposal can significantly expedite the troubleshooting and resolution process. Service representatives can pinpoint the exact moment when an issue occurred and swiftly take corrective action, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction.

These enhancements further solidify SugarCRM's commitment to providing users with a robust toolset for managing customer relationships effectively and efficiently.

Use Cases for Sales & Marketing

Sales and marketing teams can leverage the Timeline dashlet in various ways:

• Lead Qualification: Identify hot leads by analyzing their engagement history, enabling your sales team to prioritize their efforts effectively.
• Personalized Outreach: Craft tailored messages and offers based on previous interactions to increase the chances of conversion.
• Sales Forecasting: With a comprehensive view of sales activities, forecast future sales more accurately and set achievable targets.

Use Cases for Service Reps

Service representatives can also benefit from the Timeline feature:

• Audit Trail & Change History: Instantly access a customer's interaction history to understand the context of their current issue, leading to faster problem resolution.
• Customer Insights: Gain insights into customer preferences and pain points, allowing you to offer personalized support and suggestions.
• Efficient Collaboration: Share customer timelines with colleagues to ensure a seamless handover and consistent service.

In addition, customers that use the full Sugar platform (or a combination of Market, Sell or Enterprise, and Serve) can get an even clearer picture of the customer by tracking marketing, sales, and service activities across the full customer journey, allows organizations to better support customers and their specific needs.

Timeline: Your New Secret Weapon for Customer Satisfaction

In conclusion, SugarCRM's Timeline feature is a valuable tool that empowers sales, marketing, and service professionals to excel in their roles. With the recent enhancements, including the search feature and expanded module support, it's easier than ever to harness the power of customer data for improved communication, increased sales, and enhanced customer satisfaction. Whether you're closing deals or providing stellar support, the Timeline feature is your ticket to success. Try it out and experience the transformation in your customer interactions today!