Use Case Corner
Email templates are great for standardizing communications to groups of Leads, Contacts, and Accounts. However, they can also be used to facilitate individual communications and expedite individual processes.
Take the real-life example of the technical support department of a software company for whom I used to work. For one of their earlier products, a large percentage of the support calls they took were resolved with the user having to follow one of two standard procedures. The first was referred to as deleting locks and nets and the second, which was a running joke in the organization, was referred to as cleaning your privates. These procedures involved deleting lingering database locking files or cleaning unnecessary files from the private directory (ha, ha). In each case, a user would call in, discuss the issues they were experiencing and, after some analysis, the support technician would open a standard resolution procedure document from a share folder, paste it into an email, and send it to the person on the other end of the phone. Although the steps to get this email out the door were not tremendously time consuming, they were taking place often enough that the time added up.
With Microsoft CRM email templates, standard procedures such as these can be written into an email template, and then pulled into individual emails. Figure 5.29 shows the template creation screen.
Figure 5.29. Creating an email template for a standard process
After you've created the email template for the standard process, it's just a matter of letting the users know it exists so they can pull it into emails as the need arises. Not only will they save time, but the CRM record will be automatically updated with the email, so the resolution of the case is clearly documented. Figure 5.30 shows newly created template in an email Activity.
Figure 5.30. An email template used in a single email.
Service is not the only place where email templates can be used in this way. Standard follow-up templates for salespeople can be created to allow your sales staff to quickly and easily find contacts they have made through the course of networking. Additionally, templates can be used in Workflow processes to standardize process related communications.