Monday as a CRM tool (incoming/outgoing SMS added to update on lead)

[Elliot (Elliot Cryer)]

Hi Community,

I run a function space and I wanted to share how I am able to add all SMS’s between me and my leads onto monday as an update. This is a working process, however inefficient as it uses up a lot of Zaps.

The flow:

1. Trigger; SMS sent or received
2. Automation; SMS is forwared in the form of text in an email with this app:
   
3. Email received by Zapier and parsed to gather: Name, Number, message text and incoming/outgoing status
4. My inefficient but working Zap begins
5. 

• email is received and parsed
• filtered out known numbers that I text regularly that are not leads
• path is chosen for outgoing or incoming message. they are both the same except for that fact so I will just show 1 path.
  
  
• The 2 posts requests are the same as I am searching 2 boards for a matching phone number, here is an example of 1 of them.
  
  
• there is another split that only continues if a number is found on either board
  
  
• I then create an update so that it says “Elliot text:” on an outgoing message or “{pulse.customername} text:” on an incoming message followed by the parsed message text.

And that is it, the whole process takes about 12seconds to update after a SMS is sent or received.

Notable roadblocks:

-In Australia our mobile numbers are recognised as +614** *** *** OR 04** *** *** so I trained the Parse engine to only extract from the 4 onwards in the number. Then added a “0” in-front when searching monday for a matching number as all the numbers saved on monday are in the 04** *** *** format.

-You can only search 1 board at a time with the Post request so I ended up picking my 2 mostly used boards and only searching them.

This is just part of the overall process from this topic:

• Monday as a CRM tool

[pro-monday-builder (Jack)]

Hi Elliot,

This challenge you’re facing sounds very interesting!

What if you used Twilio to handle the text messages directly? Is that an option?

[Elliot (Elliot Cryer)]

Hi Jack,

Although I haven’t used Twilio yet, It is to my understanding that it lacks in a few areas and doesn’t meet my requirements.

Where it is lacking or not meeting my requirements:

• Have to use a Twilio phone number. I would like to use my own phone number. I would like customers to be able to call and text the same number to avoid any confusion.
• One way service on Monday, you can only send pre-set messages as automations and replies are not integrated.

So I have considered using Twilio but I don’t think it is quite right for me with my current use case.

Cheers,

Elliot.