Excluding Weekends from a 2-Business Day Lead SLA

[Anonymous]

What is the simplest approach to creating a 2-day SLA within Marketo?

Here is the logic to implement:

• A lead is assigned to sales
• Give sales rep 2 business days to follow up with the lead
• After 2 business days if they have not followed up yet return the lead back to a round robin queue

The issue I am having in Marketo is the only way to consider weekends seems to be a Wait flow step that waits until M-F. But in that case if the lead is assigned on late Friday it will be redistributed on Monday which is really only 1 business day.

One workaround is to schedule campaigns on Monday-Friday nights that check for leads assigned in past 5 days - but not in past 2 days - then redistribute if sales has not followed up in past 2 days.

What is the best workaround here?

Thanks

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Jack,

This is a really interesting question.

Couple of questions back for you:
1.  What triggers the "clock" to start?  I assume its when its "assigned to sales"...so is that going to be a trigger on "Change Lead Owner"?

2.  What is the trigger that lets the system know that the lead has been "followed up"?  A status change?

PROPOSED SOLUTION:
What I was thinking you could do is:
1.  Create a smart campaign that triggers when a lead gets assigned to sales (based on question 1 above).  
Smart List would be the trigger on lead owner change.  
Flow might look like this: 



I suppose there are a couple of ways you could do this:  a.  adding to a list, b. changing a field

What the above is essentially saying is that whenever that "clock" gets triggered it will put 24 hours on the clock and then add you to a 1 day list...then put 24 hours on the clock again and add you to a two day list.

Once someone gets added to a two day list, you know you have to reassign them to the queue.

The other campaigns that you need to think about adding into here are:
1.  A remove from flow campaign (and remove from lists) when the lead is followed up with

2.  A remove from list campaign after the leads get reassigned.

Let me know if that works....just kind of ran through that quickly, so might be some holes, but thought it might be on the right track.

[Anonymous]

Ah yes, TWO waits steps is the key!  That way a Friday assignment waits until Monday but then waits again until Tuesday.  Thanks!

I ended up going with 2 campaigns and 1 smart list:

1. "Contacted" smart list checks if lead was contacted in the last 5 days - to allow for weekend days
2. "Clock" campaign triggers when lead is assigned
   1. then waits 18 hours and must end M-F at 7PM - to allow full workday
   2. then waits 23 hours and must end M-F at 7PM again
   3. then sends lead to "Assign" campaign
3. "Assign" campaign then checks if lead is not in "Contacted" campaign
   1. if not, lead is assigned to round robin queue

NOTE:  I used 18 hours on the first Wait so if the clock starts between 7:00-11:59PM the next wait will start the next day at 7pm.  With a 24 hour wait if the clock starts at say 8pm, it would wait 24 hours until tomorrow at 8pm, and the next 7pm would not be until the next day.  Which means it would end up being a 47 hours wait. 

[Anonymous]

Hey Jack - Any updates on how this is working for you? I'm looking to test a similar SLA tracker with a 1 business day (24 hr) limit and then add those 'infractions' to a list so that my reps know which leads have gone past due.

The reps have a metric scorecard and 24 Hr SLA - Lead follow up will be a criteria they will be paid on, so I need to be able to pull out the actual lead names to show them the infraction.

Looks like I would be able to use your campaign almost exactly with an adjusted wait step - true?

[Anonymous]

In theory yes.  

I am still troubleshooting how to deal with the fact it is taking Marketo 7 hours from the time lead ownership is changed in SFDC to trigger a "owner is changed" activity within Marketo.  Not sure if this is just our org experiencing this slow ownership update but it needs to be factored into the timiing.  I am also not sure if this is just something that happened to the all 3 test leads or if it is a consistent delay for all our leads.

[Anonymous]

Hi Jack. I know this is an old post, but by any chance; you able to confirm if that really works? My understanding is that as long as weekwend days not complete ly excluded from the wait time, it's not really possible to control the business hours wait time properly.

Ex: Owner changes on Friday at 10 pm. 
Wait reaches 1 day on Saturday, 10 pm. 
Wait holds until Monday - Ends at 12:00am and lead gets added to the 1 day list (despite it has only be 2 business hours)
On Tuesday 12:00am it gets added to the 2 day list (despite it has only been 1 business day + 2 hours


Thanks