Editing conversation cadence with the Schedule Editor

From the Conversation Editor, navigate to the specific conversation or contact list that you wish to edit. 

1. Hover over the exchange you want to edit and click Review/Edit to open the Messaging View.
   
2. From the Messaging View, click Timing. This displays the number of attempts in the exchange and the delays between them.
3. Select the delay you wish to edit by clicking the delay window.
4. Create the delay by entering your desired time and unit (minutes, hours, days).
5. Click Apply.
   

Once applied, it will update the timing tab in real-time to reflect the newly edited delay.

Skipping an attempt

Suppose you want to make your AI-powered assistant's cadence more passive. In that case, you can use the Schedule Editor to skip attempts in an exchange, which will reduce the number of times the AI-powered assistant attempts to send a specific message to an unresponsive lead. 

From the Conversation Editor, navigate to the specific conversation or contact list that you wish to edit. 

1. Hover over the exchange you want to edit and click Review/Edit to open the Messaging View.
   
   
2. From the Messaging View, click Timing. This displays the number of attempts in the exchange and the delays between them.
3. Click on the attempt you want to skip.
4. Click Skip. Once applied, it will update the timing tab in real-time to reflect the skipped attempt.

Restoring default timing

You can revert any timing changes made in the Schedule Editor and reset them back to their default settings by clicking Restore Default Timing. 

Identifying existing cadence customizations

Any edits that you make in the Schedule Editor will override previous customizations created by other users on your account or internally by the Conversica Success team. Previous customizations may have been made when:

• Other users on your account with permission to make edits in the Schedule Editor adjusted the cadence of an exchange.
• You or a member of your team worked with your Conversica Customer Success Manager and the Customer Support team to implement a cadence change or delay before July'21.  

You can identify whether an exchange is customized in a few ways:

• Delays between attempts: A gray exclamation point will appear next to the edited delay, indicating that custom timing has been applied.
  
• Skipped attempts: The removed attempt will be grayed out and will be labeled as Skipped.
  

Best practices

Skipping attempts and the impact on Hot Leads

Your Revenue Digital Assistant’s persistent, default cadence is proven to collect responses from leads. Did you know that 50% of Hot Leads come from attempts 3-7?

It is important to know that if you use the Schedule Editor to skip multiple attempts, especially later attempts in the exchange like attempts 3-7, it may result in fewer Hot and Engaged Leads as you will be reducing your AI-powered assistant's opportunities to engage.

As a best practice, we recommend that you consider skipping later attempts only if you notice a pattern of leads responding that they no longer want engagement or feel like they are getting too many messages.  In addition, removing multiple attempts at once is not recommended as this typically results in a significant decrease in performance directly after changes are made.

If you choose to skip a later attempt, you can review the impact on your Hot Leads by using Conversica's Reporting to ensure you aren’t experiencing a significant drop. Here are some helpful reporting resources to help you measure your performance:

• Lead Status Report
• Reporting Recipe: Review Metrics by Lead Status

Overall, when using the Schedule editor to remove any attempts or alter cadence, it is best practice to evaluate the conversation 60-90 days after the changes are applied in order to see if it resulted in a positive or negative impact on performance.

Removing attempts or altering cadence has been found to affect performance in a variety of ways. In some cases, engagement and ever-hot rates decreased after removing attempts, but the unhealthy metrics also decreased as a result. This includes the amount of Unsubscribe and Do Not Email responses. Therefore, even though you may see a decrease in your Ever Hot Leads, your changes may have still had a positive impact by decreasing unhealthy metrics. You can find the full attempt analysis here (restricted permissions).

Figure 1.  Percent of Messaged by performance metric before attempts were disabled (default), and after attempts were disabled for more than 90 days.

Figure 2.  Health Performance Percent of Attempted and Breakdown of Unhealthy metrics before attempts were disabled (default), and after attempts were disabled for more than 90 days. 

If you feel like you are experiencing too significant of a drop in Hot Leads, try restoring the skipped attempt or Contact Support.

In order to avoid scheduling irregularities that could negatively impact lead engagement, scheduling changes are applied only to leads that are assigned to the conversation after the changes have been made. Leads that are currently being messaged on the conversation, or have already been messaged on the conversation, will not receive the updated scheduling.

Limitations

Timing Limitations

Timing edits, such as delays between attempts, can be applied to specific contact lists or to entire conversations. Below is a summary of timing limitations by the communication channel.

Email exchanges

• The first attempt of every email exchange must be sent within 9 days of receiving a lead response that triggers the exchange.
• For all other attempts and exchanges, the time between attempts must be between 1 to 9 days. This time can be applied in days, hours, or minutes, as long as the time falls within the limit of 1 to 9 days.

SMS exchanges

• The first attempt of every SMS exchange (except the first exchange of the conversation) must be sent within 5 days of receiving a lead response.
• For all other attempts on any exchange, the time between attempts must be between 2 hours to 5 days. This time can be applied in days, hours, or minutes, as long as the time falls between the aforementioned time limit.

Website chat exchanges

• The first attempt of every Website Chat exchange (except the first exchange of the conversation) must be sent within 15 minutes of receiving a lead response.
• For all other attempts on any exchange, the time between attempts must be between 1-15 minutes.

FAQ

Q: Will the edits I make affect leads that are already scheduled to receive messages in the conversation?

A: No, changes made will affect any attempts that are scheduled after the change is made. It won't affect any currently-scheduled attempts.

For example: Lead A received 2 attempts of an engage exchange, and the 3rd is scheduled for tomorrow. If you edit the timing on that conversation to suppress attempt 3 going forward, Lead A will still get attempt 3; But Lead B (who just got attempt 1 today after the changes were made), would get the revised schedule of not receiving attempt 3 since only attempt 2 is currently scheduled. 

Q: Why can’t I skip the first attempt of an exchange?
A: For most exchanges, the second attempt references the RDA's previous email. To prevent confusion, we allow you to delay the first attempt but not skip it.

Q: Is there a limit on the number of attempts I can remove?
A: No. There are no restrictions to the number of attempts you can remove in this release. However, we recommend not removing more than two attempts due to its impact on engagement rates and Hot Leads. See Skipping attempts and the impact on Hot Leads.