Workflow design · scope to your operationFrom trigger to finished work
- Order history
- category-specific reorder window
- account/seasonality checks
- stock/support/debt context
- explainable risk flag
- assigned account action
- outcome recorded
The rules that matter
Exclude seasonal and one-off buying; honour contact permissions; no automatic discount; distinguish risk signal from known cause.
When the normal path breaks
Bulk purchase; seasonal pause; account transfer; supplier outage; unresolved complaint; credit hold.
Uncertain inputs go to an assigned owner with the source, reason and next decision. Failed writes are reconciled before retrying, so a recovered connection does not create a duplicate order, payment or stock movement.
How we would measure it
Eligible-account repeat rate; time to follow up; incremental contribution margin in a holdout test; false-positive tasks.
Sample representative work before the build, including difficult cases. Compare the same task mix after launch; include review, exception handling and system upkeep in the time used.
Start with one accountable slice
Map the first input, the final accepted result and who can approve it. Agree source systems, read/write access, rules, exception ownership and acceptance checks. Run representative normal, failure and recovery cases before expanding across teams.
What makes this suitable for larger teams?
Role-based access, separation of preparation and approval, versioned rules, an action history, duplicate protection, reconciliation, alerts and a named recovery owner. Private deployment or customer-controlled infrastructure can be scoped where needed. These are design requirements to validate, not an unsupported promise of perfect source data or regulatory compliance.
Before you buildQuestions about this workflow
Specific answers to help you judge the fit, the information needed and the decisions your team keeps.
How do you tell a missed reorder from a normal buying gap?
Use the account’s category-level order pattern, known seasonality and recent bulk purchases to define a reasonable review window. A one-off buyer should not be treated like a regular replenishment account. The flag identifies an unusual gap for investigation, not a confirmed intention to leave.
What customer records are needed for a useful signal?
Start with order dates, stable account identifiers, product categories and enough history to see relevant buying patterns. Stock issues, support cases and credit status can improve the context if available. Missing or newly created account history should be marked as insufficient, rather than scored with invented certainty.
Does this automatically send a discount to every flagged account?
The proposed action should depend on the reason for review. A stockout may need an availability update, while an unresolved complaint needs service recovery. Contact permissions and account ownership apply. A discount is a commercial decision with a margin impact, not the default response to a delayed order.
Can the follow-up stay in our account manager’s current CRM?
We check whether the CRM supports creating or updating owned tasks with source links, due dates and outcome fields. If access is limited, an agreed export or review queue may be preferable. The important handoff is a useful task with context, not another unexplained risk score.
How would we know follow-up caused more repeat orders?
Track eligible accounts, completed actions and false-positive flags, then compare outcomes with an appropriate untreated or matched group. Separate ordinary repeat buying from any observed uplift. Contribution margin matters more than gross order value, and time saved preparing account reviews should be measured as a separate benefit.