Every Call, Text and Email on One Customer Timeline

Open a lead and read the whole relationship from the top: the calls, the texts, the pictures, the emails and the voicemails, in the order they happened, whoever at the store handled them.

The communication timeline is the running record of everything your store and a customer have said to each other. It sits on the lead record in LeadLocate CRM, and it fills itself. A call to or from the customer lands on it with the recording and the transcript attached. A text lands on it, and so does a picture message with the photo in it. An email lands on it. A voicemail lands on it. Nobody types a note to say it happened, because the CRM logged it as it happened.

That changes what a lead record is. At most stores the lead holds a name, a phone number, a vehicle and a status, and the actual conversation is scattered across a phone system, a texting app, an email account and whatever a rep remembered to write down. On LeadLocate the conversation is the record. A rep picking up a customer for the first time reads the last three weeks in two minutes and starts the next message where the last one ended.

The category view, why a dealership wants one place for calls, texts and email at all, is on the unified inbox for dealership communications page. This page is the timeline itself, inside the CRM.

Saturday, a little after eleven. A customer walks in and asks for Mike, who is off today. The rep who greets her opens the lead on the desk computer. The timeline shows a web lead from Tuesday, an automated text that went out a minute later, a reply asking whether the SUV had a third row, a text back from Mike with the vehicle and its photos attached, a twelve minute phone call on Wednesday whose transcript mentions a trade with a payoff around eleven thousand, and an email Thursday confirming the appointment. The rep reads it standing up. He greets her by name, asks whether she brought the trade, and walks her to the SUV Mike texted her. She never has to start over, and she notices.

Monday morning the sales manager reviews a deal that fell apart on Sunday. He opens the lead and reads down the timeline instead of asking three people what happened. The customer had texted twice on Friday evening asking about the monthly payment, and the second text sat until Saturday afternoon. The call on Saturday is there with its transcript, and the customer says it plainly: he had already been to another store. That is a coaching conversation about response time, backed by the record, and it takes five minutes.

Later that day a customer calls, upset that he was promised free floor mats. The manager opens the lead, finds the Wednesday call on the timeline, reads the transcript and plays the passage. The promise is there, so the store keeps it, and the customer leaves happy. If it had not been there, the manager would have known exactly what was said and could settle it calmly on one call.

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Open any lead from Leads in the main menu and the Timeline section on the lead record lists the customer's communication in order. Each entry is marked with its channel and time, so a text reads as the text and a call carries its recording and transcript. The timeline follows the customer rather than the salesperson, so when a lead is reassigned the new owner inherits the whole history.

The channels have their own screens too, and the timeline agrees with all of them. Messaging opens the two way texting inbox, with a thread per customer and a delivery status on every outbound bubble. Email opens the email inbox and composer. Calls opens Call Logs, where each call has its recording and a transcript that opens in a lightbox, covered on the call recording and transcription page. Whatever screen a rep works from, the message lands on the lead as well.

The LeadLocate mobile app carries the SMS inbox and composer, the email inbox, Call Logs and the VoIP dialer, so a text sent from the lot or a call made from the phone app is logged to the same lead as one made from a desk. The bottom dock puts Text, Call and Email one tap away.

Every channel the store uses to reach a customer through LeadLocate writes to the timeline. Calls, inbound and outbound, with the recording and the transcript. Texts, both directions. Picture messages, with the photos a customer sent of a trade or a damaged panel, and the photos and price of a vehicle a rep dropped into a message with the vehicle button. Emails, both directions. Voicemails, including the Voicemail Drops a rep leaves from the library. The history reads as one conversation, because to the customer it was one conversation.

Automated messages are part of it too. The text that goes out the moment a lead arrives, the steps of a follow up process, a message a rep scheduled for Thursday morning and an appointment confirmation all land on the timeline beside the messages a person typed. A manager reading the lead sees everything the customer received from the store and what the customer did next.

That completeness is what makes the timeline useful for decisions. A lead that went quiet shows exactly what the store sent and when. A lead that booked shows which message did it. A lead that was lost shows where the conversation turned.

Without a shared timeline, a store's customer history lives in five places. Calls are in the phone system or on a rep's cell. Texts are in a separate texting app, or worse, on personal phones that leave when the rep does. Emails are in individual inboxes. Voicemails are in a phone menu nobody checks. The CRM holds a status and a note that says called, left message. Reconstructing a single customer means opening each system, searching by phone number and matching the times by hand, so in practice nobody does it.

Stores that want it all in one place usually pay for a CRM, a phone system with call tracking, a recording add on, a texting platform and an email tool, then pay again for an integration that copies activity between them. Each link is another login and another thing to reconnect when a password changes. In LeadLocate the calls, texts, emails and voicemails are sent from the CRM in the first place, so the record is complete by default. There is nothing to sync.

The timeline is part of LeadLocate CRM rather than a separate product. The pricing page lists what each plan includes, month to month, so a store can set it against what it spends today on the separate tools.

When a customer disputes what was said, the timeline answers with the record. The call is there with its recording and transcript. The text is there exactly as it was sent, with its delivery status. The email is there as it was sent. A manager answers a complaint with facts, calmly, and the salesperson who did the job right is protected by the same record.

The timeline also shows how often and by which channel the store contacted a customer, in one place, which is how a manager confirms that follow up is happening at the pace the store intends. A customer who asks the store to stop belongs on the Do Not Call Blacklist, which hides the contact from every view in the CRM, and the timeline shows the request that led to it.

Because the history lives on the lead rather than on a rep's personal phone, it stays with the store. A salesperson who moves on leaves the full record behind for the next rep and for the manager, and the customer relationship carries on without a gap.

There is nothing to switch on. Every call, text, picture message, email and voicemail sent or received through LeadLocate CRM is logged to the customer's lead automatically, from the first day the account is live. The work is simply using the CRM's own channels: text from Messaging or the lead, email from the Email menu or the lead, and call from Make a Call in the top bar or the softphone. Messages sent from a personal phone never reach the store's record, which is why stores put their texting and calling on their LeadLocate tracking numbers.

Two habits make the timeline even more valuable. Record calls, so the call entries carry audio and a transcript. And set up Call Alerts, so the calls that contain words your store cares about are flagged for a manager instead of waiting to be found on the timeline. Scheduling a message for later is covered in how to schedule a text or email for later, and the scheduled message joins the timeline when it goes out.

The timeline records the conversation. The tools that shape it sit around it. Car sales follow up templates for call, text and email give reps the words for each step, and the Follow Up Processes page shows how those steps run by lead type. The missed call text back page covers what a store does in the minute after a call goes unanswered, and every text that follows lands on the same timeline.

Text Automation and email drip automation keep messages going out while reps are with other customers. Voicemail Drop leaves a recorded message in seconds. Lead notifications tell the rep the moment a customer replies, so the next entry on the timeline is the store's answer, fast.

What is a customer communication timeline?

It is the full record of every contact between your store and one customer, in order, on the lead. In LeadLocate CRM that means calls with their recordings and transcripts, texts, picture messages, emails and voicemails, logged automatically as they happen.

Where do I see a customer's communication history?

Open the lead from Leads in the main menu. The Timeline section on the lead record lists every call, text, picture, email and voicemail in order. The same messages also appear in Messaging, Email and Call Logs.

Do automated texts and emails show on the timeline?

Yes. Messages sent by Automated Templates, Follow Up Processes and scheduled sends land on the timeline beside the messages reps type, so a manager sees everything the customer received from the store.

What happens to the history when a lead is reassigned?

It goes with the lead. The timeline belongs to the customer record, so the new salesperson inherits every call, text and email and picks up the conversation where it left off.

Are texts sent from the mobile app on the timeline?

Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app sends through the same CRM, so a text, email or call from the phone app is logged to the same lead as one sent from the desktop.

Does the communication timeline cost extra?

The timeline is part of LeadLocate CRM, along with the texting, email, calling and recording that fill it. The pricing page lists what each plan includes, and every plan runs month to month.

Calls, texts, pictures, emails and voicemails on one timeline come with LeadLocate CRM on a month to month plan. Watch the recorded demo and open a lead the way your reps will.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.