PauseAI•12mo ago

CRM: Automate Onboarding to not lose new volunteers

So, I have just joined PauseAI and have been waiting from someone to talk to me to get to know how can I help or do something. After a couple of hours I was worried that the community had died or was inactive, so it made me lose hype.

But, I saw the other messages and some people got a response after DAYS of posting their introductions. This is really bad for the stage we are because, as the guidelines say: ‘We are currently a small group of people’.

So, our main objective should be GET MORE PEOPLE INTO PAUSEAI. And we are losing chances.

For that, I propose an automated system with a discord bot and CRM software that assigns new volunteers or introductions to people that are leading the onboarding. So In that way, messages are not lost in a Discord thread and new potential volunteers feel heard and part of something. This could be connected also to the AirTable API.

We will need:
- Coding
- Think a good user flow
- Get people assigned to dedicated onboarding
- Make a CRM or something to know the stage our members are into.

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 1:28 PM

Thanks for writing this @Maximiliano Militzer, very important stuff!

I very much agree that we should automate our onboarding!

@Onboarding Team @Ella Hughes

Using a CRM for volunteer tracking is one of the main items on the roadmap for this year.

Related: #Track lobby efforts (crm)

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 1:43 PM

This is great @Joep Meindertsma ! I would love to lead the onboarding automation project when it comes to software. But before that, I would love to know more people in the project and also get my onboarding hahaha, let me know whatever I can do to help!

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 2:18 PM

Whoah that's amazing

Ssacred-rose This is great @Joep Meindertsma ! I would love to lead the onboarding automation...

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 2:21 PM

You available for a chat?

Hhurt-tomato You available for a chat?

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 3:21 PM

Yep! I’m available for a call also, maybe at 13:00 Chilean Time? In about 40 minutes

sacred-rose•1/2/25, 5:26 PM

We haven't automated our onboarding with a bot because the onboarding team reaches out to every new "Wants to help" user which can feel more real and that you are more valuable. I'm sorry that hasn't happened to you yet, it may be because of New Years

sacred-rose•1/2/25, 5:29 PM

But thank you for you recommendations, commitment and ideas! (I like the rest of them)

sacred-rose•1/2/25, 5:30 PM

Oh wait, maybe I misunderstood, you want the bot just to update the CRM? yeah, we for sure should have that.

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 5:51 PM

Yes! The last thing you said is what I want to work on, make a CRM to know the stages of new volunteers and assign onboarding leaders new volunteers automatically

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 5:56 PM

For example:

John joined and made an introduction, when the introduction is sent, a bot sends the introduction to the CRM and assigns it to a “onboarder” (people prepared to do onboarding)

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 5:57 PM

In that way, we are able to make new people feel appreciated and also make the useful!

sacred-rose•1/2/25, 6:05 PM

If I'm not mistaken we have a bot that does this but after an onboarder decides to onboard the person. Right, @Joep Meindertsma ?
At least it tracks the first interactions/ whether they answer and have a call or stuff like that.

Ssacred-rose If I'm not mistaken we have a bot that does this but after an onboarder decides ...

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 6:19 PM

That’s really helpful! But I feel like the onboarder should be assigned automatically, not the onboarder choose who to onboard

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 6:20 PM

Because, that will allow us to notify onboarders that they have to onboard this person instead of just choosing who to onboard. Making the process quicker and more reactive

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 6:21 PM

Allowing us to quickly know how that new volunteer can help and not lose his hype

Ssacred-rose If I'm not mistaken we have a bot that does this but after an onboarder decides ...

awake-maroon•1/2/25, 7:38 PM

Nope @ProjectBot has been retired because we couldn’t find a maintainer and there were some nasty bugs

Aawake-maroon Nope @ProjectBot has been retired because we couldn’t find a maintainer and ther...

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 7:49 PM

Well, here is the new maintainer! Hahaha

Ssacred-rose Well, here is the new maintainer! Hahaha

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 7:52 PM

Haha nice!

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 7:53 PM

Well, i think we'll need a huge revamp

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 7:53 PM

Automated emails, discord integration...

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 7:53 PM

Integrating with website

Hhurt-tomato Integrating with website

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 8:06 PM

No problem! I studied full stack development, so I can work it out!

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 8:06 PM

Yay!

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 8:06 PM

Familiar with crm tools like Hubspot?

Hhurt-tomato Familiar with crm tools like Hubspot?

sacred-roseOP•1/2/25, 8:07 PM

I use it at my startup!

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 8:10 PM

Omg

hurt-tomato•1/2/25, 8:10 PM

Yay!

colossal-harlequin•1/3/25, 1:29 AM

Ok. If you have good experience with HubSpot in practice that would indeed be a complete godsend. What you have here (holding my own hand up as software team lead) is a bunch of technical folk who know what a CRM does and why we need one, but little on the ground experience.

Reach out to Will as onboarding team lead! https://pauseai.info/teams @Will Petillo

PauseAI

Teams of PauseAI

What are the various teams at PauseAI?

dual-salmon•1/3/25, 1:30 AM

@Maximiliano Militzer Let's have a 1 on 1 chat about this, here is my calendar to schedule a time. The first step towards automating any process is to understand the manual version, which I am more than happy to walk you though, in addition to getting up to speed on earlier attempts at automation and where those have stalled out.

colossal-harlequin•1/3/25, 1:45 AM

Heh, jinx!

Backstory, although Will can correct mistakes when you talk: the site started with a little bot glueing the Discord-based onboarding process to data stashed in AirTable, but it was kind of belt and braces. Will can code, so he looked into taking it over when original author Maxime dropped to concentrate on Pause IA (.fr) but decided against.

dual-salmon•1/3/25, 1:48 AM

I think it would also be good for you to experience the manual process yourself a couple times, Maximiliano, mind if I add you to the onboarding team, at least temporarily? I'll cover everything you need to know in our conversation.

colossal-harlequin•1/3/25, 1:52 AM

We have several distinct CRM needs. Outreach team (lead @Diego Delgado) needs to track external parties we engage (influencers, experts, policy folk.)

@SP is keen on more automated assistance in such a system, and @Max Winga expressed interest in wiring it up but does have a proper job working at Conjecture!

We also want to track actual and potential movement membership and activity metrics (at both global and regional chapter levels.) @Ella Hughes is your point person here. Onboarding should be a subset of that given flow.
----

colossal-harlequin•1/3/25, 1:55 AM

Absolutely no need for these to be either the same or different CRM systems.

We've played with HubSpot. Main issues have been that the business model assumes individually licensed seats in an org each using the CRM a lot. But, a volunteer movement has a lot of folk who'll mail just a few folk (representative, etc.) and tracking that in the same system isn't typically well supported. We also found it less trivial than expected to populate by backfill forwarding and cc-ing ongoing email outreach to hook addresses.

I will note we also looked seriously at https://www.twenty.com/ as something to build on, if our combined needs for LLM-assisted-automation and wide user base require enough bespoke work.

Twenty - The #1 Open-Source CRM

Experience the forefront of open-source CRM. Packed with advanced features, customizable workflows, and community support. Transform customer relationship management seamlessly and efficiently.

Ddual-salmon @Maximiliano Militzer Let's have a 1 on 1 chat about this, here is my calendar t...

sacred-roseOP•1/3/25, 10:32 AM

Scheduled!

Ccolossal-harlequin We have several distinct CRM needs. Outreach team (lead @Diego Delgado) needs to...

sacred-roseOP•1/3/25, 10:37 AM

In my opinion, I think our main focus should be getting more people onboard, because influencers, experts, sponsors, etc. Take you more seriously if you have a big movement, and also more people means (mostly) more hands working to get everyone to know us.

As @Joep Meindertsma wrote in its new years resolution, our main goal should be getting more output, not more input.

Ccolossal-harlequin Absolutely no need for these to be either the same or different CRM systems. We...

sacred-roseOP•1/3/25, 10:42 AM

I haven’t used twenty, but I have coded CRM systems myself, I think the steps to take would be:

1. Have my complete onboarding (to get more people in Chile onboard and test the new system)
2. Meet with the people in charge of onboarding and software development (to understand how it works know and find details)
3. Assemble a team that could help me with the development (so we can get it out ASAP)
4. Make a user flow (so we can detect bottlenecks)
5. Get to coding
6. QA
7. Production

hurt-tomato•1/3/25, 2:59 PM

@Will Petillo @Ella Hughes @anthonybailey.net @Maximiliano Militzer

I invited you all for a meeting next tuesday to talk about CRM. Maximiliano is highly motivated to work on this.

colossal-harlequin•1/4/25, 1:20 AM

Sounds good. @Maximiliano Militzer let's talk in advance too, to share more general software context. Try http://antb.me/meet

spotty-amber•1/5/25, 3:55 AM

@Joep Meindertsma add me as optional to the Tuesday meeting as well please! I don’t know much about CRMs but I have some use cases and I’d like to understand how CRM plugs into any databases that Pause Ai maintains or public data like ai safety. Com landscape map
@Maximiliano Militzer great to have you onboard and love the hype!!

hurt-tomato•1/7/25, 3:37 PM

Notes from our meeting just now: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y1LUef91uFxpWHn5bM4NL83hBlH1ZB9C58Tn0l-nDMs/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.daaho2rzz32x

Sspotty-amber @Joep Meindertsma add me as optional to the Tuesday meeting as well please! I do...

hurt-tomato•1/7/25, 3:37 PM

Sorry scott, only just now see this message! My bad

Hhurt-tomato Sorry scott, only just now see this message! My bad

spotty-amber•1/7/25, 4:35 PM

No worries

spotty-amber•1/7/25, 4:43 PM

I read thru the notes and looks like yall had a very productive discussion. I’m aligned with all the points. I’m probably going to be most useful in the following capacities:
-writing requirements
-helping to define a vision: user journey vision, data model vision, tech architecture vision.
-connecting with partner orgs (Alignment Ecosystem Development) in the ai safety space to see how we can share data, volunteers and build and use solutions that scale across orgs.
What’s the agenda of the call on Thursday? If we will touch on any of those, please add me as optional.

colossal-harlequin•1/8/25, 2:40 AM

Because we were mostly discussing requirements, the implementation @Maximiliano Militzer proposed remains mostly unexamined.

I would like to call out that last time we discussed CRM requirements was more in the context of outreach, where we came to understand that the license regime for typical CRM products isn't well suited to a movement composed of a large number of volunteer members, any of whom might be writing a few contacts. This was one of the main reasons we were considering building rather than buying.

For managing members in the context of current growth plans then especially if we become less funding constrained it is much less clear that off-the-shelf solutions won't be fit for purpose. Buying and integrating standard systems can be much better than building from scratch.

(Aside: even the CRM idiom is somewhat weaker in the current context. How much are our audience of potential and active volunteers like customers of the "product" that the central Pause AI org is "selling"? Well, some - it can be a useful lens - but hiring / staff management is another appropriate perspective and the set of systems that help do that are much larger than CRM per se.)

sad-indigo•1/8/25, 4:59 PM

Can I help on something here

dual-salmon•1/9/25, 6:59 AM

@Styloway I've added you to the software team, which is managing this (feel free to let me know if you would prefer to be taken off). It's OK if you don't write code, testing and other roles count.

hurt-tomato•1/22/25, 4:27 PM

@Anonymous also has some thoughts on this:

- Would be nice to have a public list of activities per member, or what they're working on

hurt-tomato•1/22/25, 4:43 PM

Just met with @Ella Hughes and @anthonybailey.net to talk about the CRM.

NOtes here.

hurt-tomato•1/22/25, 4:44 PM

@Ella Hughes apparently Airtable has https://sendgrid.com/en-us integration. Could be what you're looking for

SendGrid

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full-green•1/22/25, 10:52 PM

I looked into sendgrid way back and thought it seemed great

CRM: Automate Onboarding to not lose new volunteers

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