Elevate Your Customer Support with Automated Rfp Response for Customer Support

Automated rfp response for Customer Support

hello it's Demi Utley and today I just want to share with you a quick behind the scenes of our RFP response management template and how you can use that to actually manage your rfps so here on this first page we have just the instructions on how to actually use the template so I'm going to walk through all this with you but if you did actually get the template then you would have these instructions as well so you can reference back those whenever you need to so the first tab here is RFP information so this one I use to kind of keep track of everything from like an administrative perspective for the RFP so who the customer is their contact people any key team members both from the customer and our side of things uh production details like if we need to actually ship it out or if it's an electronic submission if they require a mailing label with specific information um all of that's in this tab and this is really helpful especially if you're responding to public sector rfps where they have a lot of that information then I just put it here so I know if I need to reference that I can always find it in this section the next tab here is the calendar tab so in the template you can see we have a blank calendar for three months and then you can just copy this if it's longer and then I have an example calendar here of what it would look like if you were actually working on an RFP so normally whenever I have a due date I kind of work from the deadline and then work back with all the steps that we need to take so like the kickoff meeting maybe you have a strategy session um brainstorming if we split the deliverables into different phases when those are due our status calls the team reviews all that stuff is in this template so you can kind of use it for inspiration when you're planning out your schedule for your RFP response as well kickoff call questions so this one is I like to use this because when I'm reading through an RFP sometimes there will be questions that come up that I want to make sure we address before we ever start working on any content because it could either make or break our proposal or something that I know is going to take a little bit more time to figure out so those are the things that I add in this kickoff call question so so the section here like if we look at this example let's say the RFP had an experience section and they required five years of experience and we didn't know if we had that so we would ask that during the kickoff call questions um another example would be if say they required a specific certification just confirming we have that certification things like that I also like to use some standard questions that normally I don't list in this sheet so if you are curious what those are we do have some blog posts on kickoff call questions you can go and take a look at those as well The Next Step here so this is probably the main one that you would be working in this is where we actually keep track of everything that we have to pull together and create for the proposal so for example we need a company overview section we have some notes here this is who it's assigned to it's going to be a part of phase one deliverables and then it's due June 13th we also would go through and add everything that we have to do so sometimes I'll I will list every single question we're going to respond to if people are going to be responding to like the same section of questions then maybe I would just say okay you're going to do all of the company questions versus breaking out all 10 of those and then that's when you'll get those partial responses where maybe some of the questions are answered but not all of them and I might change the notes there and then you can see in our template we have these are the options for the status column so if you have some of it you would change it to partial if you're waiting on review you would switch that as well maybe you no longer need that information um or it's complete so the goal is to have everything green at the end of The Proposal and you can just quickly see you know how far you are and how much is left by how much is still not green so that just makes it a little bit easier for you to manage and then the format tab here so this is where especially for a public sector rfps like I've done a lot of state and local and K-12 education RPS and they don't always follow the same format after actually they often don't especially for different customers so in this section here I would kind of keep track of okay well what is the order of our proposal do they require a specific order um are there any forms that we have to include I'd make sure to list those here and make sure that we don't miss those when we're actually compiling our response and then if it's a case where pricing has to be separate down here you could use this as your pricing section and then anything that you need to include in that as well submission requirements is I like to use this for okay what are the final things we want to make sure that we do before we actually physically send it off to the customer so maybe we need to make sure we have five hard copies and one original because they ask for that maybe we have to include this this form on the very first page of our proposal even before the cover page because that's specific in the RFP so anything that's like those kind of compliance related requirements that's what I would include here or if there's anything else that you just don't want to forget at the very end I like to add all those here and then just go through and mark them yes as we work through to complete those at the very end and then the last tab in this template is called a post award so I'll just zoom in a bit here so the intention of this is is there something that you need to know once you're actually awarded the proposal and the contract that you need to take action on so besides doing the actual like project or whatever it is that you're bidding on um maybe in this example you have to send quarterly reports and that's not typical for you so you just want to make note that you need to notify Finance upon award that they're going to have to send quarterly reports so you can use this tab depending on your organization maybe you wouldn't have to follow up on any of that but if you do this is just a great place to kind of check in after you're awarded to make sure you don't miss anything so that's all that I wanted to show you that's just a little quick background on this template how I actually use it for rfps and if you have any questions feel free to include them in the comments below otherwise I hope that you enjoy the template and I will talk to you again soon