Is Lead Routing Software Slowing Down Lead Response Time in Salesforce?

TLDR

Lead routing should make Salesforce faster, not slower. In B2B sales, when a new inbound lead enters the pipeline, it should first get matched to the right account and then routed to the best-fit sales rep. Then, trigger the right follow-up. But the process is not the same for complex Salesforce environments. Sometimes, routing could cause delays and hamper lead response time.

Delays happen before a lead is routed to a sales rep. Multiple automation rules, APEX jobs, Flows, account matching, and enrichment must be evaluated before assigning to a salesperson.

We will walk you through lead response time, what causes delays in lead response time in Salesforce, and more.

What To Actually Measure In “Lead Response Time”?

Lead response time is the elapsed time between a prospect’s first interest in a product and the sales rep’s first contact. It has two major clocks piled up on each other:

Processing Time: It is the time that is required for lead enrichment, account matching, and assignment. Basically a time before the lead reaches the rep. 

Rep Response Time: It is the time when a sales rep contacts the prospect after a lead is assigned to them or when they get the lead assignment notification. 

Usually, the CRM dashboard reports these two metrics as one. In reality, they are different. And that is why a native LMS system considers it a sales rep error.

If you have a lead management system that runs within the CRM, then the lead assignment process will take time until the Salesforce resources are available to process the leads.

Why Is Delay Inside Salesforce Not A Small Inconvenience?

A delay inside a CRM is a big inconvenience for every business. They are not revenue-leaking.

It is well known that a delay in routing directly affects response time, follow-up, poor customer experience, lost sales, and more. 

According to MIT InsideSales research, they have studied 3 years of data from 6 different companies and extracted the following study:

What Causes Lead Response Time Delay Inside Salesforce?

While there are 10s and 20s of reasons that cause delays inside the Salesforce CRM. Here are the top reasons that affect lead response time:

1. Database Performance Issue

CRMs operate continuously, and a large amount of data enters every minute. Customer data, files, emails, and history take time to process, which affects speed to lead and performance.  Poorly optimized database indexes, complex queries, and reports cause lead response time delays inside Salesforce. 

2. Native Lead Routing Tools

Native lead routing tools use the same Salesforce instance. Multiple lead routing rules (like territory, capacity based, skill based, ownership based, and more) slow down lead assignment. Lead response time can be affected because Salesforce activates only one rule at a time, so you cannot run multiple conditions at the same time. This delays lead response time as Salesforce checks each rule one by one.

3. Numerous Automation Workflows

Salesforce may trigger multiple automation processes when a lead is created. Salesforce Apex, Flow, and approvals workflows get triggered simultaneously the moment a lead is entered or the record gets updated. 

When multiple automations are triggered together, the additional processing can increase response time and slow down lead assignment. 

4. Data Quality 

Almost 80% of Fortune companies in the US use Salesforce as their CRM. With large volumes of data, duplicate records can accumulate over time.  Poor data quality makes lead routing more difficult and time-consuming. It makes routing more expensive as Salesforce and other tools need to search through more records for accurate lead routing.

5. Poor System Configuration

Poor system configuration can increase processing time and directly affect lead response time in Salesforce. For example, validation rules, complex flows, custom objects, and integrations need to be evaluated at the same time. When this happens, Salesforce needs to perform more checks. The more checks Salesforce needs to perform, the longer the processing time. 

How Do Native Lead Routing Tools Slow Down Lead Response Time in Salesforce?

It’s easy to assume that lead routing can affect Salesforce performance, or even slow down the response time. The important distinction is that native routing uses Salesforce’s own automation and processing before routing. Let’s understand how native routing tools affect lead routing time:

1. Routing logic runs inside Salesforce transactions

Native routing tools have dependencies on Salesforce automations (Salesforce Flow, Apex, assignment rules, or other automations). These automations first evaluate details related to a lead account or its appropriate account owner. After evaluation, you can route a lead through a record-trigger flow, Apex triggers, or a combination of mechanisms.  

So, every time a lead is created or routed in Salesforce, it needs to go through a transaction lifecycle. If routing requires multiple queries, decisions, and record updates, the processing must be completed before assigning it to a sales rep.

The longer Salesforce takes to process the lead, the later it reaches the sales rep. And the longer the overall response time becomes.

2. Complex lead routing rules add more execution complexity

Advanced routing rules evaluate territory, account ownership, lead source, and exceptions. They use Salesforce Flow decision elements, SOQL queries, and cross-object lookups to evaluate lead routing criteria and rules. 

The more conditions and database records Salesforce needs to process, the more processing occurs before the lead finally reaches the appropriate rep. It makes leads wait in a queue before they are evaluated, and such a long time turns a high-intent lead into a cold lead. 

3. Routing depends on Salesforce data

Salesforce needs to retrieve accounts, contacts, opportunities, or sometimes even territories that are associated with the lead before deciding the best-fit sales rep for routing. 

So, if Salesforce requires lead-to-account matching or any database lookup, that extra lookup becomes a part of the processing time, or you can say the lead-to-assignment path.  

Any additional processing time between the sales rep and the prospect’s first interaction increases the lead response time. 

Why Can In-Instance Routing Slow Down Lead Response Time?

Every salesperson, CRM admin, and RevOps is tired of understanding why leads don’t reach the rep on time.

Let’s go through a technical overview of the Salesforce native lead routing tool to get a clear picture. 

LeanData’s Technical Overview states that LeanData creates 61 custom objects and adds additional managed fields on standard objects. It uses the Batch Apex process “LeanDataContinuousBatch” to handle lead routing and matching. LeanDataContinuousBatch queries custom objects for inserts and updates that are waiting to be matched and updated. 

Salesforce only allows five Batch Apex jobs to run simultaneously. Therefore, LeanData needs to get one available processing slot to route leads.

When a slot is available, LeanData can process leads normally. When the slot is available, the impact of Salesforce governor limits is minimal. But if the slot is unavailable, LeanData may need to wait in the Salesforce Flex Queue system. This delay affects lead response time and Salesforce performance.

The Lead Routing Troubleshooting Guide defines job statuses that map, one-for-one, onto assignment lag:

LeanData is explicit about coexistence. It operates within Salesforce and its Apex jobs run alongside other applications and processes. The processing time varies based on the number of Apex jobs running within Salesforce alongside LeanData.

If other slots have occupied Salesforce, LeanData’s jobs can temporarily be deprioritized, and “the processing of new and updated Leads, Contacts & Accounts would become delayed until enough job slots have opened up.”

But the question here is:  is that in-instance runtime adding processing time to lead response time?

So, the answer here is yes. Because the routing engine runs inside Salesforce, its processing speed can depend on Salesforce’s available processing capacity. 

Now that you know, native lead routing tools increase the lead response time. So, the next section covers how third-party lead routing tools like LeadAngel prevent slowing down lead response time.

How Does LeadAngel Prevent Slowing Down Lead Routing Time In Salesforce?

LeadAngel is an enterprise Salesforce lead routing and account matching software. Instead of replacing Salesforce CRM, it integrates with Salesforce. You can say it sits on top of the CRM.  The software intelligently routes inbound leads to the best-fit salesperson using pre-defined attributes and rules. Predefined attributes and rules include territory, skill set, round-robin, ZIP code, or any custom rules.

But the real question was, how does LeadAngel overcome Salesforce lead response delays and slowdowns? 

Multi-Rule Routing

One of the biggest reasons Salesforce can have performance issues is that it activates only one rule at a time, which is why, when complex real-time routing requirements arise, it runs conditions one by one. Teams need to create APEX or nested Flow logic to handle routing complexity issues. 

When Salesforce runs a single rule, it increases the CPU runtime, and teams hit the governor limit easily.

On the other side, LeadAngel routes leads using multiple criteria. You can combine multiple criteria that your business needs in a single routing workflow. It runs multiple independent routers as well. These routers are isolated from each other, so routing complexity doesn’t interfere with other routers. 

APEX Free Maintenance

LeadAngel’s routing rules are visually attractive. It is based on Salesforce field drag-and-drop logic. LeadAngel does not utilize handwritten Apex or chained flow systems. So, accumulating triggers do not sprawl on Lead, Account, or Opportunity when new rules are added over time. 

Real-Time Evaluation

LeadAngel verifies lead-to-account matching, territory rules, qualification criteria, rep availability, and assignment caps before routing a lead. It evaluates the best-fit sales rep for routing. The platform avoids redundant evaluations and does not provide partial results back and forth. This reduces unnecessary CPU time, and also, when the lead is already matched and routed to the right rep, lead response time gets improved.

Built-In Reps Capacity.

Native Salesforce round-robin does not check if a sales rep is out of office (OOO) without custom Apex. LeadAngel builds that logic in. It checks sales rep availability in many different ways, such as CRM availability, being on vacation, availability on the notification channel, block dates, or more. 

Data Deduplication & Meeting Scheduling

LeadAngel provides robust Salesforce data cleaning and deduplication features. It merges and dedupes duplicate records and cleans the dirty data. Sales teams can now merge two or more records into one and choose which record to keep (new or old).

Along with this, the meeting scheduling feature allows sales reps and prospects to book meetings according to their availability. Sales reps can also schedule meetings for account executives through offline scheduling. 

LeadAngel supports different time zones; hence, the leads do not get cold, and the contact window gets closed faster. 

The biggest advantage of LeadAngel is that it does not use Salesforce’s routing engine to route leads; it uses its own routing engine. Hence, LeadAngel is not dependent on Salesforce’s queue to route leads. 

An in-instance LMS vs a routing engine on top of the CRM

Conclusion

Lead response time is not only about how quickly a salesperson responds or follows up with a prospect. It also includes lead processing, account matching, and lead routing time. If your routing logic runs inside Salesforce, processing capacity, Apex jobs, automation workflows, and queues can add additional time before a lead reaches the best-fit salesperson.

LeadAngel has a different architectural approach. It does not use Salesforce’s routing engine and logic. The software handles routing through its independent routing engine. The sales team can handle complex routing requirements easily without adding more complexity inside Salesforce. The result is a faster path from inbound lead to the right salesperson.

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