Improve searching by two letter state code
Hi Ideas,
Greetings from Lockdown London. I trust you are well.
Please see below email exchange between myself and your customer service dept. I find it incredulous that 2-letter state codes can't be used on Pipeline.
Either me & my team are doing something wrong, or Pipeline needs improving.
Please help this disenchanted customer. Thanks! Spencer
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Hello Spencer,
Thank you for your email. We are a product that is set up to allow users all over the world to use it and they do not all go by a 2-letter state abbreviation system. As a result, this may cause issues when a filter is applied for 2-letter states. You may want to communicate internally whether you would like for your users to only use the 2-letter codes or spelling out the state name entirely. I will be sure to submit this feedback to our product and development team as well. Also, we have an "Ideas" section on our website that gives our customers the ability to provide product feedback to help improve Pipeline. This feedback is sent directly to our Product Team. Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Best,
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Hi Melissa,
Greetings from Lockdown London. I trust you had a lovely weekend.
I've been thinking about your response below and I want to return to this question as I'm not quite satisfied with the answer.
My initial reaction to the issue is that the Pipeline filter/search system isn't behaving correctly. Since every US State has a unique two letter abbreviation, MO for Missouri and MT for Montana as an example (as I am sure you know), if someone were to enter in the correct abbreviation, only the contacts that fall under that specific state should pull up.
It sounds like Pipeline is set up to capture the first two letters of any input and display results based on the full state names, regardless of their official abbreviation. This is clearly problematic.
If Pipeline allows me to search by entering in the first few letters of a state, each full state name should pop up and I should be able to choose which state I would like to filter by in a dropdown menu. It sounds like it is missing a step and just importing everything based on my two letter input without tying it to a specific state.
If I am understanding correctly, it sounds to me as though Pipeline needs to update it's filtering tool to more accurately tie state abbreviations with the correct states. I realise that this may not be the easiest solution, but the issue you are having is one I have never come across in any online platform I use in the US in which I am filtering by states.
Can we please explore this further, as it may be that me and my team are missing something?
Many thanks for your help Melissa.
Best wishes,
Spencer
On Thu, 13 May 2021 at 20:04, Customer Care customercare@pipelinecrm.com wrote:
Hello Spencer,
Thank you for email response. Based on what you have advised me, I think that the best way to avoid what you are experiencing would be to update those "two-letter" entries to the entire state name. I think that by making this update, it will allow you to be able to filter for these contacts better than you have previously. I hope that this helps! Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Best,
Melissa Hancock |Customer Success Associate
How did we do with making it easier to handle your inquiry?
Not Good
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On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 4:12 AM EDT, Spencer Hawkes spencer@bmiglobaled.com wrote:
Hi Melissa,
Greetings from Lockdown London. I trust you are safe and well.
Thanks again for the feedback. Can I please share with you an email from one of my team about this issue when I said we were going for two-letter codes only:
Hi Spencer,
Thanks for this. I am in principle up for doing this and get the point.
There is an issue on PLD at the moment though, as if we filter by the abbreviation and the full name of the state (which is what we need to do, given a lot of the states are written with the full name) it is problematic.
For example if I filter for MO (Missouri) this will not only filter in any contacts from Missouri but also Montana as it brings into view any state name that starts with MO. There are other examples such as Maryland (MA) & Massascheutists.
Cheers
Will
Melissa, how can we avoid the problems that Will is mentioning above?
Thank you very much for your help Melissa.
Best wishes,
Spencer
On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 8:42 AM EDT, Customer Care customercare@pipelinecrm.com wrote:
Hello Spencer,
Thank you for contacting us via chat, I'm sorry that we missed your interaction. When entering the US companies, there isn't really a right or wrong format to use to refer to the states. I think the most common format that our customers use would be the "two-letter code". However, any format will work in this case. I hope that this helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Best,