Product Updates

Email Unsubscribe

We released an update to our email unsubscribe functionality. Earlier this month, when we released the functionality to automate managing your unsubscribes you could either turn it on or off for your entire organization.

Now, after this past release, it’s much more flexible with:

• Customizable unsubscribe links. Match your brand and email template types with specific messaging.

• Find and manage your unsubscribed contacts. Filter, search, or create a Smart View to find every unsubscribed contact.

• Undo an unsubscribe. Resubscribe contacts who may have accidentally unsubscribed in a click.

Find out more in our help article.
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Snippets and Quick Insert Menu

We released Snippets, which allows you to add a sentence or paragraph of text you type frequently and insert it into the email, SMS, notes, and template editors.

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The quick insert menu is a new way of interacting with editors. By typing `/` you can insert a snippet, scheduling link, or template tags into the editors.

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We also slightly adjusted our pricing - from now on, only shared email templates, SMS templates, and snippets count toward organization limits.
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Saved Columns per Smart View

We've added the ability to save your column set as part of your Smart View.

When creating a new Smart View or updating an existing one, we'll automatically save your column set so that it loads along with the Smart View. This will help teams that want to focus on different pieces of information on the Lead or Contact when using particular views.

If the Smart View is shared, any user that accesses the view will automatically see the saved columns.

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Basic Email Unsubscribe

We've just released the basic email unsubscribe. Now, you can enforce adding a hardcoded unsubscribe link for your Bulk and Workflow emails (for your organization).

Shortly, we'll add the ability to customize the unsubscribe link and simple reporting and management of your unsubscribed contacts.

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Note - we've since shipped more unsubscribe functionality

January Improvements

What’s New‍

• You can now report issues for calls linked to meetings. 
• The call activity section has been reorganized to display information vertically, replacing the previous tab or dropdown format.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where a disconnected Calendly account did not show as disconnected in the system.

December Improvements

What’s New‍

• You can now drag and drop columns to change quickly change the order.

• When submitting a support ticket from Close, you can now record a session to submit along with your ticket. This session recording would better track any errors that you be may be seeing. Please note it does not record any audio, so if you'd like to submit a video explanation to help our team assist you better, a tool like Loom would be better for that use case.

• Call recordings now automatically pause when you are no longer viewing the recording. Additionally, if a call is already playing and you start to play another call, only that call will play.
• Our ChatGPT plugin now has access to transcription summaries from calls and voicemails for teams using Call Assistant.
• You can now swipe between lead page tabs in the Close mobile app.
• We've added the ability to copy field text from any custom fields on your Custom Objects, similar to the options that currently exist on Lead, Contact, and Opportunity fields.

Bug Fixes

• SMS attachments will now send with the correct file name. This mostly impacted PDFs as they were sent with a generic application_1.pdf name before.

Call and Meeting Linking

Calls will now automatically attach to Meetings in certain scenarios to help declutter your activity feed.

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Notes:

• Calls placed from Close less than 15 minutes before the start of the meeting or during the meetings scheduled time will be automatically attached.
• The call must be placed to number associated with a contact attending the meeting or a phone number listed within the meeting itself.
• Multiple calls can be linked to the meeting in case or disconnects or unanswered attempts.
• Calls attached to Meetings are still tracked in reporting as they were previously.
• Notes taken within the Meetings field are also reflected on the attached calls when accessed through the API.
• At this time calls can not be manually attached or detached from meetings.
• Calls will only be attached when the Meeting exists prior to the call being placed. There is no historical linking associated with this feature.

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Mobile - Android app, push notifications, and inbound calling

We've released the V1 of the Close app for Android. You can download it by clicking on this Google Play link.

On top of that, we added push notifications and inbound calling support (both iOS and Android).

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November Improvements

What’s New‍

• Call Assistant improvements:

• We've made more improvements to our calling service, making our connectivity more robust. Additionally, we will now indicate the calling service status via the phone icon in the top right of the app. The icon will pulse when a connection is being established and will show red if the connection fails.

• Now, you can click on a column header in a Lead or Contact list to quickly sort by that column.

• New Email Editor Options:

• If a regulatory bundle you submitted is rejected, we'll now include the specific document that was rejected and the reason why.

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed native mobile app issue where attempting to edit an old draft email would show a blank pop-up

October Improvements

What’s New‍

• Customers that have an approved A2P 10DLC campaign will automatically get SHAKEN/STIR Level A attestation.
• We updated the Call Assistant transcript UI. There is now a different colored icon for each user and an updated transcript layout, making it easier to read and scan

• If a new contact is included in an email thread within a Lead, you can add that person as a contact in one click. 

• We've added the ability to easily copy and share a lead page.

• We updated our mobile app:

• We launched a new version on Zapier that improves all actions related to Notes.
• We updated how thumbnails show for attachments and improved the spacing for Activities in the Lead Activities list.
• We changed how replies to text messages work. Now, when you reply, Close will automatically use the same phone number that sent the original SMS, as long as that number is still available.
• When you receive a voicemail and get an email notification from Close, the link in that email will now take you to the Lead with the voicemail filtered in the activity feed.
• If an email fails to send for any reason, you can now edit the email and attempt to re-send it.

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Next Lead/Contact Button

We've just released the Next Lead/Contact button!

When you open a Lead from a lead search, contact search, or Smart View, you’ll now see a button at the bottom-right corner.

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You can use that (or `j` and `k` keyboard shortcuts) to navigate the list.

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Call Assistant

We just launched a brand new AI-powered Call Assistant. When enabled, you'll gain new functionality on any calls recorded in Close.

Transcriptions

Call Assistant will automatically transcribe all of your recorded calls made through Close.

• Know exactly what was said in calls without painstaking review
• Skim the transcript, and jump to points in the conversation just by clicking on text
• Speaker labels help you understand who said what on the call

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• You can also search through any transcriptions. At the transcription level, find instances of any words being spoken, or use Lead search to find all leads that have transcriptions containing specific words or phrases.

Summaries

• Call Assistant will generate a short summary after each call based on the transcript.
• Get the gist of each conversation without having to rely on notes. Easily review you or your team’s previous interactions with a customer much faster than previously possible.

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We're celebrating with a free access period! 🎉

Close customers can enjoy free access to Call Assistant through November 8th.

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September Improvements and Bug Fix Roundup

What’s New

• We updated the Lead Page SMS editor
  

• We display the Contact name on the Opportunity card in the Pipeline report.

• We updated the look and feel of a few Lead Activities (Opportunity Status Change, Task Completed, Custom Activities, and Lead changes).

• We added a thread count badge to the Inbox items.
• We added animations to upcoming activities, and modals across the app.
• We updated SMS, Lead, Note, and History icons.

Workflow Schedule and Pausing Customization

We're launched two new customization capabilities for Workflows.

Schedules

You can now set your own Workflow communication schedule on each Workflow in Close. Simply select the days of the week you're hoping to send, along with your hourly sending window.

Note: This schedule only applies to communication steps (e.g. calls, emails, SMS). Any tasks or instant actions will process outside of this window.

Pausing

You now have more control over what pauses your Workflows. Optionally disable automated pausing when receiving incoming calls, emails, or SMS if you would rather your Workflow continue to run.

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Close ChatGPT Plugin

We developed the Close ChatGPT plugin. You can now connect ChatGPT and your Close data - which means using the power of Generative AI to write emails, provide valuable prospect insights, segment leads and contacts, and analyze reporting data.

Find out more about the best use cases in our blog article.

Meetings in Inbox

We've added a new Meetings section to your Inbox experience in Close.

This section allows you to:

• Easily see a daily view of your upcoming or past meetings.
• Navigate to future or previous days to see what's coming up or review past meetings.
• Go to the Lead directly by clicking on the meeting.

Automated Triggers + Workflows

• We've renamed Sequences to Workflows, and added the ability for you to automatically trigger your Workflows.

• Any Workflow can now have automated triggering criteria. Triggering criteria can include most fields related to the Lead and associated Contacts.

• The trigger will fire any time a lead is created or updated to match your specified filters. Leads that were already matching your specified criteria will not trigger the workflow.
• Only the primary contact on the lead will be enrolled when the trigger fires.
• By default, the Workflow creator will be set as the assigned User for any Workflow steps. Use Send As settings for more advanced sending options.
• For more details, check out our Help Center guide.

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August Improvements and Bug Fix Roundup

What’s New

• When editing a sequence, you can add new steps between any existing steps.

• You can now record your meeting notes directly in Close on any meeting activity

• The options for snoozing items were updated to include only the most common choices and a simpler date picker.
• Sending an SMS message to a US phone number requires an approved A2P 10DLC registration now. For more information, check out this help article.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused the "More" menu in templates not to show.
• Fixed an issue with the Activity Feed filter that was causing meetings not to show up when users filtered by contacts.
• When you reach your custom fields limit, you will now be shown a helpful error message.
• Fixed an issue where changing the “From” field in an email draft would clear the subject field in certain cases.

Mobile App - Calling Improvements & Reporting

We added mobile calling settings, where you can define your default calling options, along with Caller ID selection and Call Recording options.

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We also added the most popular Reports - Activity Overview, Activity Comparison, and Opportunity Funnel.

Task Steps in Sequences

You can now add task steps to your sequences. Task steps can represent a few different concepts for teams:

• Pre-communication flows (e.g. Prospect the lead prior to them receiving calls/emails/sms)
• Communication outside of Close (e.g. Connect/message on LinkedIn)
• General operations actions (e.g. Create a “new customer” task for a CSM when leads move into customer status)
• Post-sequence flows (e.g. Decide what to do with the lead if they don’t respond to a sequence)

Tasks can be required or optional

• Required - the sequence won’t progress until the task is completed
• Optional - the sequence will create the task and move to the next step immediately

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