What are Cadences?

Cadences are an automation tool to help your team achieve faster speed-to-lead and/or maintain a structured outreach approach. Cadences let you create a sequence of actions – calls and SMS messages – that are automatically executed after a trigger event.

For example, let’s say a new lead enters your pipeline after filling out a signup form on your website. As soon as this happens, the lead gets an automated SMS message from their assigned agent, and that agent is also prompted to call the lead. If the lead does not pick up their phone, the agent will be prompted to call them after a specified period of time.

Note: only Kixie users with Manager or Admin level permissions can set up Cadences.

Before creating a cadence, you will need to set up a Queue to enroll into the cadence. (And before setting up a Queue, you will need to set up a Team to enter into the Queue.)

Once you have set up a Queue In the Kixie Dashboard, navigate to Manage > Cadences in the menu on the left side of the page. If this is your first Cadence, click the blue “+ ADD NEW CADENCE” button at the bottom center of the screen. If other Cadences have already been created on your account, this button will be in the top right corner of the page. 

Cadence Settings

In the Cadence Settings window, follow the steps below to get started setting up your Cadence:

1. Give your Cadence a name
2. Select the Queue to be enrolled in the Cadence
3. Assign Contact Owner: this determines which agent the calls/texts will come from. You have two options:
• Auto-Assign from Queue: this will automatically assign the calls/texts to a specific agent, assigned in a round robin fashion. It will also assign that agent to be the contact owner in your CRM.
• Assign from Queue on Answer: this will prompt all available agents to make the first call, and whoever accepts the prompt first will be made the contact owner in your CRM. Any subsequent calls/texts in the Cadence will go out from the contact owner.
4. Use Contact Owner: if toggled ON, this will override whatever is selected under “Assign Contact Owner” in the event that the contact already has a contact owner in your CRM.
5. Allow Re-enrollment: if toggled ON, contacts who have already gone through the Cadence can be enrolled again.
6. Cadence Hours: the Cadence will only run during these hours, in your local time zone
7. Target Hours: the Cadence will only call/text contacts during these hours, in the contact’s local time zone
8. Click “Cadence Actions” to move on to the next section and continue setting up your Cadence

Cadence Actions

The Cadence Actions section is where you will set up the calling and SMS actions the cadence will perform. When you first open this section, it will look like this:

To set up a “Call” action of your Cadence:

1. Select Call from the Type dropdown menu
2. If you want there to be a delay between when the contact is enrolled in the Cadence and when the call goes out, you can set it in the “After” section
3. If you would like the cadence to retry the call in the event the target rep is unavailable, set “Retry” to “Yes” (if you don’t want to retry the call, set “Retry” to “No” and move on to step 6)
4. Attempts: the number of times the call action will be retried
5. Min. Duration Between Attempts: the minimum amount of time between retry attempts
6. Click the button to add another action to your Cadence

To set up an “SMS” action in your Cadence:

1. Select SMS from the Type dropdown menu
2. If you want there to be a delay between when the contact is enrolled in the Cadence and when the SMS is sent, you can set it in the “After” section
3. Pick an SMS template for the text. If you need to create an SMS template, click SAVE and follow the steps in this article to create an SMS template
4. If you would like to alter the selected SMS template, toggle “Customize Message” ON and you will be able to edit the text of the template

After adding all of your desired actions to the Cadence, select “Dispositions” from the left-side menu to move on to the next step.

Dispositions

You can use the call dispositions (AKA outcomes) in your PowerCall dialer to either remove a contact from the cadence, or move a contact to a different Cadence. 

To set a disposition to remove a contact from the Cadence:

1. Under “Disposition” select the disposition you want to use to remove contacts from the cadence
2. Under “Action” select “Stop Cadence”
3. Click the button to add another Disposition Rule

To set a disposition to move a contact to a different Cadence:

1. Under “Disposition” select the disposition you want to use to move contacts to a different cadence
2. Under “Action” select “Forward to Cadence”
3. Under “Cadence” select the Cadence you want the disposition to forward contacts to
4. Click the  button to add another Disposition Rule, if you would like to add another
5. When you're done adding Disposition Rules, click “Harassment Rules” to move to the final step

Harassment Rules

Harassment Rules prevent your agents from calling or texting a particular contact too many times in a given timeframe. 

To set up Harassment Rules for your Cadence:

1. If you want to use the same general Harassment Rules that are set for your Kixie Account (under Manage > Account > Harassment Rules), toggle “Use Business Harassment Rules” to ON
2. Otherwise, you can set up specific Harassment Rules for the Cadence. In the “Call Rules” section, you can set the amount of calls and specify the time period this amount of calls can be made in. For example, in the Cadence in the screenshot below, a contact can only be called 3 times in 1 day (i.e. one 24 hour time period)
3.  SMS Rules function the same way. In the screenshot below, the Cadence will send a maximum of 2 SMS messages per day

Once you have set up your Harassment Rules, you are done setting up your cadence. Be sure to click “SAVE” before moving on to anything else.

Managing your Cadences 

Now that you have at least one Cadence up and running, you’ll want to know what all of the sections and columns mean. There are three sections: Cadences, Inflight Actions, and Completed Actions. 

Cadences

This is the general Cadences section, where you can see basic information about your Cadences, edit your Cadences, and turn Cadences on or off. Below is a key to what each column means, from left to right:

• Active: use the toggle switch in this column to turn a cadence on or off
• Cadence: The Cadence name is in this column. Click on the name of a Cadence to edit it
• Version: the current version of your cadence. Each time a cadence is edited (i.e. any time you make a change to the cadence and click “Save”) counts as a “version”
• Actions: the total number of Call/SMS Actions in the Cadence
• Disposition Rules: the total number of Disposition Rules in the Cadence
• Invocations: the total number of contacts that have been enrolled into the Cadence
• Tasks Run: the total number of Actions the Cadence has successfully performed
• Last Triggered: the most recent date a contact was enrolled in the Cadence
• Last Action Ran: the most recent date an Action was performed by the Cadence
• Actions: Click to edit a Cadence; click to delete a Cadence

Inflight Actions

The Inflight Actions section shows you all Actions that are currently waiting to be performed by your Cadences. Below is a key to what each column in this section means, from left to right:

• Created Date:  date the Cadence was created
• Cadence ID: the ID number for the Cadence (used for connecting a cadence with a third party app, such as a CRM or Zapier)
• Cadence Version: the current version of your cadence. Each time a cadence is edited (i.e. any time you make a change to the cadence and click “Save”) counts as a “version”
• Cadence Name: the name of the Cadence
• Target Phone Number: the phone number of the contact
• Action Type: the type of action – Call or SMS
• Scheduled Date: the time/date the action is scheduled to be performed
• Status: the status will be either “Scheduled” or “Processing”
• Scheduled: waiting for the scheduled date to occur
• Processing: waiting for an available Agent to perform the scheduled action
• Retry Count: total number of times the Action has been retried
• Max Retry / Duration: the maximum number of times the Action will be retried in a given duration

Completed Actions

The Completed Actions section shows you all Actions that have been performed by your Cadences. The columns in this section are mostly the same as the columns in the Inflight Actions, apart from one column: Completed Date (the time and date the Action was completed).