Business Problem:
Currently, lifecycle stages in respond.io are fully visible and editable by all users, regardless of team, role, or data ownership. This creates two major challenges:
  • Lack of Visibility Control: Some teams manage sensitive workflows (e.g., HR or Finance-related stages) that should not be visible or accessible to every user. The absence of stage-level access control compromises confidentiality and creates confusion for teams not involved in those stages.
  • No Restriction on Manual Changes: In many cases, lifecycle data is synced from an external CRM, where the CRM is the single source of truth. Currently, respond.io does not offer a way to prevent users from manually changing the lifecycle of a contact, which may result in data inconsistencies and misaligned customer journeys across platforms.
Desired Outcome:
Introduce granular access control and permission settings for lifecycle management that allow:
Stage-Level Visibility Controls:
  • Limit which lifecycle stages are visible to specific users or teams
  • Ensure only authorized users can view or assign contacts to certain stages (e.g., sensitive HR or Finance workflows)
Permission-Based Editing Controls:
  • Restrict agents (or all users) from manually changing a contact’s lifecycle stage
  • Support use cases where the CRM controls lifecycle updates, preventing manual overrides in respond.io
  • Maintain data consistency and integrity across connected systems