What Is Email Triage?
Email triage is a way to handle high volumes of incoming applications and decision messages by quickly categorizing them. In MCA and small business lending, this is important because brokers receive hundreds of ISO packets, funder replies, and supporting documents every day.
Email triage typically appears when operators need to process shared inboxes at scale. They use it to separate applications, decision emails, and supporting documents so each type flows into the correct part of the deal process.
How Does Email Triage Work?
At a general level, email triage follows a simple pattern:
- Input: Emails and attachments arrive from brokers, ISOs, or funders.
- Core action: The system reads the subject, body, and files to classify what type of email it is.
- Output: Each email is labeled or tagged with its type and routed to the proper workflow.
- Follow-on: The message is either processed automatically, reviewed by staff, or used to update a record.
In Heron’s workflow, email triage is fully automated:
- Intake: Emails land in shared inboxes like underwriting@ or subs@ and flow into Heron.
- Scrub/Checks: Heron scrubs the content, identifies attachments, and classifies the email as a submission, decision, or supporting document.
- Write-Back: Clean, structured information such as deal IDs, applicant names, and statuses is written into the CRM.
- Next Action: The deal is routed to underwriting, flagged for missing info, or updated with a new status.
Heron makes sure triage happens instantly, so teams do not waste time opening and sorting each email manually.
Why Is Email Triage Important?
For brokers and funders, email triage is vital to keep deal flow moving. It shortens turnaround time by cutting out manual email review.
It also improves accuracy because deals are routed correctly the first time, without human error. With triage automated in Heron, teams can handle spikes in volume while keeping the CRM clean and reducing rework.
Common Use Cases
Email triage supports daily operations in high-volume lending environments.
- Classifying ISO submissions into intake workflows automatically.
- Detecting and routing funder decision emails into deal status updates.
- Sorting supporting documents like bank statements into the right deal folder.
- Filtering duplicates so underwriters do not receive the same packet twice.
- Triggering missing-info requests when attachments are incomplete.
FAQs About Email Triage
How does email triage reduce manual work for brokers/funders?
Heron eliminates the need for staff to open, review, and label every incoming email. Submissions and decisions are classified instantly, which saves hours of inbox management.
Where in the Heron workflow does email triage happen?
Email triage takes place at the intake stage. Heron reads each message, scrubs it for content, and routes the results into the CRM with structured fields.
What outputs should teams expect from email triage?
Teams get clean CRM updates such as deal status, applicant details, and risk indicators. Emails no longer sit unprocessed in shared inboxes, and deals move faster through the pipeline.