This chapter covers the following topics:
An interaction is a single contact event between a customer or customer system and a resource of the business. An example of an Interaction with a potential customer would occur when marketing campaigns target lists of e-mail addresses for mass mailings or when a person calls a call center to get product information.
The Interaction Matching Engine provides the mechanism to mine and evaluate these customer interactions and responses for sales follow up. Interaction Matching rules can be set up to determine the marketing interactions that must be evaluated to generate sales leads or to enhance the quality of existing leads.
To understand the Interaction Matching Engine and associated concepts, see the following sections:
Interaction Types and Interaction Scores
Interaction Score Threshold
Customer interactions are of various types. Examples of interaction type are Event Registration, Survey Completion, Web Visit, and so on.
Each interaction type is associated with a default interaction score that indicates the significance of the interaction. For example, an interaction where the customer tells the call center agent to have a sales representative call back is a very significant type of interaction. This event has an immediate sale potential, and merits a high score. Whereas, an interaction type such as Event Registration may indicate that the customer has some interest in the product associated with the event. However, it does not merit immediate sales attention, and hence is worthy of a low score.
The following table lists the seeded interaction types and the default interaction scores considered by the Interaction Matching Engine. The Seeded Interaction Rule uses these interaction scores. To set up additional interaction types, see Setting Up Interaction Types.
| Interaction Type | Description | Default Interaction Score |
|---|---|---|
| Survey Callback | Customer has requested a call back from the company. | 10 |
| Event Registration | Customer has registered for an event organized by the company. | 3 |
| Survey Completion | Customer has completed taking a survey posted by the company. | 3 |
| Web Collaboration | Customer has interacted with the company through the Web. | 2 |
| Inquired about an item from Customer | Customer has enquired about an item of the company. | 3 |
| Web Advertisement Visits | Customer has clicked on the company's advertisement on the web for details. | 1 |
| Web Offer Visits | Customer has clicked on the company's offer on the web for details. | 1 |
| E-mail Clickthroughs | Customer has clicked on a URL in an e-mail sent by the company. | 1 |
Note: The scores for the interaction types can be changed when you are setting up rule sets in the Interaction Matching Engine. For more information, see Interaction Rule Sets.
The Interaction Score Threshold (IST) is a set value against which the sum of all the interaction scores for a customer are matched. When the sum is equal to or greater than the IST, a lead is generated from the set of interactions. Each time an interaction is linked to a customer, the sum of interaction scores are evaluated against the IST.
For example, assume that the IST is set to 20. A customer interaction with a score of 5 is chosen by the Interaction Matching Engine. However, no lead is available for the corresponding customer. When another interaction for the same customer with a score of 10 is recorded, both the interaction scores are added and compared with the IST. In this case, the score does not exceed the IST yet. A lead is created from these interactions when the sum of all the interaction scores equal or exceed the IST.
The IST value is set in the OS: Interaction Score Threshold profile. The default value for this profile is 20.
The Interaction Matching Engine functions in two key ways:
If no lead exists for a customer, new marketing interactions for the customer are mined and used to generate a lead for sales follow up.
After a lead is generated, or if a lead already exists for a customer, new marketing interactions for the customer are matched with the lead to improve its quality.
To understand the working of the Interaction Matching Engine, see the following sections:
The Mining Behavior of the Interaction Matching Engine
Linking an Interaction with Existing Leads
Linking if No Lead Exists for the Interaction
Running the Concurrent Program
The Interaction Matching Engine is driven by a rule set that has an activation date range. A concurrent program (Run Interaction Matching Engine to Match or Create Leads) runs the Interaction Matching Engine at scheduled times. Based on the rule set, interactions are evaluated for their sales potential.
The Guards in the rule set support the Country and Campaign (Source Code) attributes. The attributes are ANDed during evaluation. You can also opt to capture all interactions without any attributes. The Rules in the rule set support the Interaction Type and the Interaction Score.
If the Interaction Matching Engine rules sets are modified, they are applicable only for the new interactions captured since the last time the engine ran. They are not used to match interactions that were processed before the rule sets changed.
All the matched interactions are tracked and displayed with the timestamp on the lead. You can also browse through all the responses that contributed to the lead. Review and periodically archive interactions that are not matched with leads or other interactions. You can view the interactions attached to a lead from the history details for the lead. For more information, see the Oracle Field Sales User Guide.
Note: Interactions with a Guest User's Party ID are not used for matching.
The mining behavior can be customized with business-specific logic that renders certain interactions in specific contexts valuable in determining sales value.
Mining by Source Code
The significance of an interaction may depend on the specific promotion associated with it. For example, an Event Registration for a strategic CEO level event is more significant than an Event Registration for a technical web seminar. Hence, the score of the interaction also depends on the promotion code associated with the interaction. For this type of mining, you can create specific rules that will leverage the source code as a guard.
In addition to the source code attribute, the country attribute can also be used as a guard to define interaction rules.
When an interaction is captured for linking, the Interaction Matching Engine first checks all the existing sales leads to match the interaction with a lead. The interaction is matched with leads based on the following criteria:
Creation Date Range - This is the date range when the lead is created. For example, the interaction is compared with all leads created in the last 60 days.
Lead Status - The status of the lead must be Open.
B2B and B2C - The Interaction Matching Engine supports matching of Business to Business (B2B) as well as Business to Customer (B2C) leads. For B2B situations, the Customer (Organization) ID recorded in the interaction must match the Customer ID recorded in the lead. Optionally, the contact recorded in the interaction (if any) must match one of the contacts recorded on the lead. The profile OS: Interaction Matching Engine Matches Contact for B2B lead determines whether the primary contact should also be matched for B2B leads.
If more than one lead matches a given interaction, then a lead is chosen by its progress in the sales pipeline.
Based on the rating of the lead, the lead with the better rating is chosen.
Based on the creation date of the lead, the lead created most recently is chosen.
Lead Reevaluation
When an interaction is linked to a lead, the lead is reevaluated only if both these conditions are satisfied:
One of the attributes in the Qualifying, Rating, or Channel Selection engine rule sets is Interaction Score.
The OS: Auto Run Lead Engines While Update profile is set to Yes.
The Interaction Score can be leveraged in the Rating Engine to upgrade the lead value, along with any other relevant attributes. When new (additional) interactions are linked, the score of the new interaction will augment the rating of the lead.
When an unqualified lead is appended with an interaction, and the lead's Interaction Score goes up, the lead is processed by the qualification, rating, and channel selection engines again.
If a matching lead is not found for an interaction, the interaction is evaluated, and if the interaction score is equal to or greater than the IST score, then a lead is generated.
If the interaction score does not meet the IST, the interaction is linked with other unique interactions for the same party. All matching interactions for the prospect within the allowed time frame are scored and evaluated as an aggregate score. This aggregate score is constantly reevaluated against the IST, and a lead is created when appropriate. All interactions used to generate the lead are appended to the lead.
Lead Generation
When a lead is generated from a set of interactions, the lead is assigned to a sales channel with the following details:
The name of the lead. This is taken from the interactions from which the lead was generated. The name could be the Contact first name or last name; or the name of the Organization.
The customer and contacts are populated with the parties in the interactions. The party details can also be linked for contact point information.
The source code is either the source code of the most recent interaction, or the source code of the interaction with the highest score. All the other source codes are recorded as lead lines along with the associated products.
If present, all products and related offers associated with the interaction or source code are recorded as lead lines.
The Run Interaction Matching Engine to Match or Create Leads concurrent program runs the Interaction Matching Engine.
Use the following details to run the Run Interaction Matching Engine to Match or Create Leads concurrent program.
Prerequisite: Interaction Matching Rules must be set up.
Responsibility: Oracle Sales Administrator
Parameters:
Debug - Enter Yes if you want to see debug messages.
SQL Trace - Enter Yes if you want to trace SQL.
Schedule - Once
For the steps to run the concurrent program, see Running Concurrent Programs.
All customer interactions can be associated with a specific type. Examples of interaction types are Event Registration, Survey Completion, and Web Visit. You can set up interaction types that you want associated with the interaction rules.
The first few interaction types are seeded, and cannot be selected. You can enable or disable a seeded interaction type, and also change the description and meaning, if required.
Notes
Enabled: An interaction type that is not enabled is not visible while creating rules for the Interaction Matching Engine rule sets.
Meaning: The term entered in the Meaning column will appear as the Interaction Type when you create an interaction rule set.
The interaction rules sets identify the interactions that are appropriate and relevant to be mined for follow up purposes.
The Linking rules can be customized to:
Find the particular business interactions that merit linking such as completed surveys, event registration, web collaboration, web visits, or inbound calls.
Identify worthy business interactions that merit lead generation using promotion source codes.
If more than one rule set with equal precedence win, the rule set with the highest score is selected.
You can view the interactions attached to a lead from the history details for the lead. For more information, see the Oracle Field Sales User Guide.
You can track the effectiveness of the interaction rule sets by viewing the Lead Linking Report. For more details, see Lead Linking Report.
An interaction rule set contains a guard and rules. The Country and Campaign attributes make up the guard options. Rules can be created using Interaction Types and Scores. You can view the details of the seeded interaction rule set called Seeded Interaction Rule.
When an interaction matches with the rule set conditions, a score is assigned to the interaction based on the type of the interaction. When the score reaches a threshold, a lead is created from the interaction(s).
While creating a rule set, it is in the Draft status by default. Use the following procedure to create an interaction rule set.
Navigation:Log in with the Oracle Marketing Superuser responsibility and navigate to Administration > Leads > Processing Rules > Interaction Selection.
Notes
Start and End Dates: Dates between which the rule set is valid.
Precedence: Each rule set can have a different precedence, to define the order of importance for evaluation (where 100 is higher than 1).
Match All Interactions: If you do not want to filter any interactions, select Match all Interactions. To filter interactions based on their attributes, select Match Interactions based on Guard.
Guards define the domain to which the rule set applies such as campaign-specific or country-specific.
Match Interactions Based on Guard: To filter interactions based on their attributes, select Match Interactions based on Guard. Guards define the domain to which the rule set applies such as campaign-specific or country-specific.
Add Attributes: Add attributes to the rule set.
Rule: Add rules to the rule set.
Interaction Type:From this drop-down list, select a type and enter a value for the score.