Bookshelf v7.5: Customer Interaction Life Cycle

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Customer Interaction Life Cycle

Interactions between companies and potential or existing customers typically follow a pattern called a life cycle, composed of the following stages:

Prospect stage. Your company has contact information for a prospective customer, but has not determined the prospect's level of interest in your goods or services. Lists of prospects are often rented to companies for limited time periods, during which time prospect data must be kept separate from data on other possible customers who have voluntarily interacted with the company. This information is stored using the Prospect screen.

Candidate stage. Your company has interacted with the prospective customer and has determined that the prospect is interested in doing business with you. At this point, prospect information is typically moved to the storage area for contact information, and the prospect is considered to be promoted to a contact.

Qualified stage. Your company has determined that the contact represents a significant sales opportunity. At this point, an opportunity record is created.

Customer stage. The contact has made one or more purchases from your company. The status of the contact is Active.

Inactive stage. The contact has purchased from your company in the past, but has no current service agreements, and represents no current sales opportunities.

Marked for Deletion stage. The contact information has ceased to be useful, typically because the contact is no longer with the account or household, or because the account no longer exists, or because your company wants no further interaction with that contact, account, or household.

Using Siebel Call Center, you can record the life cycle stage for a contact, an account, or a household, using the Status field in the appropriate screen. By indicating the life cycle stage of the record, you can make decisions on what resources to allocate to interactions with that contact, account, or household. The default Status assigned to a new contact, account, or household record is Active.

Additional information about working with Accounts, Contacts, Households, and Prospects is available in the following sections:

For information about Accounts, see Accounts.

For information about Contacts, see Contacts.

For information about Households, see Households.

For information about Prospects, see Prospects.

For information about working with Contacts, Prospects, and Opportunities in the specific context of a marketing campaign, see Campaigns and SmartScripts.

For additional information about Opportunities, see Siebel Sales User Guide.