This chapter covers the following topics:
An interaction is a point of contact between a human or automated agent and a party such as a customer, a customer system, or a potential customer.
An interaction comprises all activities that take place between the time agents receive a call or start an interaction until they end the interaction or wrap up the call. An interaction can have multiple activities. Some activities, including service request updates, the creation of associated tasks, and the sending of e-mails, are automatically recorded by the application. Agents can view the past interactions with customers.
An activity describes the elements of an event that take place during an interaction. An activity includes an action (such as, creating or sending) and an activity type (such as, a service request or collateral). An interaction must have at least one activity.
A customer calls an agent to request service. The agent creates a service request, sends a collateral, and updates the notes in the customer record.
The activities are:
Creating a service request.
Sending collateral.
Updating a note.
Interactions are created if any of the following actions take place:
When a service request is saved, an interaction with the activity – “Service request created” is created.
When a service request is updated for status changes, adding notes, problem code change, urgency change, or resolution code change, an interaction with the activity – “Service request updated” is created. These activities are created under the same interaction.
When a link is created, updated, or deleted; when product or related information is added or updated; when a contact is added or updated; and when a contract is added or updated. In all of the above cases an interaction with the activity - “Service request updated” is created.
When a task is created on a service request, an interaction with the activity – “A task is created” is created.
If you perform any action on the service request after an interaction is closed, a new interaction with activities is created that are associated with the action.
However, the following actions do not create interactions or activities:
Adding or deleting an attachment
Adding or updating charge lines
Invoking Oracle Scripting and saving scripts
The actions that end an interaction are follows:
Closing the Create Service Request page
Clicking the Save, Cancel, or the Apply buttons.
Interactions are logged based on the settings in the profile option:
Service: Interaction Logging Mode – You can enter any of the following values:
Do not log Interactions - If the profile is set to this value, then interactions and activities are not logged.
Log Interactions manually - This profile value is currently not supported in HTML Customer Support. The behavior of this profile value is similar to the profile value Log interactions automatically. If the profile is set to this value, then interactions and activities are automatically logged.
Log Interactions automatically - If the profile is set to this value, then interactions and activities are automatically created. The following interactions and activities are created:
| Interaction | Activity |
|---|---|
| Service request is created | Service Request is Created |
| Service request is updated | Service Request is Updated |
| Task is created | A task is added |
| Task is updated | A task is updated |
If the Service: Interaction Logging Mode profile option is either set to Log Interactions manually or Log Interactions automatically, then the interactions are captured with associated activities.
Interactions and activities are displayed in the Interactions tab but you can display the Interactions region on any other tab using Personalization.