6Managing Households

About Managing Households

A household is a group of contacts generally sharing a common link or association. Households provide valuable segmentation information on the household as a whole, as well as a summary of information about the household member contacts. Users can use the Households screen for identifying and capturing demographic information about a household. They can also use the Households screen to review customer’s financial accounts, products, and contact information associated with that household. This information allows them to assess customers’ data.

Caution: This chapter assumes you have renamed Siebel Account objects to Companies. By default, Siebel Healthcare installs using the term Accounts. For more information on renaming Siebel Account objects, see Siebel Database Upgrade Guide.

Grouping all of a customer’s accounts by household allows a service provider to identify a client’s real value to the organization and seek opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell additional products and services to them, such as homeowners insurance and loans for children’s education. In addition, the ability to view all of a customer's financial accounts and related portfolio information by household allows an organization to view the household’s overall financial position.

By following the procedures described in this chapter, users can enter, manage, and review information about household members (contacts), accounts, policies, underwriting reports, claims, opportunities, activities, service requests, and relationship hierarchies.

Note: Many of the views are read-only, because they provide a summary of information about household contacts. The only editable views are Contacts and Relationship Hierarchy.

The Households screen and associated views that appear in Siebel Healthcare share much of the functionality found in Siebel Business Applications. This chapter focuses on the household functionality that is unique to Siebel Healthcare. For more information on basic household functionality, see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.

Scenario for Managing Households

These scenarios are examples of workflows performed by sales representatives and their managers in the insurance and healthcare industries.Your company might follow a different workflow according to its business requirements.

Household information supports sales and service decisions for segmentation and cross-selling. It also provides background information for the finance and insurance industries about a household and all of its contacts.

A sales representative uses the Household screen for identifying and capturing demographic and relationship information about the household, and for reviewing policies and products associated with that household. From the Households screen, the sales representative creates a new household for a new customer. He then adds contacts to the household.

Some weeks later, the sales representative wants to review household information. He navigates to the My Households view, and then selects the Insurance Summary view to review a list of contacts, service requests, policies and quotes, and claims associated with a household.

In this scenario, end users are the sales representatives who manage household information in the field. They enter and review information to:

  • Add a household

  • Add a contact to a household

  • View household summary information

  • View household relationships

  • View household policies

Process of Managing Households

This topic details sample tasks often performed by end-users when managing households. Your company might follow a different process according to its business requirements.

Adding Households

End users can collect and manage information about a customer’s household. Households are added from the Households screen. For detailed information on how to add a household see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.

Setting the Household Privacy Option

United States law requires that financial institutions disclose their privacy policies regarding the sharing of nonpublic personal information with third parties, and fair credit reporting, that impacts the sharing of nonpublic personal information with affiliates. End users can specify a privacy level by making a selection from the Privacy Option field.

The Privacy Option field is for registering the privacy level requested by the household; it does not impact record visibility in any way.

To set the privacy option for a household

  1. Navigate to the Households screen, then the List view.

  2. To specify a privacy level, scroll down to the Privacy Option field and select one of the following:

    • Opt-In. Sharing of nonpublic personal information is allowed without restrictions.

    • Opt-Out - Affiliates. Sharing of nonpublic personal information with affiliates is not allowed.

    • Opt-Out - Third Party. Sharing of nonpublic personal information with third parties is not allowed.

    • Opt-Out - All Parties. Sharing of nonpublic personal information with any affiliate or third party is not allowed.

Associating Contacts with Households

Contacts are persons associated with a household. End users can specify one person in the household as the head of household and then identify the others as spouse, child, or dependent parent.

To add a contact to a household

  1. Navigate to the Households screen, then the List view.

  2. In the Households list, drill down on the household to which the contacts will be added.

  3. Click the Contacts view tab.

  4. In the Contacts list, click Add, and do one of the following:

    • Select an existing contact and click OK.

    • Perform a query to choose an existing contact.

    • Select New to add a new contact.

      The contact is associated with the household.

    Note: In the Households screen, a contact’s address is his or her residential or personal address. In the Contact’s screen, a contact’s address is his or her work address. Household addresses can only be selected from among residential addresses.

Viewing Household Summaries

The Household Summary view provides a comprehensive view of the household’s relationship with an end user’s organization in an editable format. This view displays basic information about the household, contacts, financial accounts, and past or pending service requests.

To view household summary information

  1. Navigate to the Households screen, then the List view.

  2. In the Households list, drill down on the household, and click the Summary view tab.

Using the Household Relationship Hierarchy

End users use the Household Relationship Hierarchy view to identify and capture key relationships for a household. This view features a graphical tree that provides a visual representation of a household’s relationships, which includes its natural relationships to the household contacts as well as custom-defined, dynamic relationships.

Users can create custom-defined relationships between a household and any contact or organization. End users can record custom-defined relationships between any two entities in the adjacent Party Relationships list.

Note: The Relationship Hierarchy view is also available on the Contacts and Companies screens. For more information, see Viewing Contact Relationship Hierarchies (End User) and Viewing Company Relationship Hierarchies (End User).

To create a custom-defined relationship

  1. Navigate to the Households screen, then the List view.

  2. In the Households list, drill down on the household for which you wish to define relationships.

  3. Click the Relationship Hierarchy view tab, and in the Party Relationship list, add a record.

  4. Complete the fields described in the following table.

    Field Comments

    Relationship

    The value in this field categorizes the relationship between the household and the other entity. The field has an LOV for custom-defined Relationship values. Predefined values include Reports To, Spouse, Child, Lawyer, Board Member, Primary Contact (Backup), Admin Assistant, Competitor, Referral, Service Provider, Investor, Wealth Management Rep, Related Subsidiary, Bank Attorney, Trustee Attorney, and Debtor Attorney. This LOV can be modified by the Siebel administrator. For more information, see Configuring Lists of Values.

    Type

    The value in this field determines the type of entity with which you wish to establish a relationship. Defaults to Contact. Other values include Household, Organization, and Employee.

    Value

    The value in this field is based on the Type field. For example, if Type equals Contact, then clicking the select button in Value field displays the Select Contact dialog box.

    The newly defined relationship appears in the Relationship Hierarchy explorer.