Overview of Business Rules
Business rules are powerful tools for simplifying and automating common business tasks. They link data from all B2C Service products in the knowledge base, resulting in a responsive, consistent customer experience.
A business rule is an “if-then” statement: If these conditions apply, then take this action. For example, if a customer has a billing question, then route the incident to an accounting staff member. If a new contact is from the East Coast, then send a marketing email about the opening of a New York store. If an agent proposes an answer for the knowledge base, then route that answer to the knowledge engineer for review.
Business rules can also include an Else clause: If the conditions of the rule aren’t met, then take a different action. Extending the billing question example, a rule can route the incident to accounting. If the question isn’t about billing, for example, the incident does not match the rule condition, route it to technical support.
B2C Service has eight rule types:
- Answer
- Chat
- Contact
- Custom Object
- Incident
- Opportunity
- Organization
- Task
Each of these sets of rules—including the associated states, functions, and variables—is a rule base. The entity to which a rule base applies is known as the object type. This can be an answer, incident, contact, chat, opportunity, organization, task, or custom object.
- Makes creating business rules easier.
- Introduces searching for fields and values in rules.
- Gives access to related objects and attributes when defining rules.
- Runs reports on business rules.
Business rules help you provide a consistent, accurate, and timely experience for customers. They also streamline the efficiency of staff members. When the rules engine updates information automatically and immediately, your entire organization has access to an accurate and current knowledge base. This knowledge base is used in every customer interaction. For example, marketing staff members always know a customer’s email preferences, even when the customer changes opt-in choices. Sales representatives can be sensitive to a prospective customer when they know that the customer is experiencing technical support issues. And agents can reinforce your organization’s marketing campaigns when they know what emails a customer has received.
Besides the many advantages of keeping the knowledge base accurate and current, business rules also let staff members work efficiently and consistently. When you create rules to answer routine customer questions, customers enjoy an immediate response. At the same time, staff members work more productively without the distraction of repetitive tasks. As a result, they can deliver more responsive customer service and follow-up.
Business rules route incidents to the suitable support person. They notify an engineer when answers in the knowledge base need to be reviewed, and automatically answer customer questions. Business rules also send marketing emails and surveys. They escalate overlooked opportunities and set strategies based on conditions you define. Rules update contacts and organizations, set custom fields, and assign tasks. For specific examples of business rules with a discussion of the logic used to create them, see Examples of Business Rules.