Setting Up Customer Contact Types

Every customer contact record has a contact type that controls the behavior of the customer contact.

Fastpath:

Refer to The Big Picture Of Customer Contacts for more information about customer contacts.

Open Admin > Customer > Customer Contact Type > Add to define your customer contact types.

Description of Page

Every customer contact type is identified by a unique combination of Contact Class and Contact Type.

Enter a brief Description of the customer contact type.

Only specify a Contact Shorthand if customer contacts of this type can be added in the Customer Contact Zone. The value you specify in this field is what the user selects to add a customer contact in this zone.

If your implementation requires restricting customer contact types by CIS Division, specify a CIS Division on the customer contact type.

Person Usage controls the applicability of a person on customer contacts of this type. Select Required if a person must be defined on this type of customer contact. Select Optional if a person can optionally be defined on this type of customer contact. Select Not Allowed if a person is not allowed on this type of customer contact.

Account Usage controls the applicability of an account on customer contacts of this type. Select Required if an account must be defined on this type of customer contact. Select Optional if an account can optionally be defined on this type of customer contact. Select Not Allowed if an account is not allowed on this type of customer contact.

Premise Usage controls the applicability of a premise on customer contacts of this type. Select Required if a premise must be defined on this type of customer contact. Select Optional if a premise can optionally be defined on this type of customer contact. Select Not Allowed if a premise is not allowed on this type of customer contact.

Note:

Person usage and premise usage cannot both be set to not allowed, as the customer contact must at least one of them. Account usage is dependent on person usage.

Entity Relationship controls the validation of relationships on customer contacts of this type. All ensures that the account belongs to the person and that the account and premise are related. Person and Account Only disables the account and premise validation. Premise and Account Only disables the person and account validation. None disables all validation and allows any values. This setting only impacts the validation of values entered and works in conjunction with the three usage fields described above.

Use Contact Action if something should be triggered when customer contacts of this type are added or if the contact has a special use. When set to Send Letter, you must also specify a Letter Template. Refer to Printing Letters for more information about how letters are produced. Set to Record Notification if this contact type is used on template-based notification types as a record of the communication.

The Business Object defined here controls how customer contacts of this type are show on the customer contact portal. The system is delivered with three customer contact business objects. The value is defaulted based on the contact action.

Note: Unlike many objects, the customer contact business object is not stored directly on the customer contact. The system obtains it from the type and uses it to control how the customer contact is displayed, such as which fields are shown. It does not impact the behavior of the customer contact.

Set the Custom Archive Eligibility Criteria flag to Applicable if customer contacts of this type require additional custom eligibility criteria checks when being evaluated for archiving.

Note: The base product provides an ILM Eligibility algorithm for Customer Contact (C1-CCILMELIG) that marks a customer contact as eligible for archiving based on the customer contact’s age and the state of the related person’s information. This algorithm will not mark the customer contact as eligible for archive if the customer contact type’s Custom Archive Eligibility Criteria flag is Applicable. Your implementation is responsible for providing the additional criteria checks for customer contact types that require custom eligibility criteria.

Use the Customer Contact Type Characteristics collection to define characteristics that can be defined for contacts of a given type. Use Sequence to control the order in which characteristics are defaulted. Turn on the Required switch if the Characteristic Type must be defined on customer contacts of a given type. Turn on the Default switch to default the Characteristic Type when customer contacts of the given type are created. Enter a Characteristic Value to use as the default for a given Characteristic Type when the Default switch is turned on.