Overview

A Contact is a person or a company that your organisation is doing business with. CRM.COM maintains full details of your contacts such as emails, phones, addresses, payment methods and this information is used primarily to communicate to contacts. In addition optional data protection compliance and KYC (Know your Customer) verification information can be handled.  

Setting Up Contacts 

Before you start using Contacts, you must set up the system to reflect your own business needs.

Settings

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Contact Settings provide a set of rules associated to contact identification and authorisation. 

• Display & Uniqueness
  • Name Display Rule: Select how the contact name should be displayed throughout CRM.COM.
  • Person Uniqueness Rule: Select one or more contact details that will make a 'Person' contact unique throughout the system, e.g. Last name and ID number or Social Security Number. Note that the contact details used for the uniqueness rules are mandatory and must be provided during Contact creation.
  • Company Uniqueness Rule: Likewise, select one or more contact details to ensure the uniqueness of a 'Company' contact in the system.  
• Authorisation settings:  Specify the default options for sending advertising communications (Send direct marketing material) or associated promotions (Send affiliate marketing material) to new contacts. These settings can be amended for each individual contact on the Contact screen. 
• Consent Settings: Contact consent is the procedure of obtaining written permission from a Contact (person or company) allowing you to keep and use their personal information for as long as necessary, in compliance with the general data protection regulation (EU) or your regional data privacy laws. Select 'Enable contact consent' if your company will be enforcing such a procedure, you can select how the data of contacts will be manipulated according to the state the consent is in. Refer to Contact Consent for more information and setup instructions.   

Supported Types

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Supported types are the various types of contact details allowed for Addresses, Emails, Phones and Relations. The contact details available are the same for both 'Person' contacts and 'Company' contacts.

• Label: Give the preferred name to be used by the system for each specific contact detail, if the label is left blank then the original name provided will be used (e.g Home, Business etc.).  
• Supported for Person/Supported for Company:  Select which details should be available on the Contacts screen for both person and company contacts. 
• Mandatory for Person/ Mandatory for Company: Specify whether it should be compulsory to provide this information during contact creation. 
• Default for Person/Default for Company: Select one of the chosen supported types to be the default selected type for person contacts, and one for company contacts.   

Categories

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Configure the Categories to be used for classifying contacts according to their business role (e.g. customers, partners etc.). Use the +New option to create a category. Categories can be created using a hierarchical structure, if a category is a parent category then leave 'Parent' blank.  

Industries and Industry Sectors

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An economy is made up of sectors which can be broken down into industries. A sector refers to a large segment of the economy, whereas an industry consists of a specific group of companies with common business activity. An example of an industry sector could be Food & Beverage, and its industries (among others) could include hotels & tourist accommodation, restaurants, snack bars, cafeterias etc. Once industries and industry sectors are configured in the system, they can be added to 'Company' type contacts and used for grouping and referencing.

Name Day Rules

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Name day rules allow the automatic assignment of a name day to contacts of type 'Person', so that they can be contacted with wishes and/or rewards for  their name day. You can define the name day rules manually, or alternatively import (or export) them using the respective action from the Actions menu option.      

Use the Edit option to initiate the configuration. 

• Apply on: Select whether the name day rules will be applied only to 'Contacts without name day' specified, or to 'All Contacts' (regardless of whether a name day is already specified).
• Select +Name day rule to start entering the name days. 
• Name Day: Select the day and month of the name day using the drop-down lists (e.g. 23 April). 
• Description: Enter a brief description for the name day (e.g. St. George's day).  
• Names: Enter the names that celebrate on the specific day separated by a comma ',' (e.g. George,Georgos,Georgia,Georgina,Gina etc.).  
• Repeat the above steps to add more name days, then select Save to save the name days created.

A background process needs to start (run) in order to populate the 'Name day' date for those Contacts satisfying the name day rules. To do this choose Modify, to schedule the background process, then Save, or choose Run now to start the process immediately. Of course name days can also be entered directly from the Contact screen (in the Demographics section) for each individual contact. 

Anonymisation & KYC 

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• Anonymisation: Define the settings for anonymising contacts in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).  
• KYC Settings: Define the company's Know Your Customer (KYC) business rules by which KYC profiles will be assigned to contacts based on the information they have provided.

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Using Contacts 

'Contacts' is used to organise the details of customers, prospect customers, users and partners. Specify the search criteria matching the contacts you are interested in locating on the Contacts search screen, or alternatively use New > Person or Company to enter the details of a new contact. Provide the information defined as mandatory on the Contacts  screen and Save the contact. You can Delete a Contact as long as there is no associated account.

 Contacts may have one of the following life cycle states (appears next to the contact's name):

• Financial - the contact is associated with an account. 
• Marketing - the contact is not associated with an account, this is the default status when a contact is first created. The 'Marketing' life cycle state of a contact will automatically become 'Financial' if it is associated with an account.
• Organisational - the contact is associated with an organisational unit or user. Contacts with this life cycle state can also be viewed from the organisational units. Please refer to the System Settings > Network Management Settings manual for further information. 

Importing Contacts 

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The most efficient way to create contacts is by importing an Excel or CSV file (Foundation > Utilities > Imports) which will automatically create the contacts, this is especially useful if the contacts are already available on a third party system. Templates in three different formats are available to download in order to prepare the file to be imported. Please refer to the relevant Foundation documentation for more information. 

Addresses

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Addresses entered for a contact are used by various processes in the system both for billing and delivery of goods and services. For example, in case of billing, an address can help to determine the taxes to be applied on products bought by the contact, and for delivery, the address can help determine if delivery is possible. Addresses of various types (e.g. Home, Business etc.) can be entered for each contact, one of the addresses must be selected as the primary address.  See Supported Types on how to configure address types.   

Additional Contact Details

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At the bottom of the Contacts screen there are five sections available for providing further information regarding the contact:  

• Demographics/Company Profile: For a 'Person' contact enter date of birth and personal id information, for a 'Company' contact enter business details and company registration information.  
• Preferences and Relations: Marketing authorisation settings and relations to other contacts are recorded here.
  • Authorisation Preferences: Contacts can opt-in and out of communications regarding direct (in-house) and affiliate (partner) marketing campaigns, but they do not have the option to opt out of communications regarding financial matters, such as bills. Specify whether the contact wishes to receive direct and affiliate marketing material (the settings default to those defined in Authorisation Settings). Contacts can update their authorisation preferences directly from their email, for more information refer to Dynamic Links Settings in the Communications manual.
  • Relations: Identify any contact relation to other contacts (either business or personal), select the type of relation from a list of pre-defined relations provided by the system. Additional contact relations can also be defined (see Supported Types).     
• Attachments: Any file attachments relating to the contact can be referenced here, e.g. documents supplied by the contact for the KYC verification procedure, consent forms for keeping and processing  personal data etc. For attachments related to KYC verification be sure to specify the attachment 'classification' in order to allow the KYC profile to be assigned correctly.   
• Security Information: Select the collaboration profile group to which this contact's details belong. The collaboration profile selected determines which data owned by the particular group can be shared (accessed and/or modified) between other groups with regards to predefined privacy levels. Collaboration groups can be defined via Configuration > System Settings > Setup Network Management Settings > Collaboration Profiles - refer to the relevant Configuration manual for further information.

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Other Contact related processes

Communicating contact details

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The existing details of a Contact can be sent to the Contact through the Communications procedures. It is also possible to automate communications by setting up an 'Event Based Communication Definition' accordingly. You can use tags related to contact details (special text that is automatically replaced by values from a specific entity) when creating communications. Tags are available for selection by typing '#'. Refer to the Communications manual for a complete list of tags.

KYC Profiles

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Know Your Customer (or KYC) is the process through which a company verifies and establishes the actual identity of its customers (contacts). In order to achieve this, the company asks it's customers to provide valid and reliable identification documents (e.g. printed or scanned copies of their ID cards or passports) to be verified against the information given by the customer. KYC is important because it enables a company to have a better understanding of its customers in order to classify them based on their risk profile. The risk profile in turn determines specific restrictions that can be applied such as the ability to obtain an account or buy services and physical goods. Additionally, the KYC profile can be used as a condition in CRM.COM for the assignment of the Account credit limit, and Wallet balance thresholds. 

Setting up KYC Profiles

KYC flows and restrictions are applied only if the KYC Settings definition is 'Active'. Activation and deactivation can be enforced using the Actions option.

Choose Edit to set the following:

• KYC Profile Expiration Settings: Select 'Valid for a specific period' to define when the KYC profile of a contact will expire - a value must be supplied (e.g. 2) and a time interval (e.g. days, months, years). Alternatively, selecting 'Always Valid' indicates that the KYC profile of a contact will never expire. In cases where the KYC profile does expire, the contacts will have to go through the verification process again. 
• KYC Profiles: A list of KYC profiles to be applied to contacts, at least one KYC profile must exist if the KYC definition is 'Active'. 
  • Name: The name of the profile which must be unique.
  • Level: The level number to allow ordering of the KYC profiles (also see note below). 
  • Alternative Code: The KYC profile code. If it's not supplied then it will be automatically generated by the system. 
  • Requires Verification: Indicates whether the KYC profile will require verification after it is assigned to a customer.
  • Default: Select the default KYC profile. 

• KYC Person Profile Rules / KYC Company Profile Rules: These are the business rules that will determine the required contact details for each KYC profile to be used to subsequently establish if a contact passes the verification procedure or not. You can define separate KYC rules for individuals (person) and for companies. 

  • Field: Select the item of information to assign to the KYC profile, all contact details are available for selection. 
  • Semi-optional: This indicates that either one of two contact details must be supplied in order to apply the KYC rule (e.g. provide either the contact's ID number or passport number). At least two or none contact details must be marked as semi optional. 
  • Attachment classification: Indicate if a copy of a particular document type must be supplied by the contact to verify the specific contact details. An attachment can be a printed/scanned copy of a reliable document that proves information validity.  
  • Requires renewal: Identify which contact details require renewal after a period of time, e.g. an ID number doesn't require renewal as it never changes, but a passport number does.  
  • KYC Profile: Select the KYC profile to which this contact detail belongs to. 

Using KYC Profiles 

On creating a contact with an account (i.e. a contact of life cycle state 'Financial') the system will attempt to assign the KYC profile based on the configured KYC rules. If any of the rules have been specified as requiring an attachment (with a given 'Attachments classification') then these documents must be included in the Contact's 'Attachments' section with the correct classification in order to fulfill the KYC rule requirements. 

The KYC life cycle state indicates the customer's KYC verification progress:

• Pending verification: The customer has provided the necessary information but it has not yet been verified. 
• Verified: The contact's information has been verified and accepted.
• Refute: Verification failed. Not all the required information has been provided to allow verification, further actions are required (e.g. not all documents were submitted or uploaded documents have to be resent by the contact)
• Expired: The customer's KYC profile has expired and the whole verification procedure needs to be repeated again.

By default, a financial contact is allowed to buy physical goods or services only if their KYC status is 'Verified'. Contacts whose KYC profile is not verified or has expired cannot perform transactions.   

If a customer's KYC status is set to ‘Refute’ or ‘Expired’ then the customer will be required to re-submit all necessary information or documents again for verification purposes.  It is up to the user to ‘Verify’ or ‘Refute’ a customer’s KYC profile using the respective actions (see below), however a profile is automatically set to ‘Expired’ in any of the following cases:

• The allowable time frame since the customer's profile was last verified has expired - this expiration period is set in the KYC definition. 
• The ID card expiry date has passed 
• The passport expiry date has passed 

Whenever a contact is created or edited, the KYC profile is assigned accordingly if the following conditions are met:

• The necessary fields defined in the KYC definition are provided for the contact and that they comply with the defined requirements.  
• The contact is associated to an account (i.e. the contacts life cycle state is 'Financial').

• Verify:  The required documentation has been provided and validated by an agent against the information given by the contact. Once selected the life cycle state changes to 'Verified'. 
• Refute: The required documentation has not been submitted or must be re-sent. The agent must give a reason for refuting, and the life cycle state changes to 'Refute'. 

Expiring KYC profile: The KYC expiration process is a background process that checks the date of when each KYC profile should expire (based on the KYC configuration) and updates the KYC state of the profile to 'Expired'. 

Communicating KYC information to customers: This can be achieved by creating customer lists (segments) of financial customers with a specific KYC profile which expires in a user-defined number of days, and notifying the customers by sending them communications through a batch process. It is also possible to instantly privately communicate to a customer any changes associated to their KYC profile, so that they are informed upon a specific change. More specifically you can instantly send a communication (email/SMS) to customers upon the following events:

• On Assigning a KYC profile
• On KYC Profile Verification
• On KYC Profile Refute
• On KYC Profile Expiration

Refer to Configuration > Setup Communication Settings > Event-based Communication Rules and Foundation > Segmentation manuals for more information on how to set up the Event Based Communications, create and notify customers, and create the lists of customers that should be notified.

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• Requesting Contact consent for keeping and processing data.
• Anonymising data for contacts who have withdrawn their consent or who have been inactive for a specific period of time.
• Know-Your-Customer profiles for identifying and verifying the contact's details.
• Deleting contacts if certain criteria are fulfilled.

Each Contact has a state associated to their consent which can be one of the following:

• Pending: Contact has not yet provided their consent. 
• Accepted: Contact has provided their consent.
• Rejected: Contact has not given their consent.
• Withdrawn: A contact who previously provided their consent has withdrawn it. 

Setting up Contact Consent 

Setting up Anonymisation 

Define whether the contact anonymisation functionality should be enabled, then provide the necessary settings for extra checks before the anonymisation takes place in order to safeguard against erroneous anonymisation. The Minimum Number of Months which must have passed since the last contact update, subscription termination, financial transaction and wallet transaction posting. Then schedule when the process should be repeated as required.