THE ESSENTIALS

Before taking a more detailed look at Contacts, let's get familiar with some key terms used throughout CRM.COM regarding Contacts.

An example of the type of information that can be logged for a contact includes their name, surname, email, phone number, one or more addresses, preferred language, date of birth, and more.

On the financial side of things, each contact owns a CRM.COM Wallet, an account, and multiple payment methods that can be viewed and managed from front-end applications. A contact can be uniquely identified using their CRM.COM Wallet code, but various other identification methods are also available.

Contact Identity

This is the contact authentication and identification credentials. Their registration, identification and authentication processes can be carried out via front-end applications using the CRM.COM self-service APIs, with the authentication method chosen by the business through the back-end system.

Types

A Contact can be of type Person or Company. Person type Contacts are physical persons, whereas Company type contacts are commercial businesses. The type is set upon Contact creation and cannot be changed after that.

Open

Person type contact

Open

Company type contact

Contact Code

This is the CRM.COM code which, again, uniquely identifies a Contact. It can be set manually during contact creation or automatically generated by the system. Once set, the Contact code cannot be changed.

Birthday

A Contact's birthday can be set, therefore allowing the business to communicate with the Contact to wish them many happy returns or even offer them the opportunity to take advantage of a Reward Offer on their special day.

A Contact's birthday can be set:

• By the Contact using a consumer mobile app/portal (using a self-service API)

• By a user through the back-end system

Name Day

A name day is a day of celebration that is typically associated with one's Christian name. Name days can be utilised in Reward Offer configurations to award contacts on their special day. A prepared list of Christian Orthodox name days can be imported into http://CRM.COM for this purpose.

A Contact's name day can be set:

• By the Contact using a consumer mobile app/portal (using a self-service API)

• By a user through the back-end system

Language

CRM.COM is a multilingual system, the default language setting is English, but other languages can also be enabled via the system settings. 

The Contact's selected language is used in customer-facing apps/portals, but also for communications sent to the Contact, and can be changed:

• By the Contact themselves using a consumer mobile app/portal (through a self-service API)

• By a user through the back-end system

Country of Agreement

If your business operates on a multi-regional level, you can configure multiple supported Countries of Agreement, thus easily distinguishing the pricing and taxation policies for your product offerings in different countries.

During the contact registration procedure, contacts are prompted to select their Country of Agreement (typically the country they reside in). When placing an order, a Contact will see prices and taxes based on their selected Country of Agreement.

Sales Model

Pricing policies are applied based on Sales Models as well, which is one of the key conditions. There are two default sales models: Wholesale, which is by default assigned when creating a Contact of type Company, and Retail, which is assigned to Contacts of type Person. Additional Sales Models can be configured and assigned to Contacts, denoting the prices that will be applied when contacts place orders or are billed for services.

Loyalty Identifiers

Typically a loyalty identifier is a Contact loyalty number in an external system. If Contacts are imported to CRM.COM, the respective loyalty identifier (if available) can be set for each Contact. 

Loyalty identifiers are also used in front-end registration processes (app, portal) to create authentication credentials for an existing Contact in the system. 

Loyalty identifiers can also be manually added to Contacts via the CRM.COM back-end system. Refer to the Rewards section in this manual for further details.

Interaction State

This state reflects the Contact's engagement with the Business. It's determined by the timing of the Contact’s last financial transaction, i.e. invoice, payment, refund, payout, credit note, top-up, or transfer:

• Never Engaged - No financial transactions have ever been performed

• Engaged - A financial transaction was performed within the last 60 days

• Dormant - A financial transaction took place between 61-120 days ago

• Resting - A financial transaction was performed more than 120 days ago

When Contacts are first created, they automatically assume a state of Never Engaged. They only become Engaged once a financial transaction takes place for that Contact.

Identity Verification

This state indicates whether CRM.COM has verified the Contact's identity. Verification is performed via an activation link or an OTP sent to the Contact in a communication during the registration process.

If a Contact's identity has not been verified, there are no restrictions to the type of actions that can be performed on behalf of the Contact via the back-end system. However, it's possible for front-end applications to force a contact to verify their email (using the email/password registration option) to access the app/portal, refer to the Contact Authentication & Identities settings for further details.

Referral Code

When a Contact is created in http://CRM.COM , it is assigned a unique 6-character alphanumeric referral code. This code can be set via the self-service API when creating the Contact, or alternatively, it can be auto-generated by the system. 

The referral code is used during a referred Contact's registration and can result in the referring Contact receiving an award subject to the Referral Reward Offer configuration. 

Marketing Settings

Contacts can specify whether they want to receive marketing-related material via email or SMS from the business; these settings can be changed at any point in time. Contacts can opt-in or opt-out from receiving such communications via:

• The consumer mobile app/portal (using a self-service API)

• The back-end system - manually changed by a system user

• Links in a communication sent to the Contact

Note that the Business can override (i.e. ignore) the marketing communication settings for critical communications when configuring a Communication Plan for mandatory system communications, such as a verification communication sent during the Contact registration process.

CIMs

A Customer Identification Medium (CIM) is an attribute that uniquely identifies a contact when interacting with CRM.COM. CIMs are particularly useful when processing Purchase Events, and can be used to identify the contact responsible for the transaction.

CIMs are configurable via Settings and can include the following:

• Card (one or more bank cards in hashed format)

• Phone (a single mobile phone)

• Email (a single email address)

• Gift Pass (one or more gift passes redeemed by the Contact)

• Loyalty Identifier (one or more contact loyalty codes)

If multiple CIMs are used, a contact can be uniquely identified using any of these.

Anonymise Contact vs Delete Contact

In compliance with GDPR, anonymising a Contact removes all identifying particulars and details of a Contact so that they are no longer distinguishable within the system without actually removing the Contact and its related transactions. Refer to Anonymise Contact for further details. 

On the other hand, deleting a Contact permanently deletes it and all its related transactions from the system. Refer to Delete Contact for the specific validation checks performed prior to deletion.

Tags

Tags allow you to label Contacts with one or more custom terms so that they can be categorised and filtered in the system. Refer to the Generic Settings manual for further information on configuring and managing tags.

Communities

A Contact can create their own community by adding other contacts. Once a contact joins a community, they can enjoy the community's benefits. These benefits are set by the community owner, who has the authority to:

• Grant them access to perform various actions on behalf of the company from a front-end app/portal.

• Share their CRM.COM Wallet balance with the members.

• Share their usage allowance with the community members, with the owner covering both the usage and the recurring billing charges.

Contact Registry

The Service Owner optionally sets up a contact registry, which maintains common contact details (i.e. first name, middle name, last name, email, phone, CIMs) and can be shared with the Businesses that opt-in to use it. 

If a Business opts-in to using the Service Owner’s contact registry, it will have access to use the contacts of the registry and the common details of these contacts. Contacts can only be created by the Service Owner, and contact common details can only be updated by the Service Owner (using the Service Owner’s API key). However, the Business can create and maintain additional personal information for each Contact, such as date of birth, name, day and addresses.

Refer to the Business Network manual for further details about enabling the contact registry. 

Managing Contacts

Navigate to CRM > My Contacts to view the summary screen of existing Contacts.

On the summary screen, Contacts can be searched for by applying a filter with search criteria or, alternatively, by using any of the following details:

• First name

• Last name

• First name and Last name

• Email

• Telephone number

• Contact code

Select a Contact from the summary screen to see all details relevant to the Contact. Note that aside from personal information, you will also see financial, rewards and subscription-related information on this screen too.

A back-end system user can manage the Contact's information and perform various (mainly financial-related) actions from this screen by clicking the options button. The actions menu options are separated into four areas - Contact Actions, Financial Actions, Reward Actions and Custom Form Actions.

Contact Actions

Anonymise Contact

A system user can anonymise a contact by selecting the corresponding option on the Contact screen. Prior to anonymisation, it's necessary to terminate the contact's accounts, which entails a manual process due to potential associations with pending Orders, Service Requests, active Subscriptions, and similar.

If the Contact in question has funds in their Business Pocket, then those funds can be transferred to another Contact within the system.

In scenarios where the Contact belongs to multiple organisations within a multi-tenant platform), then anonymisation will solely affect the current organisation.

Delete Contact

Deleting a contact will permanently remove all data associated with it from the system. Please note that this action cannot be reversed. The following should also be taken into account about deleting a Contact:

• Contacts at the Service Owner (contact registry) level cannot be deleted.

• Contacts that were created for Businesses utilising the Service Owner's registry can be deleted at the Business level but not at the contact registry level.

• Contacts who still have rented devices on them (for subscription services) cannot be deleted until the devices have been returned.

• No financial validation checks whatsoever are performed prior to deleting a contact (e.g. any unpaid invoices will be disregarded).

• Deleted contacts and their transactions are excluded from all analytics representations.

• Account and Business Commerce balances are not transferable, the Business Open balance can be transferred prior to deleting the contact.

Create Activity

Create and schedule an Activity (an internal task) to be carried out for the Contact. Refer to the Activities manual for further information on configuring and managing Activities.

Add Service

Select and add a subscription service for the Contact. Implies that Subscription services have been configured in the system.

CRM Actions

Create Service Request

Create a Service Request for the Contact. Service requests are formal requests from the Contact to the Business, requesting specific actions, such as providing information for a particular service, reporting technical issues, filing complaints and more.

Place Order

Place an order for the Contact from the contact screen (as opposed to navigating to Commerce > Orders).

Financial Actions

Multiple financial-related actions can be performed against the Contact's account or wallet. For information on financial actions, refer to the Financials manual.

Reward Actions

Create Purchase

Create a Purchase Event on behalf of the Contact. Any eligible awards will be granted, but the spending of any sort will not be triggered. Any financial transactions generated by the purchase will be logged in the normal manor.

Custom Form Actions

View the Contact's details using a configured Custom Form. This option is only available if Custom Forms have been created via Settings > Platform > Custom Forms.

Attachments

Upload and manage multiple attachment files and links related to the Contact for internal use.

When an attachment has been successfully uploaded, you can see it on the Attachments card. Click on an attachment to download it.

Custom Preferences

Aside from the standard information stored for a Contact in CRM.COM, it’s also possible to create your own Custom Fields. Custom Fields provide the flexibility to store additional information not catered for in CRM.COM, but is nonetheless important to your organisation.

Custom Fields can be edited by selecting the options button in the respective area. Any Custom Fields set for the Contact will be visible on this card in view mode.

Payment Methods

A Contact's Payment Methods represent the payment options they can select for online orders or recurring billing payments. These options are determined by the organisation and can be managed under  Settings > Financials > Financials > Payment Methods. Refer to the Payment Methods manual for further information.

Contacts have the choice to add and manage multiple Payment Methods via a front-end system. The only Payment Method that can be configured via the backend is the Account Debit method, primarily used for B2B flows.

The first payment method added becomes the primary one (marked with a P on the UI) and serves as the default option for online and automatic payments.

Deleting the Primary Payment Method

As mentioned above, Contacts can manage their own payment methods through the mobile app or portal. The following applies in cases where the Contact removes their primary payment method:

• The primary payment method can be deleted, even if it's the Contact's only payment method.

• If a contact has two payment methods and selects to remove the primary payment method, the other one automatically becomes their primary payment method.

Devices

Devices are physical goods which are either owned or rented by a Contact and may or may not be associated with a Contact's subscriptions. Select the devices option button to view current devices or add new ones. Refer to the Subscriptions manual for further details on devices.

Communities

Contacts have the ability to create communities to fund their members or delegate certain actions to them.

A community can be created either by the contact themselves through the front-end app/portal or, in the case of B2B flows, by a system user via the back-end system.

A Contact can be a member of multiple communities and can perform community-related actions via front-end systems by switching between the community group profiles. When the Contact switches to the community group profile, they can only perform actions that are subject to the access level and permissions assigned to them.

Adding Contacts to a Community

The same steps are used to create a community and add members to either a Person or Company type Contact from the back end.

Navigate to the contact screen of a Person or Company type Contact, and scroll down to the Community section.

Click on the options button and select Add Person.

The Add Person modal appears, where you must locate the Contact to be added to the community. Remember that you can only add Person-type contacts to a community.

• Contact - If the Contact is already in the system, select Existing Contact and type their name in the respective placeholder to locate and select them. If the Contact doesn't exist in the system, you can create them on the fly by selecting New Contact and providing their first name and last name.

• Relation - Select the contact's relationship with the community's owner. Relationships can be configured via Community Relations in the system settings.

• Group - Optionally select the group that the contact will be assigned to. To create a new group simply type the group name in the placeholder, and you will see an option to ‘Create …’ the new group.

• Access Level - A Contact's access level can be set to either:

  • Full access - No restrictions apply (i.e. Admin user)

    • For Person-type communities, the Admin user is the community owner, i.e. the Contact who owns and manages the community.

    • For Company type communities, a back-end user must add a contact and assign them full permissions (i.e. Admin); this Contact can then, in turn, add and manage other contacts (e.g. employees, managers etc.) to the company's community.

  • Restricted access - Restrictions apply based on the Allowed Permissions set for the Contact.

• Allowed Permissions - When a contact assumes the role of community owner, they will have certain permissions available to them via the front-end. The contact can switch to the community owner’s profile using the Switch Role option on front-end applications.

  • Contact management - Ability to update the community's contacts (& contact details).

  • Service Request management - Ability to create and view service requests.

  • Order management - Ability to create and manage orders.

Select Save to add the Contact to the community.

Viewing the Members of the Contact's Community

Navigate to the contact screen to view the contact’s community members.

Select a member to edit their membership settings.

Manage Allowance

This feature allows community owners to subscribe to services that provide usage allowance and share this allowance among their community members. An example of this is a bus company (e.g., City Buses) allocating a fuel allowance for each of its community members (e.g. drivers). The driver can refuel their vehicle at the petrol station, thus consuming allocated funds/units from their allowance.

Firstly the community owner (City Buses) must subscribe to a service that allows usage consumption. Next, an allowance must be allocated to the eligible community members by navigating to the community members screen (View People) and selecting Manage Allowance.

Enable the Manage Allowance toggle and set the community member’s allowance.

Manage Wallet Sharing

If the Wallet sharing functionality is enabled for a community member, then that member can use funds from the CRM.COM Wallet of the community owner when making purchases. This feature promotes seamless transactions within the community, allowing members to automatically transfer and use funds from the owner’s wallet to pay off a purchase.

Wallet sharing would typically be set up via a front-end app or portal, but a back-end system user can also set up wallet sharing restrictions for members of a community by navigating to the Contact screen (of the community owner) and selecting View People.

When the community members are displayed, select Manage Wallet Sharing for the member in question.

Enable the Wallet sharing option and optionally select a Commerce Pool (i.e. restrictions can apply to the time, location and type of products). Optionally set the maximum amount of money that can be transferred and used per (calendar) month by the selected member.

Viewing the Communities a Contact is a Member of

A contact may have their own community but may also be a member of other communities.

Leaving a Community

A community member can be removed from a community by selecting the contact’s options on the community members screen and selecting Delete or Leave Community.

Financials

The Financials section within the Contact screen provides an overview of the contact's financial status, displaying details such as their Account and Wallet balances. For guidance on managing these balances and executing financial tasks on behalf of the contact, please consult the Financials and Wallet manuals.

Subscriptions

The Subscriptions tab displays the Subscription services that the Contact has subscribed to and their effective terms. For further information on managing contact subscriptions, refer to the Subscriptions manual.

Activity Feed

The Activity Feed tab displays a chronological record of all business events conducted for the Contact, including communications and financial actions (whether processed or in Draft state). You can use the filter option to narrow down activities by type or click on a link to access the detailed transaction information.

Rewards

Rewards is the process whereby a Business awards its Contacts in recognition of their loyalty. At first glance, the basic rewards information, such as the Contact's current reward tier and joined reward schemes, is visible on the rewards card.

Refer to the Rewards manuals for information on setting up Reward Schemes, Reward Offers and reward tiering.

Reward Tier

Reward tiering involves categorizing Contacts according to their purchasing behavior. The concept is that as Contacts make more purchases, they earn greater rewards. Upon reaching a specified number of units within a defined timeframe, they progress to the next reward tier, unlocking additional benefits.

If reward tiering has been configured for the Business, the Contact's current reward tier colour is displayed, along with a progress bar indicating how close the Contact is to achieving the next rewards tier.

Each Contact's tiering information has two main attributes:

• Period Value Units - Value units earned from purchases during the current interval.

• Lifetime Value Units - Total value units earned from purchases since the customer registered with the Business.

Managing Rewards

Click on the options button (…) and select Edit to view/manage the Contact's reward scheme details.

Options include:

Block contact from spending

If this toggle is enabled, the Contact cannot spend their Wallet commerce balance (i.e. any awarded amounts) when purchasing/ordering.

Loyalty Identifiers

Create one or more unique loyalty identifiers to identify a Contact via an external system. Loyalty identifiers also act as CIMs in the software.

Signed-up Reward Schemes

Any reward schemes that the Contact has signed up for will appear here, along with the option to sign up for other available reward schemes.

Contact Settings

All the contact settings (subject to user permissions) can be configured by navigating to Settings > Contacts & CRM.

There are six configurable system settings related to Contacts in the Contacts section:

Name Display

Select how Contact names should be displayed throughout the system. Select from a combination of first name, middle name and last name.

Name Day Rules

Define name days (if applicable), or import a pre-defined list. Use name days to increase customer sales - configure Reward Offers around name days, communicate with contacts celebrating their name day, and offer them a discount on a purchase for their name day.

Based on Applications configuration, a Contact can optionally set the name day they celebrate via an app or portal.

Categories

Setting up Contact categories allows an organisation to group Contacts based on similar attributes. These categories can then be used throughout the software to differentiate the organisation's behaviour towards the Contacts.

For example, use categories for Segmentation purposes, allowing you to group together Contacts belonging to a particular category. These segments can then be employed for setting product prices or specified in reward offers to grant awards to contacts within specific categories.

Contact categories are assigned to Contacts by system users.

Customer Identification Medium (CIM)

Define how your Contacts will be uniquely identified within CRM.COM. Choose from a bank Card number, Phone, Email, Gift Pass or a combination of these. Authorised applications (e.g., external integration systems) can also use this identification method to submit transactions for Contacts using the selected CIM as a unique identifier.

Contact Authentication & Identities

Select the how contacts will be required to register (using the app/portal) and the method of verifying their registration, e.g. Phone/OTP implies that contacts will be required to register using their phone number and verify using an OTP sent to that phone number.

The selected registration method will uniquely identify all contacts throughout the system. Verification methods are also subject to configured communication Integrations.

When enabling one of these options, other settings also become available:

• Email & Password

  • Require email verification - Contacts must verify their email address by clicking on a link sent to them in an email. Failure to verify their email will deny them access to the app/portal.

  • Does not require email verification - Contacts do not need to verify their email. Once the registration flow has been completed, they are granted access to the app/portal.

• Email & OTP

  • Support Demo Contact - This option appears only when Email/OTP is enabled. Its purpose is to set a demo contact when submitting the app to the Stores for approval prior to publication. These details need to be included when submitting your app to the Stores.

    • Contact - Select from one of the existing contacts in the system

    • OTP - Specify an OTP of your choice.

• Facebook

  • Manage Facebook App - Set the App ID and App Secret provided by Facebook.

• OpenID Connect

  • Manage OpenID Connect - This option uses an OIDC provider to authenticate a contact’s identity. At the end of this process, the contact is created and signed-in.

    • Application ID - Get this from your selected provider.

    • Configuration Document URL - Get this from your selected provider (ends in ‘well-known/openid-configuration’).

    • Client Secret - Get this from your selected provider.

    • Backchannel Logout URL - The endpoint to which logout notifications are sent from the OpenID provider to logout a contact’s session.

• Applicable for all applications - The selected identification and verification method applies to all Application configurations set up in the back-end system.

• Applicable for selected applications - The selected identification and verification method applies to specific Applications only. Search and select these Applications by name.

Community Relations

Configure relationships that can be assigned to contacts when being added to a contact community.

Industries & Sub-industries

Set up Industries and their sub-industries that can be assigned to Company type Contacts and to other Organisations (Merchants/Service Providers). This feature is particularly useful for Organisations, enabling Contacts using the app/portal to filter their locations based on the industry and sub-industry to which they belong.

This setting is not located under the Contacts system settings but can be found under Settings > Platform > Generic > Industries & Sub-industries

Reference Material

You may also find it helpful to refer to the following manuals for further reading in relation to Contacts.

Generic Settings

Generic Settings

Import Data

Import Contacts to CRM.COM

Bulk Data Operations

Finance

Finance

Rewards

Reward Offers

Subscriptions

Subscriptions

Billing

Billing

Custom Extensibility

Create custom fields and custom forms for Contacts

Custom Extensibility

Integrations

Integrations

Applications

CRM.COM Apps

Automations

Automations

Customer Events

Customer Events

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