Every time iService receives a question (customer email, chat, customer ticket submitted from a form), it determines whether a contact exists for the sender. If there isn't already a contact in the database, iService will create a new contact. Information you gather about contacts is stored in contact properties. Agents can create new contacts using the New Contact page.
Contacts are a key aspect of iService, because every interaction is associated with a single contact. All of your conversations with a contact are archived within their history.
The Contact Type field is used to label and group contacts.
The Contact Types property
The values in the list can be updated in the Settings - Lists page. The values are just labels with no special purpose, except for the Spam label. This label is added to a contact whenever an agent uses the Mark as Spam action on one of the contact's questions. Filters are often created to categorize future questions from contacts marked as Spam into the _Spam topic. So care should be taken when using this label.
Contact properties are used to store information about a contact. Every tenant has default contact properties for customer information such as first name, last name, email address, etc. You can create an unlimited number of custom properties to store information relevant to contacts that interact with your organization. These custom properties are shown in a separate section of the Contact Details page grouped by segment. To learn about creating contact properties, see the Settings - Contact Properties page.
The first step in interacting with a contact is finding them. There are several ways to find contacts.
Searching - the most common way to load contact details is to perform a search. You can use the quick search box in the left navigation panel to search by email address or login. Or, you can use the full Contact Search page to construct a more detailed search query.
Quick customer search box
Links from Interactions - you can also load contact details using the hyperlink on the contacts email address in interaction search results.
Customer email hyperlink to the contact page
My Message Inbox - the My Message Inbox page loads the contact details for each interaction selected. Since the history is also shown here, there is usually no need to load the contact page separately.
Everything you need to know about a contact can be found in the contact page. This includes all of their contact property values, subscriptions to mailing lists and campaigns, and the history of every interaction you have had with the contact.
In addition to all of the details about the contact, a contact summary page shows an overview of contact information, recent interactions, and important metrics. The summary page can be modified by your administrator to reflect your unique requirements.
One of the main features of iService is managing email correspondence with your customers. The most common processes is responding to a question, but you can also initiate a conversation using the Agent Email action.
The built-in agent email action is presented with every interaction that you view.
Sending agent email from history
When you send an agent email from an existing interaction iService quotes the original question in your message.