Business rules

Business rules are the driving force behind NDEP's live-chat targeting engine, which launches a live-chat engagement.

Note: Business rules can also launch or suppress any automated solution, including both proactive and reactive filtering guides and informational guides.

Since providing live-agent services incurs expenses, business rules help increase sales while reducing costs by strategically:

  • assisting customers who may need assistance, based on their website behavior, because they are likely to complete a commissionable sale

  • suppressing some visitors from viewing chat and call services, based on their website behavior, because they are unlikely to complete a commissionable sale

Tip: The goal is not to chat with all customers, because that is not cost effective.

Business rules specify:

  • a set of conditions

  • actions that the system takes when that set of conditions is met

In NDEP, business rules determine whether to display a chat button or chat window on a web page, and how to route a live chat to a specific agent group.

Each business rule has a condition (if statement) and an action (then statement):

  • If the condition is true, then NDEP executes the corresponding action.

  • If the condition is false, then no action occurs.

Examples of business rules

  • If the user visits the Shopping Cart page, then show the Click-2-Chat button.
  • If the user spends 10 minutes on marketing pages, then show a chat window.
  • If the user spent 10 or more minutes on the website during a previous visit, then show the Click-2-Call button on the home page.
  • If the user closes a proactive chat window, then show Click-2-Chat button in the buy-flow (purchasing pages).
  • If the user filled out the Last Name form field but has not progressed to the Email form field after 30 seconds, then show a chat window in the Payment page.
  • If the user viewed 3 product-details pages, then show the automated guide.
  • If the user made a purchase in last 7 days, then suppress chat buttons and windows.
  • If the user is from an affiliate website, then suppress all Nuance services.

How business rules help

In general, business rules help:

  • improve the customer experience

  • target the customer at the right time

  • improve the conversion rate

Track visitor behavior for reporting

Business rules send information about visitor behavior to the reporting server. Business analysts can access this information from Portal or a custom Excel report linked to Portal data.  The type of visitor behavior information that is stored for each business rule includes the number of times that visitors do the following:

  • satisfy the rule's launch criteria (the Targeted metric)
  • click a reactive button
  • view a proactive window
  • interact with an agent
  • achieve the criteria for the program's "assisted" event
  • complete an online purchase after meeting the "assisted" criteria.

Control which data is displayed to agents

Rules can control which data is displayed to agents in the Agent Desktop interface. They provide valuable visitor information to agents and supervisors about user goals, which helps chat and call agents lead a successful chat interaction or phone call. Visitor information that is useful to the agent may include:

  • location (country/state/region)

  • items in the shopping cart

  • value of items in the shopping cart

  • total time on website

  • external search engine keywords used in navigating to the website

  • age or gender (although this data is not commonly not available)

Tip: Use naming conventions for business rules. When business rules follow a naming convention, they are easy for agents to understand at a glance: they can quickly understand which business rule triggered the live chat session, which helps them quickly learn part of the user's story, and anticipate the user's concerns, such as the user's goals, search intentions, and questions. For information on naming conventions, see Business-rule naming conventions.

Control which data is displayed in the browser console

All popular web browsers have consoles that web developers use for testing and debugging. Most browser consoles can be accessed by pressing the F12 key on the keyboard. The BR3 engine enables Nuance to create rules that display information in the console that is useful for testing or debugging. While a rule may display any information within the console, the following types of information are most commonly displayed there:

  • name of the triggered business rule

  • whether agents are available after a business rule is triggered

  • name of a triggered custom event

  • Nuance customer ID

  • chat ID

  • username of agent assigned to the current chat

  • whether a visitor is assigned to the control group or non-control group

Get started

Note: To create and edit business rules, as described in this section, the BR GUI Edit and SaaS Client Administrator roles must be assigned to your user profile. For detailed instructions, see General Information Tab.

  1. Design business rules. For details, see Design a business rule.

  2. Create or edit business rules from the Rules tab of the Business Rules page. For details, see Manage business rules in the user interface. From this page you open either the Create Rule or the Edit Rule page. Both pages have the following tabs:

You can also:

Tips for organizing a library of business rules

Categorize business rules by the following dimensions:

  • Display mode—Is it a proactive or reactive rule?

  • Solution type—What type of solution is being displayed? Chat or guide?

  • Action type—Does executing the rule show something or suppress something?

  • Launch condition—What are the conditions that trigger the rule to execute an action?