The Context, often called the Customer Context is the name for the key device that contains all of the known, imputed, calculated, predicted and derived information about a customer at the current point of an interaction.

The context typically includes as much customer data as it is possible to know and is required for interaction management prior to the interaction. This typically includes all information about products held, services used, purchases paid, payments, complaint history and crucially all other interaction history, whether this has been controlled by the current interaction management tool or not.

However the context of the interaction also includes non-customer information such as the date, hour of day and the physical location of the interaction. Indeed the physical location can lead to a huge number of new imputed informaton that may be useful to the interaction such as distance to store, distance from home etc.

Thirdly the context of the interaction needs to include the channel and the cpabilities of the channel. Is this a manned or unmanned channel? Does the channel have the ability to capture more detailed context. In online channels this might involve web tacking behaviour on public or private sites, or it might be mouse location or eye tracking information.

In a manned channel the agents capabililty and skills also forms parts of the the context of the interaction. An agent database of skills provides information that could be critical to the management of the interaction.

Use of the customer context:

• In defining eligibility criteria for recommendations
• Customer governance rules
• As an input to real-time scoring
• Ranking and prioritisation of recommendations
• Personalization of messages through merge fields
• Selecting variable content
• Assisting with the downstream fulfilment process by avoiding replication of data
• Reporting about the success of interaction management

Channels also often have the capability to capture extra information which could not be known prior to the interaction. This might be as simple as the stated reason for call given to the agent and cpatured through a sdrop down menu. It could be the customer tone of voice captured through sophsiticated voice analysis software or it may be the agents interpretation of that through the use of simple happy, neutral and sad smiley faces. In any case we have to cater for the unknown.