Introduction to service/order communication
What is service/order communication?
Your end-users will receive communication from Engage during their customer journey, as email or SMS. Some of this will be marketing: to inform of promotions, to remind about bonus checks, to send birthday wishes. An end-user can choose to opt-out of these kind of communications.
The other kind of communication is triggered by something the end-user has actively done or requested. Of this, there are two types: order communication and service communication.
Order communication
This is communication (email or SMS) directly connected to an order. Example are:
Order confirmation
Item pick-up information
Delivery notice
Payment confirmation
Service communication
This is every other kind of communication, such as:
Information that an item is back in stock
A response to a password reset request
Updates concerning the wish list
Abandoned cart reminders
Why use Engage to send communication?
There are many benefits to be gained from moving all end-user communication into Engage's control, such as:
Everything sent to the end-user will have a more consistent look and feel
Personalization is possible since the end-user is already known by Engage
There are fewer systems to keep track of for sending customer communication
Note
Communication from Engage to an end-user falls into two groups: those that were triggered or requested by that end-user, and those that weren't. You as an Engage customer have some wiggle room in deciding what falls into these each of these groups.
The Engage communication pipeline
All end-user communication begins by providing the relevant information through the Engage API. The different paths to this all make use of Engage's automations in some way, the main difference being which starting point is used.
Communication can be triggered through:
The /orders endpoint
Your custom trigger endpoints
Your automation workflows
The orders endpoint
To use the orders API endpoint, it needs to be activated (in the Retail module) by your Voyado Engage team. It was developed for displaying multiple products and their information, such as in an order email. This endpoint can be used with both emails and SMS but is particularly suited to the email channel. It is mainly used to send data about an ECOM-order, although sending from POS is also possible as long as the customer is an identified contact.
All data relating to the order needs to be sent for each call. No data is stored about orders; only the data submitted in the call can be used to trigger specific automation flows, based on the order status and payment status that have been configured.
The data submitted can be used as personalization data in the automation flows to build order confirmations, delivery notices, and other transactional communication. An email template module which can traverse the article lines for an order is produced by your Voyado team.
The JSON to be sent to this endpoint must first be validated, otherwise an error message is likely
The order must also be sent in the same currency the contact has used, shown in the currency field.
Note
The orders endpoint is only used for communication connected to an order and will not store any data in Engage for segmentation purposes.
Custom trigger endpoints
These are a more dynamic and lightweight way to trigger communication, but are not quite as "smart" as the orders endpoint. This method is typically used in the cases that are not concerned with order communication.
Read more about Custom Triggers here.
Order and payment status
Once the orders API is activated the order statuses and payment statuses for this particular project need to be configured to determine which transactional flow to trigger. Ask your Voyado team about this. Apart from this function, these statuses not used anywhere else in Engage. They are defined per client.