Contact Properties

Contact Properties can be very useful in your work with visitors or customers, and allow a lot of flexibility for handling information.

In this article, you'll learn:

• What Contact Properties are
• How to set new Contact Properties
• How to use Contact Properties in flows
• How to use Lead Scoring
• How to add Contact Properties manually during chats

What are Contact Properties?

Contact Properties are pieces of data you can assign to your visitors and customers (through flows or manually). The Contact Properties assigned to the contacts are then stored in the Contacts section. You can also use those data later on for Condition nodes in flows so that your flows can be even more personalized. 

Set new Contact Properties 

To create a new Contact Property, go to the Settings > Contact Properties section in your Tidio admin panel. 

In there, you will see a list of any custom Contact Properties you may already have, and the option to create new ones in the top-right:

Note that the list also shows the operator who created the property, as well as the option to view any contacts who have a specific property assigned to them. You can also choose to hide your Contact Properties if you wish, so they do not come up in certain lists later on (to avoid using a property that shouldn't be used anymore).

Click on the Create a Contact Property button to give the property a name, e.g., 'Favourite color' or 'Shoe size.'

You also need to select the property type, which is crucial; this will determine what kind of data your new Contact Property can handle, e.g. text, email addresses, numbers, or URLs. Please note: you cannot modify the type later on, so make sure you select the correct one for your new property!

To edit an existing Contact Property's label, hover your mouse over the property and click the pencil icon. To show the contacts assigned to a specific property, click the Show Contacts button. 

To learn more about managing your contacts, visit our complete guide about the contacts section.

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Please note: at the moment, existing Contact Properties cannot be deleted. They can be hidden; once hidden, the property stops being listed when you edit a visitor's info in a conversation. It will still remain listed when editing a flow, however (e.g. when using the Update Contact Property action).

 

Updating Contact Properties via Flows

Now that you know what Contact Properties are let's go over the scenarios and how they work in practice. Some default properties are already available in Tidio; if you'd like to use custom bits of information, you'll need to define your properties first. 

In other words, if you want to store and track a contact's favorite color and age, you will need to define a 'color' property and an 'age' property. 

Once set, you can export your contact list that contains an email address, favorite color, and age for each matching recipient.

Example

In this example, we'll be looking at an automatic customer-product grouping scenario. Our goal is to group our customers by clothing brand and provide availability info for the specific brand they select. To do so, we'll be using a custom property (that we created earlier in the Settings section) and contact segmentation.

In this example, the custom Contact Property will be mainly Product brand, which is a text type property - but we will also be using Shoe size, a number type property.

Create a Decision node to let the customer choose their brand and then use a Update Contact Property action with the brand as a value - select the Product brand property and set the value to be a brand name:

The entire flow allows the customer to select one of three brands in this example, and the general setup looks as follows:

Whenever a specific brand is selected in the Decision action, the flow uses the Update Contact Property action to apply a specific property (or properties) to that customer, and apply a value to each property as well.

Here's what the example Decision step looks like in the editor:

When the customer chooses one of the brands, the flow applies the appropriate Product brand value (the brand name) to that customer, and follows up with a message and link to the correct product page. Here, the actual Product brand property is used inside the message itself:

This way, the customer can see the selected brand name when they receive the message:

In another example in our flow, when the customer chooses a specific brand that may be out of stock, the flow informs about that specifically - and then goes on to ask the customer about their shoe size (so the store staff can check for availability later, and contact the customer via email):

The flow uses the Ask a question action to ask for the shoe size. This simple action is a great way to collect single bits of information like that, but it needs to be set up properly to actually save the information in a usable way. Specifically, make sure that you enable the option called Save the answer as a Contact Property, available at the bottom of the action's settings:

Select the correct Contact Property from the list that appears (Shoe size in this example), and the flow will be able to save the customer's answer properly. Of course, this will only work if the customer provides the answer correctly - the shoe size needs to be a number, after all (this is determined by the Contact Property type).

Notice how you can use any existing Contact Property inside your flow messages; simply click on the open braces icon { } to insert a property, or start typing inside an open brace:

In the flow editor, you will always see properties inserted this way in your flow messages, and you can modify them anytime, of course. Using properties in messages can be useful when you are sending a message that needs to use different bits of information, based on what the customer had provided earlier.

From the customer's perspective, the message will simply include the appropriate information - as long as it was available in your Tidio project for that customer:

Whenever you're chatting with a customer, you will see all of the Contact Properties that have any value assigned in their specific case, e.g. a shoe size they provided, or the product brand they selected:

The same information is available when you browse your Customers list, in columns:

How to use Lead Scoring in Tidio

Lead scoring is the process of assigning values to each lead you generate for the business, often in the form of numerical points. You can score your leads based on multiple attributes, including the information they've submitted to you and how they've engaged with your website. This process helps prioritize leads, respond to them appropriately, and increase the rate at which those leads become customers.

You can award points for a variety of actions. Points can be assigned once, awarded, and/or subtracted after each completed activity.

Please note that you need to register the email address first for the contact to appear on the contacts list. To ask for the email, use the Pre-Chat Survey or a Lead Generation flow; most lead-scoring scenarios are based on returning visitors. As soon as you register their email address - you will see it assigned to a Contact Property.

Example 

Number of Page Views

In this example, we'll create a new Contact Property and Automation for lead scoring. 

If you'd like to create lead scoring for a specific contact, the number of pages viewed can be your best indication of a person's interest in a particular product. This property keeps a running counter of the number of times the person has viewed one of your web pages. The higher the number, the more engaged they are; you can note the right moment to contact such highly interested users.

First, create a new Contact Property:

Once the property is ready, create a new flow from scratch. Use Visitor opens a specific page as the trigger. Use the option unlimited (send on each visit)  to let it work whenever someone visits that particular page.

Drop the action node Set Contact Property into the workspace & choose the Contact Property created earlier. Set the contact property to Increase (+) by a value of 1. 

This property will now keep a running tally of the number of times the person has viewed a specific page. To check matching contacts, visit the Contacts section. 

Adding Contact Properties Manually

If you want to add a contact property to your contact during the chat conversation - you can do that on the right in the visitor's details section. This may be helpful when you're trying to save important data about the visitor that you may use in the future. 

You can choose the contact property from the list of available properties or create a completely new contact property.