Scoring Complex or Fluid Conditions

This page outlines some techniques to score complex or fluid conditions that do not easily fit into a standard demographic or customer action.

A-Score scores are generated based on a Scoring Weight that evaluates either:

• A single field on a customer (individual, organization or chapter).
• A Customer Action based on a defined record in NetForum that is a permanent record of the action, such as an event registration, a product purchase, a committee assignment, a customer request, etc.
• A free-form Customer Action that is not based on a specific NetForum activity and which is not related to a specific NetForum record. These kinds of actions can be added by external systems through xWeb.

The remainder of this page suggests some ways to score more complex actions or conditions.

Mixing Actions and Demographics

When NetForum evaluates whether an Action Qualifies for points, we recommend you add filtering conditions that are tied very specifically to the Action itself and not to evaluate peripheral conditions.

For example, suppose you score 5 points to an individual who registers for a particular event and has an individual type of Student. On the day they register they are a student so they get 5 points. Later on, the customer is changed from Student to Regular (or any other type). Are these 5 points still valid? If NetForum should ever requalify that registrant, then that record will no longer be eligible for those 5 points.

In the scenario above, it's recommended that you try to capture the student attribute through a registrant type or registrant fee. Since this value won't presumably change, the eligibility will never change either.

Therefore, don't mix actions and demographics in scoring criteria or else you'll risk having people lose eligibility for points that they rightfully should have had. Think of it this way: the conditions you evaluated must be valid indefinitely for those points to last permanently.

If you must do something like this, then see Free-Form Points.

Free-Form Points

If you need to score something that is fluid or impermanent and which cannot be assured of future eligibility because there is no fixed action or demographic on which to base the customer action, then you can always add a customer action that is based on an Action Type that is not related to a NetForum Object/Table.

If this customer action should trigged based on an event by a NetForum Object, then you can do this with a Workflow Rule containing a Task of the Action type. You can add any preceding conditions before that Action type to check for whether the record meets the right conditions. You can then insert a Customer Action related to an Action Type with no Object. Since there is no NetForum record to join to, this Action will never be requalified and it will last permanently. Be aware that this means you cannot take the Action back unless you write a custom process to "revoke" such Actions if they are no longer valid.

Perhaps there is no triggering event that should generate points, but instead the points are based on a combination of conditions. If so, see the Mailing List section below.

Compound Demographics

Scoring Weights based on a demographic can evaluate only a single field. It is not possible to have a "compound" qualification condition for two or more demographic column/values in a single Scoring Weight (for example, an individual who is both a CEO (individual type) and a specific ethnicity). It is not possible to make this work as an Action with a selection query, because there no "action" occurs simply from the existence of an Individual record. See the Mailing List section below.

Mailing List

If want to award points for a mixture of conditions and/or actions, and you can't really pinpoint a single triggering action, then you might want to consider adding this set of people to a Mailing List and scoring as an Action the fact that the person is on the mailing list.

If you really need to make this happen, we suggest creating a Mailing List (which can trigger a "real" score-able Action) and set up a Workflow Rule on the Individual object to add people into and out of the Mailing List based on the combination of filters. Next, create a Scoring Weight based on belonging to that particular Mailing List. If someone drops on or off that list based on demographics that change regularly, make sure you don't duplicate points for that.

For this particular Action Type, we recommend that you configure the Scoring Workflow Rule to not be triggered by insert or updates in real-time, and instead allow the All Scales Maintenance to handle the insertion of Customer Actions.

Score based on spending amount

Q. Is there an easy way, without customization, to setup an A-Score Scoring Weight that would give 1 point per dollar spent on a Publication Purchase? In other words Adam spent $25 and gets 25 points, Bob spent $377 and gets 377 points. I can easily write an SQL procedure/view that would let me know how much each customer spent if there is a way to connect the Scoring Weight to that procedure/view.

A. The A-Score doesn't have an out-of-the-box way to calculate a score like this. Many A-Score activities are not yes-or-no types of activities (such as serving on a committee or registering for an event) but are based on amount/volume. Obviously someone who buys $1,000 worth of merchandise is more active than someone who buys $10.

What we have recommended in these cases is something a little simpler, like this:

Set up three weights: High, Medium and Low.

• High: anyone who spends more than $1000 – 10 points
• Medium: anyone who spends between $100 and $999.99 – 3 points
• Low: anyone who spends more between $10 and $99.99 – 1 point

The ranges and point settings can be adjusted to suit your organization.

Write one query for each range that hard codes each of the range amounts.

While this example is is not as sophisticated as a scoring system based on a logarithmic or sliding scale, it is a manageable way to capture the target score.