Use profile questionnaires to classify business contacts

You can rate a prospect so you can identify the ideal prospects to focus your sales campaign on. You can set up profile questionnaires that you want to use when entering information about your contacts' profiles. Within each questionnaire, you can set up the different questions you intend to ask your contacts. This way, you can group contacts so that your campaigns are more likely to target the right people based on the criteria that you define with the questionnaires.

With the right questionnaires, you can rate your prospects and group them into categories. You can use existing questions and answers and combine them with new questions and answers to form the basis of your rating. Each answer in the rating has a point value. Depending on the range you set for the categories (From Value and To Value), the rating system groups your contacts in the categories you defined. For example, ABC customers, High/Low loyalty vendors, or Platinum/Gold/Silver prospects.

You can also run the questionnaire to answer some of the questions based on contact, customer, or vendor data automatically.

Add a profile questionnaire

1. Select Search (Alt+Q) in the upper-right corner, enter Questionnaire Setup, and then choose the related link.
2. Choose the New Action.
3. Fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

Add questions to a profile questionnaire

1. Choose the relevant profile questionnaire, and then choose the Edit Questionnaire Setup action.

2. On the first empty line, in the Type field, choose Question, and type your question in the Description field. Fill in the other fields on this line.

   Optionally, add details to the question.

   1. Choose the line with the question, and then, choose the Line menu, and then choose Question Details.

   2. On the Classification FastTab in the Profile Question Details page, select the Auto Contact Classification field.

   3. In the Contact Class. Field field, select the Rating option.

   4. In the Min. % Questions Answered field, specify the percentage of questions that the participant must answer for this rating to be calculated. The default is 0.

   5. On the Actions tab, in the Page group, choose Answer Points. Enter the points you want to give each answer listed in the Answer Points page.

      To get an overview of the points for each answer, choose the Answer Points action.

   6. To run an update, return to the Profile Questionnaire Setup page. On the Actions menu, in the Functions group, choose Update Classification.

   In the Profile Questionnaire Setup page, the number of contacts that meets this criteria is displayed in the No. of Contacts field, and on the Contact Card of each contact.

3. On the next empty line, in the Type field, choose Answer, and type your answer in the Description field.

4. In the Priority field, select the priority. In the From Value and To Value fields, define a point range. Contacts that receive points within the defined range get the answer.

Repeat these steps to enter all the questions and answers within the profile questionnaire.

After you create a questionnaire, you can use it to rate and classify your contacts. You can also set up questions that are rated automatically based on information in the contact card.

Apply questionnaires to contacts

You can apply your questionnaires to contacts manually. Just open the relevant contact card, and then choose the Profile action. After you apply the questionnaires, you can start using the categories in your campaigns.

Automatic classification of contacts

You can automatically classify your contacts according to customer, vendor, and contact information, by setting up automatically answered profile questions on the Profile Questionnaire Setup page.

After you set up automatically answered profile questions, if you assign the profile questionnaire that contains these questions to a contact, Business Central assigns the correct answers for the contact.

Example

You can classify your contacts according to how much they bought from you:

Fill on the Profile Questionnaire Setup page as follows:

Then fill on the Profile Question Details page as follows:

When you assign the profile questionnaire containing this question to a contact, application automatically enters the relevant answer for this contact on the profile lines of the contact card.

Related information

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