We introduce the Customer Interaction Centre (CIC) and explain the steps required to set this up.
Last updated 13 Dec 2022
Jump to:
- Introduction
- Applications within the CIC
- A note on GDPR
- Customer Journey
- Initial Set up:
- Next Steps
Introduction
With our CIC, we bring your customer-facing platforms together into one consolidated and easy-to-manage web app. There's nothing for your customers to download, using any internet-enabled device using a QR code, or our short URLs.
Our CIC suite gives your customers access to a variety of your services without having to navigate to different apps or websites. Developed to bring your platforms together, offer more functionality, improve customers’ experiences and increase efficiency for everyone.
We understand that there isn’t a one size fits all approach to your customer interaction, so you can pick and choose which options you’d like included in your app based on your business requirements. As a scalable system, you can add others at a later date if and when required.
These services are hosted on our powerful, secure infrastructure and are styled with your brand to ensure your customers have a seamless experience transitioning from your existing website to the applications we host on your behalf.
Please consider the relevant settings in Kobas System Preferences.
Applications within the Customer Interaction Centre
- Online Ordering (to table, delivery or for collection), including the Category Splash Screen, and Multi Venue Ordering set up.
- Customer Facing Allergen Identifier
- Customer Loyalty System
- Recruitment Portal
- Gift Cards
The links here provide further information on the use of each application hosted within the CIC. However, the set-up detailed in this article must be completed first, followed by your configuration of the CIC.
A note on GDPR
In our experience, some of our new clients join Kobas with a large client database. To ensure that we follow good practice, as outlined within the GDPR, customers should make informed and considered decisions about when, where and how to share their data. Therefore, we will not be able to import a current customer database. Instead, we suggest that you mail out to your customers a link to sign up for your Kobas client database (once your CIC is active).
Your customer journey
Click here to see how your customers will use the CIC once it is set up.
The initial set-up
There are some decisions that you need to make in order for our engineers to ensure your CIC looks and functions exactly as you require it to. These are three separate considerations:
- Domains - Standard or Custom
- Branding
- Emails
(1) Domains
If you wish to set up your Kobas CIC, there is a cost for this. Please contact your Implementation Co-ordinator, Account Manager or Support Help Desk to be quoted for this. You will be asked which domain option you would like to set up:
- Kobas Domain. There is no ongoing fee for this. This means that we host your CIC on the Kobas domain, and let’s imagine your website is www.myawesomebar.com, your domain could be https://awesomebar.kobas.co.uk.
- Custom Domain. This means that we host the CIC on Kobas infrastructure, but using your Domain. This makes the portal seems more in line with your organisation. There is a small additional monthly fee for this. You would need to choose what is called a sub-domain for us to use. Using the same example as above, you could choose https://customers.myawesomebar.com and https://jobs.myawesomebar.com.
We can support more than one web address for your CIC but this will attract an additional cost. Your contact at Kobas will then explain the next steps to you.
Just so you know, we'll ask you if you'd like for us to set up your Kobas-hosted recruitment site at the same time as your CIC. If we are asked to do these separately, this will result in a further charge.
Further steps for Custom Domains
If you chose the custom domain option, we will provide you with settings that need adding into your web hosting server, either by you directly (using services such as godaddy.com), or your website provider.
As all our CIC functions involve the exchange of personally identifiable data, we will only provide these web applications over a secure connection known as HTTPS. In order to do this we purchase an SSL certificate from a trusted authority on your behalf. SSL certificates are based on your domain name and are valid for a fixed number of years.
In order for us to prove to a trusted authority that we are authorised to purchase an SSL certificate on your behalf, we need to be able to respond to emails sent to one of five pre-defined email addresses from your domain:
admin@myawesomebar.com
administrator@myawesomebar.com
hostmaster@myawesomebar.com
webmaster@myawesomebar.com
postmaster@myawesomebar.com
We will ask that you nominate one of these addresses and that either you’ll have someone monitoring that address so that the request to authorise the certificate can be actioned, or that it is forwarded to root@kobas.co.uk so that we may do that ourselves.
(2) Branding
Our web app is "white label" which means we build the basic framework without branding so that we can add colours, fonts and logos to align the app with your branding. In order to complete this for you, we need you to send us the following:
- Colour Names and Hex codes
- Logos
- Font names and files
Note: We currently do not support individually tailored CSS files but we will be able to in the future.
(3) Emails
Your new customer-facing applications will very likely need to send transactional emails to your customers, so we need the authority to send emails from your domain on your behalf. In order to do this, you’ll need to perform some more DNS record adjustments.
There are two lumps of changes we need to make. The first tell our infrastructure provider, Amazon Web Services, that we are authorised to send emails purporting to come from your domain. We will also create or update your existing SPF record to help convince your customers’ email servers that our email is genuine.
When you give us the go-ahead to create your customer-facing sites we will issue a DNS update pack containing these changes along with those for your new sub-domain creation as detailed above.
Note: If you use discrete parts of the system that do not involve the CIC, such as Reservations, we can simply action point (3) here at a much-reduced cost.
Next Steps
Once we have completed the initial set-up of your Kobas Customer Interaction Centre, that represents the end of the work required by an engineer. It is now over to you to review your settings in Cloud to ensure your CIC functions as you want it to: