Customer record
Commitments and promise tracking
How every promise made to a customer, by the agent or by your team, is captured, given an owner and a due date, followed up, and shown on the record until it is kept.
On this page
The most common cause of customer anger is a promise nobody tracked. "Someone will call you back tomorrow." "We will confirm your handover date by the end of the month." Each is easy to say and easy to lose.
Promise tracking records every commitment made to a customer, who made it, who owns it, when it is due, and whether it was kept, and follows it up until it is. It is configured during implementation for the workflows and teams in your deployment.
What counts as a commitment
A commitment is anything your organisation, or the customer, has agreed will happen next.
| Type | Example | Typical owner |
|---|---|---|
| A callback or reply | "A claims handler will call you by Thursday about the repair estimate" | A named handler or team |
| Information to confirm | "The handover team will confirm your date by 21 August" | Handover team |
| An action in your systems | "Your reservation will be moved to the Deluxe room once it is available" | Reservations team |
| A document to send | "We will email you the revised payment schedule" | The agent, or a team |
| Something the customer will do | "You will send the police report and two photographs of the damage" | The customer |
Recording the customer's own next steps matters as much as your organisation's. A claim that stalls because a document never arrived stalls just as badly as one nobody followed up.
How commitments are captured
At the end of every conversation, the agent identifies the commitments and next steps in it and turns them into tasks on the customer's record. It does this for its own conversations, and for conversations your team handles once those are captured into the record. See Conversations your team handles.
The agent only makes commitments your rules allow. It can promise a callback in a slot your team has made available, or a document it is able to send, because those are within its limits. It cannot promise a refund outside policy or a handover date your systems do not show, because neither is available to it. See Policies as limits.
Owners and due dates
Every commitment is recorded with what was promised, to whom, by whom, who owns it, when it is due, and the conversation it came from.
The owner is a person or a team. The due date comes from what was said, such as "by Thursday", or, where nothing was said, from the standard your team sets for that type of commitment. A developer might set that any unanswered handover question is owned by the handover team and due within two working days. These rules are agreed with you during implementation.
Follow-up and reminders
Commitments are monitored until they are kept. Before a commitment falls due, its owner is reminded where they already work: as a task in your CRM (the system that holds your customer records), a ticket in your service desk (the system your teams use to log and track requests), or a notification in Microsoft Teams or Slack, whichever your deployment uses.
When the agent owns a commitment, it carries it out itself. It places the scheduled call, sends the promised document, or messages the customer with the update. When your team keeps a commitment, the agent can let the customer know, so the customer hears it has been done without having to ask.
When the customer gets in touch again before a commitment is due, the agent can see it and tell them where things stand: "The handover team is due to confirm your date by 21 August."
Commitments on the record
Every commitment appears on the customer's record, alongside the conversation it came from, and on the relationship timeline (a single view of everything said to a customer, across every channel). Anyone with access to the record can see what was promised, when, by whom, and whether it was kept.
That makes a disputed promise a question of fact. When a customer says they were told something, your team can check the record rather than someone's memory.
Seeing which commitments are at risk
Reports show which commitments are close to their due date and not yet kept, and which are overdue, by team, by type and by owner. They can be viewed in the console (the Telonic web application your team uses) and delivered as scheduled reports. Team leads see where promises are falling behind before customers notice.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Open | Recorded and assigned, not yet due |
| At risk | Close to its due date and not yet kept, by the standard your team sets |
| Overdue | Past its due date and not yet kept |
| Kept | Carried out, with the conversation or action that kept it |
The technical detail
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| How is a commitment identified? | The agent identifies commitments and next steps in each conversation when it closes, and records them as tasks linked to the conversation, the issue and the customer |
| How is a commitment marked as kept? | When the agent carries it out, or when the owner completes it, in the console or in your connected system, such as a CRM task or service desk ticket |
| Where do reminders go? | To the owner's place of work: your CRM, your service desk, or a team messaging channel, as configured for your deployment |
| Can commitments made by your team be tracked? | Yes, for conversations your team handles that are captured into the record |
| Who can see commitments? | Anyone whose role gives them access to the customer's record. See Access control and single sign-on |
In practice
Faris has a motor claim with Wadi Assurance, a UAE insurer. The garage has sent a repair estimate that is higher than he expected.
- On Tuesday evening, Faris messages on WhatsApp to ask whether the estimate will be approved. Approving it is a claims decision, which stays with the claims team. The agent explains the next step and tells him a claims handler will call him by Thursday at 5pm, the slot the motor claims team has set for estimate queries.
- The commitment is added to his claim and his record, owned by the motor claims team, due Thursday at 5pm.
- The agent also records Faris's own next step: send the garage's itemised invoice. He sends it on WhatsApp that night, and that commitment is marked as kept.
- On Wednesday afternoon, the handler, Reem, receives a reminder in the claims system.
- On Thursday morning, Reem calls Faris. The call is captured into the record, and the commitment is marked as kept.
- The agent sends Faris a WhatsApp summary of what Reem told him and what happens next.
What your team controls
- Which workflows use promise tracking, set during implementation.
- The default owner and due date for each type of commitment.
- Where reminders go, and when a commitment counts as at risk.
- Who receives reports of commitments at risk and overdue.
Related
- The customer record: overviewCustomer record
- Issues and threadingCustomer record
- Conversations your team handlesCustomer record
- Team messagingIntegrations
- Reports and exportsQuality and analytics
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