Custom issue fields (CIFs) are a way to gather and represent information. They help you to categorize, label, organize, filter, search for, queue, and assign issues across multiple scenarios and contexts. Beyond this, they are also a source of valuable information for your customer service agents.
Each CIF combines three equal parts.
- The label (sometimes called a key) identifies an informational category, such as someone’s country of residence, a purchase date, or a service tier.
- The datatype (sometimes called a field type) pinpoints how Helpshift UIs should represent this CIF’s details on-screen, such as in a drop-down list.
- Finally, the value is the datapoint itself, whether it’s as specific as a unique identifier or as general as true/false. There are multiple ways for a CIF to acquire its value — including through:
- an API call from your mobile app to the Helpshift SDK that it contains
- a bot or an automation
- a customer service agent’s manual data entry