This topic details all the settings for value-added service products, except for the settings common to all product types. This is the information you will need when you add or edit value-added service products.
Service Design Center uses a change management process to track and approve all changes to any product. All of these changes, including additions, edits, and deletions, must go through the promote-approve-deploy process before they become available.
Any changes you make (change a name, change a price, add or delete a product from a bundle, etc.) to any product do not affect any users that already have the product.
The General tab contains most of the settings you will configure to determine how a value-added service product looks, acts, is priced, and more.
These settings define how information about a product will appear to customers.
| Setting |
Description |
| Name |
Required. The name serves 2 primary purposes: it's what you see in product lists and it's what customers see as a descriptor when they are making purchase decisions. The name is limited to 115 characters. |
| Short Description |
Brief plain-text information about the value-added service product that sometimes appears with the value-added service product name. |
| Description |
Detailed and descriptive rich-text information about the value-added service product that appears on product detail pages. The content you enter here is seen on the product detail page both pre- and post-purchase. You can format the content you enter in several different ways using the functions in the toolbar.
This field is best for for providing additional details about the product, for adding details to the brief marketing message, for legal boilerplate content, and so on.
The aggregator that provides the value-added service uses a timer to define a deadline by which customers must activate the value-added service. If a customer purchases the value-added service product and does not activate the value-added service by the aggregator-defined deadline, the aggregator notifies the {{tag.Product Name}} system that the activation failed and {{tag.Product Name}} refunds the amount paid for the value-added service product back to the customer.
|
| Marketing Message |
Descriptive rich-text information about the value added service that appears on only the pre-purchase detail page above the content you add in the Description field. You can format the content you enter in several different ways using the functions in the toolbar.
This field is best for a small amount of marketing information that will help drive purchase decisions, such as offers customers will receive with purchase. Use the Description field for larger amounts of additional product information.
|
These settings defines the value-added service.
These settings determine how and when a value added service is available in the store.
Several of the behavior settings relate to aspects of the plan cycle, aspects that include:
| Setting |
Description |
| Recurring |
Required. Defines whether the value-added service product is a multi-cycle subscription or lasts for only one cycle. Select:
- Yes - To allow the value-added service product to have as many cycles as defined in Number of Cycles. Once a customer receives the value-added service product, it continues to renew for as many cycles as defined in Number of Cycles, or until renewal is canceled.
- No - To restrict the value-added service product to just one cycle. This is the setting you would normally use when you choose Download for the How customer gets product setting because in many cases, you're offering a single digital product. (There may be cases where this is not the case. For example, it's possible to have an app-of-the-month offering, so each month, customers could click the link provided to access download of app offered each month.)
|
| Number of Cycles |
Required. This defines the number of cycles a subscriber can receive the value-added service product. The options determine if a value-added service product repeats at the end of its duration. If so, the customer is grandfathered the plan rate and attributes when it is renewed, even if you have made significant changes to the plan or even deleted it from your catalog. Available only when Recurring is set to Yes.
This value should match the number of subscription cycles defined by the aggregator for the value-added service identified by the SDP Product ID. If it does not, potential customer issues could occur, especially if this value is greater than the number of subscription cycles offered for the value-added service. In that case, customers will continue to be charged for additional cycles of the product after the value-added service subscription ends.
Select from:
- Unlimited: Subscribers can continue to receive (and pay for) the plan as long as they want.
-
Limited to: Enter the number of cycles of the plan that can be received.
You can enter only positive integers (1, 37, 5287024, etc.) in this field. Zero, negative numbers, and decimal numbers (0, 0.5, 3.1415926, 2.5, etc.) are not allowed.
Value-added service products renew when they are set to an unlimited number of cycles or when they are "limited" to more than one cycle, that is, the number in the Limited to option is greater than 1. Renewing means that at the end of a value-added service product's cycle duration:
- The cycle starts over.
- Billing occurs.
|
| Cycle Duration |
Required. This defines how long a value-added service product cycle is. Select from:
-
Unlimited. This means that there is no time limit for customers to redeem the value-added service and it will stay on the customer's My Plans page forever.
If a cycle duration is unlimited, then you must select Limited to in the Number of Cycles setting and enter 1. Products with an unlimited cycle duration may not have more than one cycle.
-
Lasts, then enter a number and select a unit of measure from minute(s), hour(s), week(s), day(s), or month(s). This sets a time limit to redeem the value-added serivce.
You can enter only positive integers (1, 37, 5287024, etc.) in this field. Zero, negative numbers, and decimal numbers (0, 0.5, 3.1415926, 2.5, etc.) are not allowed.
When you're creating a value-added service product for a subscription, you should select Lasts, and then set the value to the same length as the subscription cycle length for the value-added service identified by the SDP Product ID.
|
| Usage Display |
When customers buy value-added service products, they can view how long they have left to redeem the value-added service in the My Plans section of the self-care app.
The usage display shows the time usage. Select:
- Duration: To show a bar and label for time used and available.
- None: To show no duration information. Customers will have no information about how much time they have before the value-added service expires.
Bar and Label Direction and Position
The direction of bar movement and the position of labels in relation to the bar (to the right or left of the bar) depend on tenant settings and/or language (left-to-right or right-to-left) settings.
First, whether the bars are count up (for example, Day 7 of 15) or count down (for example, 8 days remaining) depends on a tenant setting.
Then, the direction that the bar moves (or fills) depends on a tenant setting.
Finally, if there is a label, its location depends on language settings. If the language setting is left-to-right, the label will be to the right of the bar. If the language setting is right-to-left, the label will be to the left of the bar.
|
| Visibility |
Determines whether or not the value-added service product is visible to customers.
Because a value-added service product is a link that's delivered to customers, and customers have to click on that link to activate the third-party product, if you hide the value-added service product, customers will not be able to use it. You should ether not make a selection for this setting or select only Yes, or you should make sure that a non-zero price is entered so you cannot make a selection at all for this setting.
If this is set to Hide, the value-added service product is not visible for purchase in the store nor is it visible in a customer's account information. It is not shown as part of a bundle when included in a bundle. For more on how hidden products work in bundles, see Hidden Products in Bundles.
A value-added service product cannot be hidden unless its price is equal to 0 (zero). This is because at checkout, a non-zero priced product in the cart will result in a total price that is different from the sum of the prices of the visible products, which could cause customer confusion. So this setting is unavailable until a price value greater than 0 (zero) has been entered for the value-added service product.
|
| How customer gets product |
Determines whether this is a buy and activate value-added service or a buy and download value-added service. Select:
- Activate Subscription
- Download
In either case, this insures that customers receive redemption instructions appropriate to the value-added service type.
|
| Setting |
Description |
| Retail Price |
Defines the default, standard price for the product. This is the price customers will see unless overridden by the Sale Price field or other available offer mechanisms. If no value is entered, 0 is used. |
| Sale Price |
Overrides the Retail Price while allowing you to keep a record of the retail price. To return to the Retail Price, delete the contents of this field.
A Sale Price can affect whether customers qualify for offers (benefits and discounts), depending on the value of the Apply to sale price setting in the offer. When a customer is viewing the catalog, both the sale price and the retail price are visible in the product listing. The exact appearance will depend on your branding. The following graphic is an example of what customers might see in a product where the Retail Price is 1.00 and the Sale Price is 0.80:
Some research suggests that consumers believe prices with more syllables are higher than the same prices with fewer syllables, and this is seen in both spoken and printed prices. Both commas and decimal points add to the "syllables," so, for example, $1,199.00 is viewed as more than $1199. ItsOn provides a client-side branding setting that can present catalog prices without the decimal and the digits after the decimal for whole number prices. If this setting were used for the example above, the values seen in the catalog presentation would be $1 and $0.80. This setting does not affect the amounts you enter in the Retail Price Price or the Sale Price fields, nor the amounts shown during checkout, in customer invoices, and in customer service records.
|
| Tax Classification |
This defines what specific taxes should be charged, if at all. Different municipalities and other political units charge varying amounts of and types of taxes and fees on specific types of goods and services. This selection drives the correct type and amount of taxes to be collected based on the customer's location and type of service purchased. Select from:
- Data Plan
- Voice Plan
- Text Plan
- Line-Based Fees
- Equipment
- Not Taxable
|