How do I understand Reason for Contact?
Required Feature Flags
The following feature flags and permissions are required to use this feature:
Feature Flag | Description |
Reason for Contact | Enables Reason for Contact tracking |
Reason for Contact Visibility | Enables viewing of Reason for Contact data in the UI |
Process Reason for Contact | Enables AI processing for Reason for Contact detection |
Required Permissions:
View reasons for contact (
analytics.view_reasons_for_contact) — read-only access to Reason for Contact and Intent dataView imported contacts (
quality.evaluations.imported-contacts) — required to see Reason for Contact on individual conversations
Reason for Contact (RFC) is the AI's answer to "why did this customer get in touch?" It tags every analysed conversation with one or two reasons from your taxonomy. This guide covers where to see Reason for Contact, how to filter by it, and how to use it in reports.
How the hierarchy works
Reason for Contact uses a two-level structure:
Level 1 (L1) — Broad categories like Billing, Technical Support, Account Management
Level 2 (L2) — Specific sub-reasons like Payment Failed, Refund Request, Invoice Query
Every conversation can be tagged with both an L1 and an L2, so you can analyse at either level.
Step 1: See Reason for Contact on a conversation
Open any analysed conversation from Conversations > Imported contacts.
In the Insights sidebar, open the Reason and Intent section. It shows:
The detected L1 reason
The L2 sub-reason (if applicable)
Evidence snippets from the conversation that the AI used to make the call
If the AI couldn't match a reason from your taxonomy, you'll see a dash (-). This usually means the AI is suggesting a new reason or the conversation hasn't been analysed.
Step 2: View Reason for Contact in the conversations list
Go to Conversations > Imported contacts.
The conversation list has columns for Level 1 and Level 2 Reason for Contact. You can scan down the list to see what reasons are coming through.
A dash means no reason matched — either the conversation isn't analysed yet or it didn't fit the existing taxonomy.
Step 3: Filter conversations by Reason for Contact
In the filter panel on the left of the Imported contacts page, find the Reason for Contact filter under the evaluagent Insight Fields section.
You can filter by:
L1 reason (gets you everything tagged Billing, for example)
L2 reason (narrows to a specific sub-reason)
Combinations (multiple reasons at once)
This is useful when you want to focus QA reviews on a specific contact type, or when you're investigating a spike in a particular reason.
Step 4: Use Reason for Contact in Discovery
Go to Conversations > Imported contacts > Discovery tab.
Reason for Contact appears in the chart summary, showing the breakdown of why customers are contacting you across your filtered set.
Use the Group by option to combine Reason for Contact with other metrics — for example, group by L1 reason and look at average xCSAT per reason. That tells you which contact types are driving low satisfaction.
For more on Discovery, see A user guide: Discovery tab.
Step 5: Use Reason for Contact in Spotlight
When you run Spotlight on a filtered set, the AI uses Reason for Contact as part of its analysis. Filtering Imported contacts to a specific reason and running Spotlight gives you targeted insight — for example, "what's actually going wrong in our Billing conversations?".
For more on Spotlight, see How do I use Spotlight to get root cause insights from my conversations?.
Reason for Contact vs Intent
These two features are related but distinct:
Aspect | Reason for Contact | Intent |
What it captures | Why the customer got in touch | What they're trying to achieve in the conversation |
Timing | Initial contact driver | Throughout the conversation |
Scope | One reason per contact (with optional L2) | Multiple intents possible per contact |
Example | Billing > Refund Request | Dispute Charge, Request Refund, Update Payment Method |
Use both together for the full picture: RFC tells you they came in about a billing issue, Intent tells you they wanted a refund and to update their card.
Important: Reason for Contact is not retrospective
When Reason for Contact is enabled or when new reasons are added to your taxonomy:
Only new conversations ingested afterwards get tagged
Existing conversations stay untagged
Previously analysed conversations can't be reprocessed
If you enable RFC today, only conversations imported from today onwards will have reasons attached.
Troubleshooting
Reason for Contact not showing on a conversation
The conversation hasn't been analysed yet
The conversation predates RFC being enabled — see the note above
The AI couldn't match it to your active taxonomy (a suggestion may be pending)
A reason looks wrong
Check the evidence snippets in the Insights sidebar. If the evidence supports the reason, the tagging is working as designed even if it doesn't feel like the obvious match. If the evidence clearly doesn't fit, report it to evaluagent support.
Can't see RFC at all
You may not have the View Reasons for Contact permission
The Reason for Contact feature may not be enabled for your organisation
Ask your evaluagent administrator