# Reasons

## Overview

Reasons are the QA categories that represent why a customer contacted your team.

They give quality analysis the operational context it needs. A billing conversation should not be evaluated like a cancellation request or a fraud report.

Reasons are part of Quality Assurance. They are different from Opportunities, which focus on Voice of Customer.\ <br>

<figure><img src="https://2659701720-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FN7EEIMhL4xEKWM6BDyEL%2Fuploads%2FhRCci2us7wd0TNehgaoN%2Fimage.png?alt=media&#x26;token=ed77f3e6-3e88-4126-9536-d43a81dca893" alt="" width="563"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

## Why reasons matter

Reasons help teams:

* evaluate quality within the right service flow
* apply specific criteria only where they make sense
* compare performance across different types of contact
* identify operational problems in a precise way

## How reasons work in QA

A Reason usually sits inside an Area and defines a narrower service context.

Specific criteria are attached to Reasons, so Birdie can evaluate interactions with the correct rules.

This makes analysis more fair and more useful. It avoids applying the same QA expectation to conversations with different goals, procedures, or compliance requirements.

### Common Use Cases

* By service category. Examples:
  * Reason "Billing" (category = billing);
  * Reason "Technical Support" (category = technical);
  * Reason "Commercial" (category = sales).
* By service channel. Examples:
  * Reason "Online Chat" (channel = chat);
  * Reason "Telephone Service" (channel = phone).
* By product/service. Examples:
  * Reason "Credit Card" (product = card);
  * Reason "Checking Account" (product = account).

## Reasons in analysis

In analysis, Reasons help you understand quality performance for a specific contact motive.

Use them to answer questions like:

* Which service flows generate the lowest quality scores?
* Which criteria fail most often for a given contact type?
* Which Reasons need coaching, process review, or calibration?

The **Reason** analysis page follows the same layout described in [Analysis Page Structure](https://ask.birdie.ai/getting-started/platform-overview).

## Best practices

* Define Reasons around real service flows
* Keep the scope clear and operational
* Link only the criteria that truly apply to that contact type

## Related articles

* [Areas of Interest](https://ask.birdie.ai/core-concepts-and-entities/areas)
* [Criteria](https://ask.birdie.ai/agent-quality-assurance/criteria)
* [Manual Evaluation](https://ask.birdie.ai/agent-quality-assurance/manual-evaluation)