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Models towards a hybrid conversational agent for contact centres

Authors:

Gopal Ravi Sankar,

Mathys C. du PlessisAuthors Info & Claims

SAICSIT '08: Proceedings of the 2008 annual research conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT research in developing countries: riding the wave of technology

Pages 200 - 209

https://doi.org/10.1145/1456659.1456683

Published: 06 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

The usability of touch-tone Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems is dismal. Clients would rather speak to a contact centre agent than navigate through the menu structure found in these systems. Contact centres, due to a variety of reasons, most notably high personnel costs, tend to utilise IVR as their solution for automation. IVR is an example of a simple forward chaining rule based expert system. An evaluation was conducted to determine whether a natural language interface would provide a more effective automation technique in comparison to current techniques utilised by contact centres. This evaluation compared the advantages and disadvantages of a natural language interface and a rule based expert system interface (modelled to resemble an IVR) and concluded that a hybrid system utilising a combination of these techniques would provide a better solution. This paper discusses two models that could be employed in the combination of a rule based expert system with a natural language interface.

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Cited By

Brabra HBaez MBenatallah BGaaloul WBouguelia SZamanirad S(2022)Dialogue Management in Conversational Systems: A Review of Approaches, Challenges, and OpportunitiesIEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems10.1109/TCDS.2021.308656514:3(783-798)Online publication date: Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCDS.2021.3086565
Borsci SMalizia ASchmettow Mvan der Velde FTariverdiyeva GBalaji DChamberlain A(2021)The Chatbot Usability Scale: the Design and Pilot of a Usability Scale for Interaction with AI-Based Conversational AgentsPersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-021-01582-9Online publication date: 21-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-021-01582-9
Abdellatif ABadran KShihab E(2020)MSRBot: Using bots to answer questions from software repositoriesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-019-09788-5Online publication date: 3-Mar-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-019-09788-5
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Models towards a hybrid conversational agent for contact centres
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

SAICSIT '08: Proceedings of the 2008 annual research conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT research in developing countries: riding the wave of technology

October 2008

304 pages

ISBN:9781605582863

DOI:10.1145/1456659

Program Chairs:
Reinhardt Botha
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa
,
Charmain Cilliers
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 06 October 2008

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SAICSIT '08

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Microsoft

SAICSIT '08: 2008 Annual Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists

October 6 - 8, 2008

Wilderness, South Africa

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Cited By

Brabra HBaez MBenatallah BGaaloul WBouguelia SZamanirad S(2022)Dialogue Management in Conversational Systems: A Review of Approaches, Challenges, and OpportunitiesIEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems10.1109/TCDS.2021.308656514:3(783-798)Online publication date: Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCDS.2021.3086565
Borsci SMalizia ASchmettow Mvan der Velde FTariverdiyeva GBalaji DChamberlain A(2021)The Chatbot Usability Scale: the Design and Pilot of a Usability Scale for Interaction with AI-Based Conversational AgentsPersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-021-01582-9Online publication date: 21-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-021-01582-9
Abdellatif ABadran KShihab E(2020)MSRBot: Using bots to answer questions from software repositoriesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-019-09788-5Online publication date: 3-Mar-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-019-09788-5
Thorne C(2017)Chatbots for troubleshooting: A surveyLanguage and Linguistics Compass10.1111/lnc3.1225311:10Online publication date: 2-Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12253

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