Information Self-Service with a Knowledge Base That Learns

Delivering effective customer service over the internet requires attention to many aspects of knowledge management if it is to be both satisfying for customers and economical for the company or other organization. One of the major organizational functions that is still in the early stages of being delivered by the internet is customer service, that is, remedying complaints or providing answers to a particular audience. This task involves many aspects of knowledge management, at least if it is to be convenient and satisfying for customers as well as efficient and inexpensive for the company or organization. On a basic level, it is essential (but not sufficient) to handle the administrative overhead of tracking incoming questions and complaints, together with outgoing responses, over different channels such as email, web forms, and live chat. Beyond this, to support customer service representatives (CSRs), and to assist customers seeking help at peak load times or after hours, it is necessary to provide both a knowledge base containing needed information and a convenient, intuitive means of accessing this knowledge base. Even were it not for the expense of maintaining a large staff of CSRs always available, it is found that many people prefer to find answers to their questions directly on the internet rather than take the time to compose a sufficiently detailed email message or wait in a telephone queue, possibly playing tag with a CSR for days before resolving their concerns. Furthermore, CSRs can experience boredom and burnout from constantly handling similar questions; in many cases, they are not using their skills most efficiently. The most common and straightforward response to this situation is to write and make available on a web page or pages a set of answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs). Such a web page provides a basic solution to the problems mentioned earlier, but except in the simplest and most static cases, it requires continued expert maintenance to keep the FAQ list current and organized. In addition, if the number of FAQs surpasses a few dozen, it becomes difficult for users to navigate the FAQ pages to find the answers they seek. At the opposite end of the sophistication scale, a number of conversational interfaces to knowledge bases have recently appeared, which can be personified as human or character "chatbots" or represented more soberly as simple input-and-response text fields.