Ask The Experts: Getting the most out of Smart Assistant

1. Ask The Experts: Getting the most out of Smart Assistant David Fulton, Product Manager, Web Experience Center Of Excellence, July 2010

2. Agenda • Presentation (15 minutes): • Overview of the uses that Smart Assistant can be put to • Review of what we refer to as ‘the continuum of Smart Assistant applications’ • Review of how the various applications of the capability can be realized in incident rules • Overview of best practices covering all use cases. • Overview of future roadmap for Smart Assistant • Discussion (45 minutes)

3. Uses of Smart Assistant • What is Smart Assistant? • Smart Assistant is the capability to parse an incoming request and determine whether there is knowledgebase content that potentially resolves the issue • Smart Assistant supports two use cases: • Automated responses to consumers • Through incident rules for: • Offering smart assistant when the consumer is submitting a question through the web (and before an incident has been created) • Responding to email that is directed straight to your service mailbox • Manual selection by agents • When working an incident • When working a chat interaction

4. The Smart Assistant Continuum Offer on all Incoming Requests Offer on Certain Request Types Offer in very specific cases Offer to Certain User Types The KB won’t answer all customer questions The KB covers the vast majority of customer enquiries The KB covers the vast majority of customer enquiries The KB won’t answer all customer questions Provide Preferential Service Interact with Customers by default Contain Costs Interact on certain requests

5. Offer Smart Assistant in All Cases • The incident rule on the right applies the highest level of coverage on incoming requests • No account taken for customer characteristics, request content or source Typically one of the initial rules in the rule-base Not typically restricted in this use case – you’ll typically restrict when you have a number of rule conditions

6. Offer Smart Assistant for Inbound Email • Smart Assistant can also be used to direct users away from email submissions • This example rule applies a response template & smart assistant – and automatically responds to the originator Smart Assistant becomes part of the automated email response

7. Offer Smart Assistant to certain users • In this scenario we use a customer characteristic to determine whether smart assistant is presented • Note –not all fields on the contact record can be used in this fashion – SLA for example If this is an existing customer (custom field) then offer the smart assistant response

8. Offer Smart Assistant based on certain request types • In this scenario we are using characteristics of the request to determine an offer • This is a useful technique to avoid offering smart assistant content when the specificity of the customer request will make generic answer content inappropriate If this Is a question about rebates or refunds or the customer talks to returns or replacements, don’t offer a smart assistant response

9. Offer Smart Assistant based on certain request types • The following scenario is where the restrict product or category choices on the rule are typically utilized • This technique is useful to stop content with similar concepts but on other parts of the product or taxonomy tree to filter into the results When the request is about product information, only include answers with that category

10. Offer Smart Assistant in very specific cases • In this scenario you will only offer up Smart Assistant in very specific scenarios: • perhaps using a combination of incident or contact data to determine an offer • the offer would likely be the exception to the rule • You may also decide to use characteristics of the users session on the web to determine an offer – through a capability in Customer Portal called conditions • Lets look at a simple example, used by default in the current reference implementation

11. Offer Smart Assistant in very specific cases • In Customer Portal, within the ask.php page, there is a simple condition that uses the context of the interaction to determine a presentation: <rn:conditionanswers_viewed="2" searches_done="1">         <rn:condition_else/>             <rn:widget path="input/SmartAssistantDialog"/>         </rn:condition> • This means that if 2 or more answers (a >= value is inherent) are viewed or one or more searches have been done in the visit, don’t show the smart assistant dialog • This condition can be removed, edited (increased etc)

12. Best Practices • Smart Assistant is just another way of looking at Search • All of the capabilities that govern search (weightings, keywords, product/category taxonomies, exclude lists, synonyms etc) will apply to your Smart Assistant Results. • Make sure those assistive capabilities are tuned! • A number of our search technologies are used to determine ranking: • Smart Assistant works by doing a search with your submitted content against the knowledgebase • After those initial results are discovered, it then treats the customer request as if it was an answer, and compares it against browse trees (clusters of answers) to see which area it would ‘fit’ within • SA_NL_MATCH_THRESHOLD can be used if you want to ensure that your content is associated with closely matching clusters (the default) or best matching clusters – the latter being much more restrictive on the content that will be returned.

13. Best Practices • As finding matching content is a ‘search’ problem, the responses that Smart Assistant provides are only as good as the content in your knowledgebase • Ensure that your taxonomy choices within answers are appropriate – spot check answers for correct content and structure • Pay attention to alias (thesuarus.txt) and incident stop lists (exclude_answers.txt) • Spot check incidents to see the responses given to consumers on the web – investigate smart assistant suggestions that you don’t feel are appropriate • Anomalies will suggest that there is something in your search tuning or content that needs tweaked • If in doubt, schedule a knowledge base tune-up with RightNow • Keep in mind that submission of a question on the web is a two step process where Smart Assistant is involved. • Look at your message base entries for the Smart Assistant dialog to ensure that you are reducing abandonment by having a strong call to action.

14. Roadmap for Smart Assistant (Short Term) • Modify Smart Assistant to automatically filter previously viewed answers out of the suggested answer list • More granular abandonment reporting:  more granularity on user activity when they abandon out of a smart assistant dialog • Look at establishing more a configurable “confidence threshold” for Smart Assistant results.  If SA does not provide good answers then do not display them • Create a new canned report for “WSS Resolution Rate” - display and trend the number of users who view an answer (or guide) and do not escalate to the Ask a Question or Chat channel

15. Roadmap for Smart Assistant (Long Term) • Smart Assistant 2.0 • Natural language processing to identify the most important keywords to feed to Smart Assistant. • Application of “grammar lenses” established from clustering existing KB content. • Elaborate on the continuum model for customers allowing them to define how strictly deflection is applied. • More contextual rules tied to user behaviors to determine whether an offer is made

16. Questions & Answers