KnowledgeTrail

1. KnowledgeTrail Software infrastructure for handling customer complaints www.knowledge-trail.com www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/~galitsky/KT

2. Overview • Introduction • KnowledgeTrail Vision • Answer Engine Technology • Customer Profiles • Competition • Pricing, Cost & Benefits • Summary

3. Top 5 Customer Demands Business Week Sept. 2000 Timely response to inquiries 45% Informative content 22% 24 hour availability 17% Product displayed clearly 14% Communication with real person 14%

4. The Problem... Customers demand sophisticated, fast complaint handling service with professional approach to complaint resolution Businesses want to provide efficient complaint Customer Service Centers are struggling with high turn over rates and cost of personnel; strong stress/emotional load communicating with upset customer Moving Customer Service Centers overseas even worsen the situation: customers want their problems to be understood.

5. Our Solution...For customers Input your complaint and share it with other customers. Use automatic tool to protect your rights as a customer Using our comparative analysis, choose a provider / producer with actual (not claimed) better attitude towards the customer Get a strategy for resolving your problem / predict the next move of your opponent Obtain a resolution proposal

6. Our Solution...For companies To plot a new way of handling and profiting from Web-based feedback. To build a tool that makes collecting and managing consumer opinions and feedback easier than ever. To deploy a cost saving, easily integrated solution that powers a variety of user-friendly interfaces to improve encounters between a customers and a company. Use its versatility to capture, understand, predict and use feedback to your benefit. To mine the web for consumer opinions and trends

7. KnowledgeTrail Vision Being the leader in the development of software and providing the infrastructure for coplaint handling, we target automation of the domain that has not yet been deemed to be computer assisted: dispute resolution.

8. Knowledge-Trail’s market Our market is software and services for Customer Response Management (CRM) A typical CRM solution includes: 1) Analysis of customer feedback to improve the business process 2) Making a customer feel she is taken care of after a product/ service has been purchased 3) Automating call centers / answering customer questions 4) Helping unhappy customers There is no automation so far for the item 4) above!

9. KnowledgeTrail Business Model: software and services Software: to automate the process, to store / retrieve / index / cluster complaints to predict the next customer move Service: to assist companies / their call centers in handling complaints To help sharing responsibilities between the call center personnel To provide an unbised complaint resolution To verify that a call center personnel systematically follow company‘s policy, procedures and regulations.

10. Competitors Could be CRM vendors, but… NONE really, because there is no technology that is capable of understanding textual complaints.

11. Why there is no technology available for understanding complaints? Analysis of textual complaints is one of the most difficult task for natural language information retrieval because of the following reasons: • A complex logical structure of a complaint; • A number of interconnected inconsistencies; • A biased representation of information in the uncertain conditions; • A textual representation of a conflict with explicit and implicit goals; • A rich diversity of technical and domain-specific terms, frequently abbreviated • Emotional and poorly organized structure • A high number of ambiguities and unclear references

12. KnowledgeTrail target KnowledgeTrail is planning to have a complaint handling component a must for every CRM solution

13. ComplaintEngine for Schools & Colleges Integrated environment for filing and handling complaints of upset and unsatisfied students Has been deployed starting from the spring term of 2003 Handles two types of complaint: Quality of teaching Unfair marking

14. Objective: ComplaintEngine in education • To impress students with an advanced environment for complaints; • To assist in filing and structuring complaints; • To relieve both students and teaching personnel from emotional perception; • To streamline and automate the processing of complaints

15. ComplaintEngine for Schools & Colleges Integrated environment for filing and handling complaints of upset and unsatisfied students Has been deployed starting from the spring term of 2003 Handles two types of complaint: Quality of teaching Unfair marking

16. An anatomy of student’s complain • The reasons they believe they were treated “wrongly”; • The student’s belief that others were treated better; • The suggested reason to believe that the tutor has treated them in a special way; • The anticipated gain if they are approached as they expect; ComplaintEngine automatically analyses mental attitudes of students at completing the form, and generates an advice for students, given the history of previous complaints.

17. An anatomy of student’s complain • The reasons they believe they were treated “wrongly”; • The student’s belief that others were treated better; • The suggested reason to believe that the tutor has treated them in a special way; • The anticipated gain if they are approached as they expect; ComplaintEngine automatically analyses mental attitudes of students at completing the form, and generates an advice for students, given the history of previous complaints.

18. KnowledgeTrail Technology • 3 years of R&D • Patent-filing on natural language processing technique and interactive forms in process • Domain representation based on the taxonomy of conceptual knowledge • Enginescan handle very complex sentence structures with reference to time, place, quantity, and individual situations • Technology was developed in PROLOG which ensures a quick development and implementation of Natural Language applications

19. Cost/Benefit Analysis • Average Cost to Answer a complaint? • Call Center $37/call • Email response $20/email • KnowledgeTrail ComplainEngines $0.30/answer

20. Retail Pricing • One time development fee - quote based on initial domain development cost • Monthly Service based on number of answers to complaints provided - $5,000/Mo to 100,000 answers - $7,500/Mo to 250,000 answers - $10,000/Mo to 500,000 answers - $25,000/Mo over 500,000 answers • Annual license fee - based on amount of usage, maintenance & development

21. Summary • Customized Answer Engines that can process complex questions with reference to time, place, quantity and individual situations within specific domains • High accuracy, speed, and sophistication of complaint processing • Unique cost saving and revenue enhancing benefits • Variety of application areas - customer service, sales,marketing,training, communications, website • Innovative data mining toolto let provider know what users want to know