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Chapter 12

Chapter 12. After-Sales Support. Recommended References. R. Bergmann, S. Breen, M. Göker, M. Manago, S. Wess: Developing Industrial Case-Based Reasoning Application - The INRECA- Methodology. Springer Lecture Notes in AI 1612, 1999 .

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Chapter 12

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  1. Chapter 12 After-Sales Support

  2. Recommended References • R. Bergmann, S. Breen, M. Göker, M. Manago, S. Wess: Developing Industrial Case-Based Reasoning Application - The INRECA- Methodology. Springer Lecture Notes in AI 1612, 1999. • M. Lenz, B. Bartsch-Spörl, H.-D. Burkhard, S. Wess (eds.): Case-Based Reasoning Technology. Springer Lecture Notes in AI 1400, 1998.

  3. The Task • Situation: The product is delivered to the customer. The customer has a problem with the product because e.g. a failure occurs or he does not understand how operate it properly. • The customer wants help and advice and the supplier wants to keep the customer. • A first possibility is to provide a hotline (help desk). Then a system should support the help desk operator. • In electronic commerce it is intended to provide the advice automatically, e.g. via the internet.

  4. General Aspects of CRM (1) • CRM is concerned with: • Reachability: • There should be help available. • Customer should know how to contact supplier: Phone,mail, fax, internet. • Suppliers reaction should be fast (if promised to call back within 20 minutes this should not take a day). • Cost should be adequate or free: An important strategic decision for the company. • Agents (persons or software agents) contacted should have sufficient knowledge.

  5. General Aspects of CRM (2) Customer problem Initial contact Kind of problem Supplier company Fault diagnosis Additional parts, products Problem with delivery etc Advice on handling Finding correct agent or expert

  6. Call Centers • After sales support is often provided by call centers. • Because of the wide variety of the capacities the support provided by call centers is very different with respect to the comfort provided to the customer. • The support can be provided in different ways. • One extreme is that the whole advice process is performed by a human (and the knowledge is in the head of the human) and in another extreme it runs fully automatically. • To come close to the latter is a major target in E-C.

  7. Fault Diagnosis • A great part of after sales support is concerned with fault diagnosis: The product bought by the customer does not operate as wanted. This may be due to two reasons: • inadequate handling • a real fault • A call by the customer starts a dialogue which has to identify the real reason and has to give an advice (proper handling, repair). • Fault diagnosis can either use straight forward algorithms (if available) or case based reaoning as described in chapter 3.

  8. The Role of Dialogues • The query (complaint, search for help etc.) from the customer is usually not that clear that a fully satisfactory answer can be given. • The completion of the information uses the principles for the dialogues as developed in chapter 11. • Often the situation is much simpler because there is only a restricted number of queries. Then the dialogue can be standardized or even omitted (static or dynamic forms). • Sometimes at least many queries can be handled this way: So-called frequently asked questions (FAQ‘s).

  9. FAQ’s • An FAQ is considered as a case consisting of a pair (question, solution document). • The solution document may be • an error document • a handling advice • a decription of additional new parts. • Similarities are computed between actual query and the question part of the FAQ. • The uses of FAQ’s represent degenerated dialogues. • The choice of the FAQ’s is crucial for the success: Updating the case base is important!

  10. Frequently Asked Questions: Example FAQ-document Hardware:PC & HP DeskJet 870 Software: Windows 95 Query: My new printer has problems with pictures from the graphic program Answer: Load and install the program that activates the program error document Operating System:Sun OS 4.1 Modul:Address administration Error:Failure when the input has long street names Solution:Not enough memory for the address object, repaired inaddrObj.c

  11. Analysis (1) Query: On my PC verursacht the input of long street names leads to a crash with the message “storage error”. • A1: Under Windows 3.1 there is not enough • memory for the name of the street • allocated. This may lead to a failure of the system. • A2: The PC-Version does not perform a correct storage of street names. • A3: On the Sun the input of • Umlaut leads to a failure.

  12. Analysis (2) • From the queries and possible error documents key words are extracted which represent them. • The comparison uses a thesaurus for synonyms or quasi synonyms, indicated by the colours (e.g. crash and failure). • Next similarities are computed and answer 3 is immediately excluded (because of sun versus pc and street names versus Umlaut). • Answer 1 is the nearest neighbor because this occurs more often (this is particular knowledge contained in the similarity measure !).

  13. Failure Crash Work station Computer Sun PC Win3.1 Storage Input Quasi Synonyms (Example) Quasi synonyms are “almost” synonyms

  14. Customer Support & Automatic Hotline • Hotline for customer support over telephone • How is the operator supported ? • FAQ-collections constitute the case base • If the problem is easy to solve or is familiar to the operator no call to the case base is necessary • In the many „exceptional“ situations the CBR-Engine searches in FAQ-base in order to find the most useful one. The document is presented or explained to the customer. • The solution adaptation can very often be performed best by the operator. • WWW-applications for customer queries extend this technique: There is no operator any more.

  15. First and Second Level Support • A company selling printers maintains a call center with several agents solving product-related problems by phone. Most of the problems are simple to solve but the volume of the daily calls is very high. • To provide the necessary staff for the call center, the company has hired several part-time agents who should be able to solve most of the simple calls directly. • For more advanced problems, the company maintains a highly qualified second-level support team of product specialists. •  The CBR system should empower the first-level support agents to solve as many problems as possible on the phone without forwarding the call to the second-level support.

  16. Main Targets and Advantages • Call avoidance by avoiding repeated questions (“standard errors”) • Each call requires less time • Continuously available • These save costs for supplier and customer ! (Time for conversation and/or repair etc.) • Continuous (and partially automatic) extensions and updates (task for knowledge management).

  17. Example from Industry HOMER - Hotline with Experience CAD Car Development in Sindelfingen DaimlerChrysler Aktiengesellschaft Research and Technology New Media and Services FT3/KL

  18. Intelligent Support at the Help-Desk=Reduction of downtime Service Problems • The number of employees at the hotline remains. • Number of users, Hardware & Applications grows. • Hotline experts have different skills. • Applications are complex and dynamic. • Experts construct solutions again and again over time. • Applications are time-critical. • Users are unsatisfied

  19. Solution: Homer Case-Based Hotline with the CBR-Works Support Center: • Support Experts are searching online for solutions. • Homer is available on every PC in the Intranet. • Integration into the Calltracking-Solution. • Client / Server based (CBR-Server / Java-Interface). • Available on all Hardware and Software platforms.

  20. DaimlerChryslerThe Intelligent Hotline (I) “Our hotline operations rely on the knowledge and the experience of experts. CBR-Works helps us to utilize this human capital efficiently and effectively.” Thomas Pantleon, CAD/CAM Support, DaimlerChrysler AG

  21. DaimlerChryslerThe Intelligent Hotline (II) • EP/QDF Support for CAD-Workstations for: • 600 CAD-Clients (growing up to 1300 CAD-Clients), • 16 Applications (growing up to 38 applications), • 33% of the Hardware is replaced every year. • Each Software has 1 major and 4 minor updates per year.

  22. DaimlerChryslerThe Intelligent Hotline (III) • More than 1200 UNIX workstations used for CAD/CAM, more than 20 different software applications • High costs of hotline operations: 600 complex problems to be solved per month at Sindelfingen only, many more worldwide • HOMER system: CBR takes customer’s problems and compares them to already-known problem cases • When there is no direct solution, the user is guided interactively to a new one • System is available for every hotline employee • Expected yearly savings: $600.000 for passenger and utility cars • HOMER as part of an ESPRITproject (INRECA II) • System based on CBR-Works from tec:inno GmbH

  23. DaimlerChryslerThe Intelligent Hotline (IV)

  24. Homer-Client (Appletviewer) Homer-Client (Appletviewer) TCP/IP HOMER-Server CQL (Case Query Language) CBRWorks-Server DaimlerChryslerThe Intelligent Hotline (IV) Architecture :

  25. Homer Results • Customer: • Faster Troubleshooting. • Less „Downtime“. • More efficient production. • Daimler Benz Support: • Known solutions are online available. • Effective training of new employees • Improve quality of the support • Prepared for eventual update problems • Knowledge transfer between DC departments • Savings Available: Since winter 1998

  26. Partially Automatic Hotlines • Idea: Two phases: • The first phase is fully automatic. The customer describes the problem in a query and obtains the desired information if possible. • If the problem is not solved a human agent is called in the second phase in order to solve solve the problem. • If the phase actually occurs then the human agent can be similarity based selected using the information obtained in the first phase from the customer. • The similarity now relates the query and the expert; the nearest neighbor to the query is best available expert. • Observe: These phases are not the same as in first and second level support (which are different phases!)

  27. Example: SIMATIC Knowledge Manager • Customers use a www site to describe the problem in terms of • a textual query • some information of the domain and the devices involved. • By similarity based retrieval the most useful document is presented to the customer. • There are three types of documents: • FAQ’s: Contain well established knowledge • User information notes: Are less reliably • Informal notes: Draft notes which give informal hints and may be unreliable.

  28. SIMATIC KM (FAQ 241) Title: Order numbers of CPUs with which communication is possible. Question: Which order numbers must the S7-CPUs have to be able to run basic communications with SFCs? Answer: In order to participate in communications via SFCs without a configured connection table, the module needs the correct order number. The following table illustrates which order number your CPU must have to be able to participate in these S7 homogeneous communications.

  29. SIMATIC Knowledge Manager CBR-Server Similarity model Search Structure Information about the Structure of the SIMATIC Information System Order No. Relation order numbers - product names Dictionary InformationEntities Similarities Results www.ad.siemens.de View Document Documents in the Customer SupportInformation System

  30. SIMATIC Knowledge Manager CGI-Client Search Results www.ad.siemens.de View Document Customer SupportInformation System

  31. CD2WEB Search on CD Search on the Web

  32. Customer problem Similarity query Retrieve query Retain Retrieved documents Knowledge FAQ’s manuals Answer The R4-Cycle for the SIMATIC KM Reuse Retrieve: Determine most useful documents(s). Reuse: Apply knowledge from document Revise: Evaluate the information from document. Retain Add document.. New document Hotline staff solves problem Revise Solution found No solution found

  33. Summary • After sales service is an important part of CRM • It deals with all parts of problems arising after the product is delivered. • Problems for the customer arise mostly unforeseen • the customer should know what to do and where to ask • service should be immidiate and continously available • answers should be correct and understandable • The problems are mostly not of logical but of approximation character: Similarity reasoning applies. • After sales service is so far the successful domain of CBR-applications.

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