Can virtual agents replace contact centre staff?

The US Defense department is currently investigating the development of virtual parents to allow children to communicate online with parents who are on active duty.

Reported by Nextgov in the article, Military hoping chat bots can comfort children when parents deployed, the article states that,

the military says it's seeking to "develop a highly interactive PC- or Web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with 'virtual' renditions of deployed Service Members."

While the idea of faking out your children with a comforting AI may sound bizarre, other applications of this type of technology could save organisations significant costs, while maintaining or even improving service standards.

Rather than a virtual parent, consider a virtual contact centre staff, sophisticated enough to engage a human customer online via text chat and address their enquiry.

Termed a 'chatbot', 'online agent' or 'virtual assistant', these applications have been been in use for a number of years now to facilitate human interactions and perform basic administrative tasks.

The original concept comes from an application named 'ELIZA', developed in 1966. Quoting the Wikipedia entry,

[Eliza] parodied a Rogerian therapist, largely by rephrasing many of the patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient. Thus, for example, the response to "My head hurts" might be "Why do you say your head hurts?" The response to "My mother hates me" might be "Who else in your family hates you?" ELIZA was named after Eliza Doolittle, a working-class character in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, who is taught to speak with an upper class accent.

While ELIZA was very basic, depending on the entries by the human in the conversation it could remarkably simulate a human for minutes at a time. You can give a copy of the original ELIZA a go online at Eliza test.

Over the last 40 years these types of applications have developed significantly, modern systems are very complex and able to learn how to mimic an individual by 'watching' how they engage online, such as MyCyberTwin.

They can also draw from a database or FAQ system to answer specific questions and learn how to become better at answering questions over time.

The ATO demonstrated a version last year at the ATO showcase and several companies now offer very mature and widely used chatbot technologies for supporting customer service initiatives.

These include eGain and Colloquis (owned by Microsoft).

A number of organisations already use chatbots for customer service in their sites. In the public sector this includes Almere City Council in Holland, Eurail and the US army. Commercially it includes organisations such as Ford and Ikea.

A list of some of the organisations currently using chatbots is hosted at Chatbots.org.

While no chatbots have successfully passed the Turing test to win the Loebner Prize, over a short specific conversation, such as an enquiry to a government office, modern chatbots may provide an effective first level of support, backed up by humans where necessary to address complex scenarios outside the chatbot's programming.

Is anyone in the Australian public sector currently looking at using chatbots to supplement their online (or phone) customer service?

Read full post...

View summary...

Does your department adequately manage your website?

As a former and current business owner I'm constantly considering and reflecting on our numbers regarding how well my agency's online channel is performing. My goal is to maintain an ongoing awareness of our performance and why we're performing in that manner.

To that end my agency has multiple web reporting systems in place and I use them regularly - given that I've been measuring websites now for over ten years and have a good feel for valid and invalid web metrics.

For me measurement leads to effective management. Without the information from measurement over time I cannot make good decisions regarding our online channel, provide expert advise to senior decision-makers, advocate for appropriate development of the channel or prioritise the content updates that are most importance to our audience.

However this doesn't appear to be the experience for all website managers across the Federal public service.

Per a report in the Canberra Times, the Commonwealth Auditor-General says many Federal Government agencies inadequately manage their websites, are unaware what they cost to run, and risk providing the public with outdated or inaccurate information.

The ANAO report, available as a PDF at Government Agencies' Management of their Websites was published on 16 December and involved a survey of 40 federal agencies, followed by an audit of five.

It found that agencies were increasingly relying on websites to provide information and services to the public and that,

This increased reliance by agencies on websites to provide information and services, brings with it a greater need for agencies to have sound approaches to manage their sites. Poorly managed websites not only increase the risk that information and services are not provided to website users at reasonable cost to government, but can have adverse impacts on other service channels such as extra work loads for call centres and inquiry outlets.

It also commented that,

All of the audited agencies monitored website user activity and satisfaction. However, none of the audited agencies reported specifically on how their websites were meeting their respective purposes and how they were contributing to agency business goals. Also, most agencies had little information on the costs of operating and maintaining their websites. Agencies with websites that pose significant risks to service delivery or that have multiple websites would benefit from an improved understanding of their website user activity, performance, and cost information.

In the forty agencies surveyed, only six maintained firm website cost data - meaning that the other 34 did not have a clear idea how much their online channel cost relative to other channels.

In another case the ANAO reported that one agency simply provided raw weekly hit data to management as a performance tracking tool, with no explanation of what 'hits' meant, nor what a good or bad outcome would be.

The ANAO followed up with four recommendations for agencies,

• develop a clearly stated purpose for each website;
  
• strengthen agency decision making through improved risk management;
  
• review content management processes and practices; and
  
• strengthen performance monitoring and reporting.
  

I agree with all of these recommendations. They're an important basis for the management of any type of channel, program, project or product - and a website is certainly no exception.

Read full post...

View summary...

2020: future of the internet

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has surveyed a group of internet leaders, activists and analysts on their predictions for the internet of 2020 - now only 11 years away.

Some of the predictions are very relevant to government and our role within society, such as views on organisational transparency, copyright and social justice.

In many cases the views of the experts were that while the internet would enable transparency and reduce the capacity for copyright to function under current models (with a constant arms struggle into the future), this would not necessarily lead to a fairer and more just society.

It's a very interesting and thought-provoking read, if not a particularly positive view.

It looks as if an internet-enabled utopian society may fall victim to the same human foibles, politics and power struggles as have all former utopian dreams - with a caveat that at least we'll be more transparent and open about it.

Read full post...

View summary...

Vic government publishes intranet IA best practice analysis report

The Victorian government has published the Intranet Information Architecture Best Practice Analysis report, conducted by the IA Strategy project team in the Web Domain Group, Department of Human Services (DHS) Victoria.

The analysis is available in summary and in full from the eGovernment Resource centre.

One of the writers of the report, Suze Ingram, has also published comments on her blog as 10 Intranet Best Practice (and more...).

The best practices outlined in the report are supported by evidence statements from various intranet experts to help intranet teams support their case when arguing for improvements.

One of the most interesting sections for me is regarding adequate resourcing of intranets. To quote the report,

It is crucial to the ongoing success of an intranet, that intranet teams are treated and funded at the level of other vital business tools and projects. A successful intranet needs the appropriate staff and resources so they can research, develop and produce.

In his “Managing the Intranet and Teams” report, Jakob Nielsen’s research has calculated that the average size for a core intranet team is five people. As a percentage of an organisation’s total employees, the average proportion of people with responsibilities for the intranet is 0.27% (for an organisation the size of DHS - approximately 12,500 staff - this equates to 33 staff). Some of these team members had other job responsibilities as well; team members often worked only part-time on their intranet. Nielsen asserts that “this is a small number given that intranets are a majority productivity and communication tool for organisations”.

Read full post...

View summary...

TweetMinister launches in UK as central way to communicate with MPs

Co-incidental to my post about Twitter on Friday, in the UK the TweetMinister site has launched as a central way to track UK Members of Parliament using Twitter.

It's a very slick looking site, developed as a public service initiative by private organisations, designed to allow members of the public to view what MPs are saying on Twitter.

Currently it lists seven MPs, from all sides of UK politics, together with party Twitter streams for Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

It has received some attention in the UK already, with a mention in the House of Lords, which itself operates a blog site, Lords of the Blog.

TweetMinister has its own Twitter account (naturally), where the creators discuss the design and next steps for the site.

It wouldn't be hard for an organisation to set up a similar site in Australia - though it might still find it difficult to find many Australian MP Twitterers to follow. Perhaps a blog-based site would be more successful here to start with.

Read full post...

View summary...