AI automates a help desk

摘要

Konica Business Machines' drive to fully automate its help desk arises from its desire to be a $1-billion operation by the next millennium and the company's past awards for superior tech support for office products. A project team obtained a demo version of The Molloy Group's Top of Mind and went through a one-week evaluation of it. When used to troubleshoot a problem, Top of Mind provides actions based on the description of the problem. It does not prompt the user to ask additional questions to help narrow down the correct action, so if a situation is misinterpreted, or described poorly, the percentage of wrong answers zooms upward. They turned to Inference with its CBR Express. The call-tracking software component was not flexible enough to deliver the information and reporting needed by Konica tech support. Konica's Ty Butler turned to the 3rd product the initial literature search had turned up: Software Artistry's Expert Advisor. The most unusual selling point of Expert Advisor was its multiple problem resolution modes.