Corpora: 2nd CFP: COLING 2000 Workshop on Automated Interactive Customer S ervice Centers

[Bagga, Amit (CRD)]

Automated Interactive Customer Service Centers

Workshop to be held in conjunction with COLING 2000.

Date: Saturday, August 5

Centre Universitaire, Luxembourg



WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Currently we interact with customer service centers on a regular basis for a
variety of tasks ranging from checking the balance of a bank or credit card
account to filing filing one's income tax returns.  However, almost all existing
customer service centers use Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems to route
calls on the front-end while using a combination of specialized computer systems
and/or human service providers on the backend.  However, these IVR-based systems
are customer-unfriendly and unwieldy to use.  The options specified often do not
match customer needs, and are frequently not heard by customers who either
memorize the the sequence of options that will get them the desired information,
or hit the 0 key to speak to an operator.  Therefore, given the recent advances
in speech recognition technology, the great amount of research done in the last
decade in the area of natural language dialogue, and the tremendous growth of
the Internet, there exist tremendous opportunities to use these technologies to
revolutionize customer service centers.  In addition, there is also great
potential in making a significant impact on society.

The main goal of the proposed workshop will be to provide a forum where
participants can learn about ongoing research/commercial projects in the area,
analyze the potential impact of the work done in this area, and discuss future
directions.  The workshop hopes to bring together researchers working on the
following types of projects: systems using natural language for call routing,
dialogue systems for specialized backend customer service applications, voice
over the Internet, and systems providing customer service over the web.

It should be noted that while there have been several workshops in the more
generic area of natural language dialogue in the past, this workshop will focus
on a particular significant application of such systems - the use of natural
language dialogue for providing customer service specially over the web.  Given
the tremendous potential and the emerging importance of e-commerce, the timing
of this workshop is especially important.  The specific areas of interest
include, but are not limited to, the following:
* natural language call routing
* natural language dialogue systems providing specific backend customer
  service applications (example: parts ordering systems)
* conversational agents in customer service applications
* web-based customer service centers
* voice over the Internet in web-based customer service centers
* customer service using both the phone and the web
* lessons learned from IVRs and its applicability for web-based customer service
* system evaluation

The workshop invites short papers, full-length papers, proposals for panel
discussions, and position statements that deal with any aspect of customer
service centers.  Papers describing systems that are currently in use are
specially welcome.  Of particular importance are papers on evaluation
methodologies for such systems.  However, we will accept papers that describe
work in progress, position papers describing future directions, and papers
describing the impact of such systems on society.



FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION

Paper submissions should consist of either a short paper (2000 words or less,
including references), a position statement (2000 words or less, including
references), or a full paper (5000 words or less, including references).  Each
submission should include a separate title page providing the following
information: the title, the type of paper (short/position/full), the word
count, a short abstract, names and affiliations of all the authors, the full
address of the primary author (or alternate contact person), including phone,
fax, and email.  Proposals for panels should consist of a short (upto 500
words) description of the proposed panel along with the names of the proposed
panelists.

Papers and proposals for panel discussions may be submitted by submitting three
hard copies or a soft copy (ASCII, or PS) to:

Amit Bagga
General Electric CRD
Room K1-5C34A
1 Research Circle
Niskayuna, NY 12309.  USA
phone: 1-518-387-7077
email: bagga at crd.ge.com



IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline:                 May 15
Notification of acceptance of panels :     May 26
Notification of acceptance of papers :     June 6
Camera ready papers due:                   June 20



ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Amit Bagga  - GE Corporate Research and Development
Tomek Strzalkowski - GE Corporate Research and Development



PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Amit Bagga - GE CRD
Alan Biermann - Duke University
Jennifer Chu-Carroll - Lucent Technologies
Lou Hoebel - GE CRD
Lori Lamel - LIMSI
Tomek Strzalkowski - GE CRD
Yorick Wilks - Sheffield University
Wlodek Zadrozny - IBM T.J. Watson Research Center