You Talkin' To Me? - Technology Information

Industry Standard, The, Oct 2, 2000 by Steffan Heuer

Sites are using bots to chat with customers, but these virtual sales reps have a lot to learn.

Jennifer James really wants you to buy a new car, and she'll work to keep your interest, sashaying through the showroom, posing in front of autos and spilling the details on specs and how each car handles the road. "You don't want a car that's gonna break down when you drive it off the lot," she says, opening the driver's side door to show off the leather seats. "Bonnie Raitt sounds great" on the stereo system of the rubyred model, Jennifer adds with a smile.

That's all well and good, but this potential buyer asked about something completely different: to take a look under the hood of the next car over.

If Jennifer doesn't get it, that's because she's a dumb piece of software programmed to play the virtual sales rep for a demonstration version of an Internet car dealership. "Her current content and skills are incomplete," concedes her creator, Barbara Hayes-Roth, founder of bot provider Extempo in Redwood City, Calif. Her advice: "Talk to Jennifer in simple sentences and stick to topics she knows best."

The same goes for most virtual sales reps. Close to a dozen companies in the United States and Europe are touting animated bots as user-friendly interfaces for e-commerce sites and intranets. Their software promises to guide surfers through a maze of products, answer questions quickly and cheaply and refer users to real people once the bot draws a blank.

So far, though, "animated" is a pretty loose term when applied to today's bots. Some bots just wink at you while you type queries into a text window; others move around, lean into the screen and even show a little attitude. Some are splashy but essentially dumb user interfaces sitting on a thin layer of knowledge. Others tap into a company's databases or other software.

"It's cool when it works," says Paul Hagen, a senior analyst with Forrester Research who has been following the blabbering bots for years. "We're getting closer, but I'm still not entirely sold on it. You almost always stump the things after a couple of questions." He estimates there are no more than a few dozen live virtual assistants online today.

Animated bats occupy the intersection of artificial intelligence and cutting-edge animation. Combining the two technologies makes for a virtual sales or service rep that - at least in theory - is always on call, doesn't crack under heavy call volume and never asks for a raise. "The core technology is intelligence that allows the agents to interact with users in real time, in a natural-language dialogue. The bats can listen and learn, and they can engage people in social conversations," notes Extempo's Hayes-Roth.

Her company this year helped launch Jack, Petopia.com's wisecracking "dog-bot," and Procter & Gamble's site for Mr. Clean, in which the detergent's buff namesake dispenses advice. That first-generation bat quickly demonstrates the technology's limitations. Ask the bald uber-janitor how to get rid of mildew in the kitchen, and he serves up a list of links such as "How do I clean dish drainers?"

What's more, users have to download more than 2MB of software before Mr. Clean comes alive. "It's a huge barrier for the population they are trying to reach," Hayes-Roth says about that early implementation. "It's ridiculous." P&G plans to launch a revamped site this fall, using streaming media.

STRAIGHT TALK

Most companies take a less futuristic approach. A little bit of animation is fine with them, as long as the bot answers queries in a way that's similar to what they're used to with natural-language search companies like Ask Jeeves. [See "The Language Barrier," April 24.] Take Open Grid, a startup that provides integrated services to the customers of wireless providers. "Our issue was, how do we quickly service a lot of users coming online?" recalls Open Grid President lens Horstmann. In preparing the upcoming device portal for Motorola, slated for up to 100,000 visitors a day, his company looked at several options, including completely outsourcing customer support.

Horstmann says the company quickly settled on what it perceived as the most efficient model, a multitier system that starts with a so-called vRep by Native Minds. Open Grid built its customer-service bot over a seven-week period. "We haven't decided on a name yet," says Carol Durr, the company's lead on Web and wireless usability. "But the personality will be friendly and helpful. Once it's implemented, the personality can evolve as needed," she says. On the back end, the character taps into an automated e-mail response system from Kana.

Scalability was the main reason to deploy a virtual customer-service rep, Horstmann says: "Many of my friends [at other startups] had their entire company focused on customer service before they knew it."

San Francisco-based Native Minds has put eight of its vReps on the Web and is now working on 12 more, according to CEO Walter Tackett. Among its customers are lams pet food, which will soon have a bot to answer questions by vets hooked up to an extranet. SmithKline Beecham also uses a vRep for a product line about quitting smoking.