Compaq Quicksource: Providing the Consumer with the Power of AI

It used case-based reasoning (CBR) to provide expert-level knowledge and experience to Compaq's Customer-Support Center, helping representatives with customer calls on the customer-service hotline. With the success of SMART, Compaq looked for new opportunities to use CBR technology to provide even higher levels of customer service. This analysis resulted in a reengineering of Compaq's customer support strategy. The decision was made to package and deliver the trou-bleshooting knowledge and expertise directly with the product, allowing consumers to solve most of their problems entirely on their own and to use Compaq's help desk as a backup facility. QUICKSOURCE is one of the first examples of knowledge publishing: The idea is to deliver intelligence and human expertise directly with the product. The benefit is that users are able to access this intelligence directly to help them solve their problems. We view knowledge publishing as the most effective way of delivering the power of AI to the general consumer population.