Embedded AI for Sales-Service Negotiation

Bell Atlantic Service Representatives are the primary interface between the company and its many customers. They are responsible for negotiating orders to establish, transfer or disconnect telephone service as well as answer questions and process changes to a customer’s service or billing account. To support this wide variety of tasks, the Service Reps use a number of computer applications, mostly hosted on mainframe systems. Each application has it’s own arcane language for data entry and retrieval which must be mastered by the user. In addition, large amounts of required information, such as rates, service restrictions, etc. are documented on paper and must be memorized or “looked up” during the customer contact. This information overload has a number of undesirable consequences. First, as Bell Atlantic increases the type and number of services it offers, it is increasingly difficult for a Service Rep to keep up with all of the information required to both provide customer service and to proactively present and sell Bell Atlantic’s services. In addition, the complications of accessing large quantities of external data throughout the customer contact negatively impacts the length of the contact. This inconveniences the customer and further limits the Rep’s ability to provide accurate and efficient service. Finally, the training necessary to provide the Service Reps with the tools they need to navigate this sea of information has reached unacceptable levels. In order to address these problems, Bell Atlantic has developed a distributed software application called the SaleService Negotiation System (SSNS.) The goals of the system include: In addition, it is critical that any new automated system be able to address both future-oriented technology and the current mainframe-based systems which will continue to perform the bulk of Bell Atlantic data processing for the near term.