Arguing to Support Customers: The Call Centre Study Case

Abstract

In this chapter, we present a case-based argumentation system that allows the technicians of a call centre to reach agreements and provide high quality customer support. Our application implements an argumentation framework that proposes software agents that represent technicians and have individual knowledge resources to automatically generate their positions and arguments. On the one hand, agents have a domain-cases case-base, with domain-cases that represent previous problems and their solutions. On the other hand, agents have an argument-cases case-base, with argument-cases that represent previous argumentation experiences and their final outcomes. These resources are represented by using ontologies. In this research, previous work that deployed a case-based multi-agent system in a real call centre has been enhanced by allowing agents to argue about the best way of solving the incidents that the call centre receives. The infrastructure that gives support and implements these argumentative agents has been developed and tested. The results of these tests are shown in this chapter.