From: rewari@cyber.enet.dec.com (Anil Rewari)
Subject: CFP -- AAAI'93 Workshop: AI in Service & Support
Keywords: Customer Service, Support
Reply-To: rewari@aiag.enet.dec.com (Anil Rewari)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 06:01:15 GMT

AAAI-93 Workshop  on  AI  in  Service  and Support: Bridging the Gap Between
			Research and Applications

DESCRIPTION:

The areas of customer service and support are poised to be leading areas for
revenue  growth  to companies in the 90's. A 1991 market study shows that 23
percent of high technology service organizations have already begun building
AI  based systems, and 67 percent expect to be using AI within 3 years. This
full-day  workshop will gather researchers and developers who are working on
exploring  or  applying  AI  techniques  (such as expert systems, case-based
reasoning,  model-based reasoning, intelligent information retrieval, neural
networks,  fuzzy logic, etc) in the areas of customer service and support in
industry  as  well  as  government.  The  goal of this workshop is encourage
interactions    between   researchers   (from   university   and   corporate
laboratories)  and  developers of AI systems so as to bridge the gap between
current  research  in  artificial  intelligence and current needs in service
organizations.

TOPICS:

Papers are encouraged in, but are not limited to, the following areas:

- diagnosis
- advisory activities
- information retrieval
- workforce planning and dispatch
- resource and inventory management
- hardware and software configuration management
- automated knowledge acquisition
- emergency response centers
- call center management
- billing and account servicing, and
- various value-added services

Corporate service   organizations   frequently   consist  of  geographically
dispersed  groups  whose  work  is  intertwined. Also, the rate at which new
products are being introduced makes it harder for support personnel to be on
top  of things. Keeping this in mind, we would also encourage researchers in
the  following  areas to participate by focusing on how their research could
be applied to service and support:

- Knowledge Sharing (such as that being conducted by PACT, including Stanford
   University) between functional groups such
   as engineering, service, and billing groups.
- Machine  Learning,  to augment the shortcomings of knowledge-based systems
   currently in use 
- Natural-Language  translation,  for  service  groups  that  are located in
   different countries but use the same underlying tools or applications
- Designing systems for serviceability
- Groupware
- Distributed AI, for example, for allowing various expert systems to work
   cooperatively in a help desk environment

FORMAT OF WORKSHOP:

This will  be  a  full day workshop split into 4 sessions of 90 minutes each
and will include paper sessions as well as panels. The areas of focus of the
paper  sessions  and panels will depend on the range of papers accepted, and
will be specified later.


ATTENDANCE: 

Developers and   reserchers   interested  in  applying  advanced  Artificial
Intelligence  technology  to  the  areas  of customer service and support in
industry  as  well  as  government. This workshop will encourage interaction
between  researchers  and  developers.  In  order to facilitate interaction,
attendance will be limited to 50 people.

SUBMISSSION REQUIREMENTS:

Prospective participants  should  send  4  copies  of papers not more than 8
pages  long (not including the title page and bibliography). A subset of the
participants  will  be  selected  as  speakers.  Those who are interested in
attending  but  do  not  want  to be considered for presentations may send a
detailed  abstract  describing their work and the reasons for their interest
in this workshop.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 12, 1993

NOTIFICATION DATE: April 2, 1993

FINAL DATE FOR CAMERA-READY COPIES TO ORGANIZERS: April 30, 1993

SUBMIT TO: 

Anil Rewari
Artificial Intelligence Technology Center
Digital Equipment Corporation
111 Locke Drive,  LMO2-1/E12
Marlboro, MA 01752

Tel. 508-480-5568
FAX. 508-480-5822
email: rewari@aiag.enet.dec.com

WORKSHOP CHAIR:

Anil Rewari, Digital Equipment Corporation.

WORKSHOP COMMITTEE:

Anil Rewari, Digital Equipment Corporation.
Avron Barr, Aldo Ventures, Inc. email: barr@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
Jeff Pepper, ServiceWare, Inc.
Frank von Martial, DETECON, Germany.  email: frank@gmdzi.gmd.de
Newsgroups: comp.ai