Andrej posted today an article about his new chatbot SalesClark:

http://www.chatbots.org/conversational/agent/salesclark_makes_online_shopping_easier_this_holiday_season/

What do we think?

Erwin Van Lun - Nov 17, 2010:

Andrej posted today an article about his new chatbot SalesClark:

http://www.chatbots.org/conversational/agent/salesclark_makes_online_shopping_easier_this_holiday_season/

What do we think?

Very good with query on price and usage, not very sharp in searching by other features, eg “weight”( try “Lightweight laptop that is 2 lb. or less” and it returns more than 900 options). The “narrowing-down” questions are fine but a little bit too fixed, in most cases it will be usage then price range; so user may feel tired after 2 or 3 rounds.

The best about SalesClark, in my opinion, is the pin-pointed market-slice: laptop and desktop. Very good a start.

John Li - Nov 17, 2010:

Very good with query on price and usage, not very sharp in searching by other features, eg “weight”( try “Lightweight laptop that is 2 lb. or less” and it returns more than 900 options).

Thank you for pointing that out. It turns out that this was just a spelling problem. SalesClark didn’t understand that “lb.” means the same as “lbs.” or “pounds” (that he already knew as units of weight). He showed all the relatively lightweight laptops because he understood the first part of your query. But he didn’t use 2 pounds as the precise cut-off point. Thanks to your feedback, it’s now fixed.

I like it. Have you tried a version yet that displays the results separately (not in the same chat-view)? I found that a bit confusing at first.
John Li is right though that the filters perhaps need some more work. I specified a screen size of 15.6” and it showed results for a 17.3”.

Jan, this is an interesting and rare glitch. I dug out a log file that might be yours or at least exhibits the same problem. The screen size was first specified as “big”, which SalesClark correctly interpreted as 15.6” or more. Then, after the results were shown, you (or someone else if this is a wrong log file) requested a more specific size of 15.6”. For some reason, SalesClark decided to use the original, less restrictive criteria instead. I’ll try to replicate his decision-making in this case and fix the bug.

Yes, that could have been me.
Question: the data that is depicted, is this queried from a database, or is it stored in the chatbot’s internal stutuctures (AIML or whatever)? And if it is queried, are those ‘on the fly’ generated or predefined ones?

Hmm, it depends.

SalesClark isn’t coded in AIML. As a language, AIML just isn’t powerful and flexible enough for this purpose.

Instead, there are several interconnected modules and several interconnected databases inside SalesClark. The wording of different parts of responses is prescripted, but SalesClark puts them together into a single utterance by himself, based on the input and its context. So, going back to your question, it’s mixed.

Although a typical conversation with SalesClark follows a general model from “what do you want to buy” to “here are your results”, each user sees something slightly different in each step. Even the recommendations are so personalized that, according to our data, two users almost never see the same computer in their results.

Andrej Tusicisny - Nov 18, 2010:

SalesClark didn’t understand that “lb.” means the same as “lbs.” or “pounds” (that he already knew as units of weight). He showed all the relatively lightweight laptops because he understood the first part of your query. But he didn’t use 2 pounds as the precise cut-off point.

Why don’t to make Sales Clark more international appealing by recognize the country where someone is from (using the IP address and nation databases) and set preferences for weight units, so you can have kilos and grams (actually for about the rest of the world, I’d guess /???)

Thank you for pointing that out. It turns out that this was just a spelling problem. SalesClark didn’t understand that “lb.” means the same as “lbs.” or “pounds” (that he already knew as units of weight). He showed all the relatively lightweight laptops because he understood the first part of your query. But he didn’t use 2 pounds as the precise cut-off point. Thanks to your feedback, it’s now fixed.

Awesome! The quick fix shows you must have a very flexible and “lightweight” design there!
Very impressive, indeed.

Yet another question: seems to me the narrowing down is only by usage, but actually it works fine if I just answer “internal dvd” to the question “Can you tell me more about the things you want to do on this laptop?”, so if the narrowing down question contains more options, eg ” or more about the hardware or software you want to have? “, that’ll be even better IMO.

IMO?

In My Opinion

People often use IMHO which is

In My Humble Opinion.

Before you ask IANAL means “I Am Not A Lawyer”

Erwin Van Lun - Nov 18, 2010:

Why don’t to make Sales Clark more international appealing by recognize the country where someone is from (using the IP address and nation databases) and set preferences for weight units, so you can have kilos and grams (actually for about the rest of the world, I’d guess /???)

SalesClark now primarily focuses on the American market and that’s why he uses the imperial system. We want to add the metric system before we launch the British and Canadian versions next year. The goal is to teach the virtual assistant to identify all the units and make all the necessary conversions. But he isn’t there yet.

John Li - Nov 19, 2010:

Yet another question: seems to me the narrowing down is only by usage, but actually it works fine if I just answer “internal dvd” to the question “Can you tell me more about the things you want to do on this laptop?”, so if the narrowing down question contains more options, eg ” or more about the hardware or software you want to have? “, that’ll be even better IMO.

Yes, absolutely. If Clark asks you about your price range for instance, and you specify the operating system instead of answering his question, he will still understand. SalesClark’s questions are there mostly to guide the conversation and make sure that a user didn’t forget anything important.

Maybe it would be a good idea to ask a smaller number of broader questions. I don’t know. What do you think, guys?

Andrej Tusicisny - Nov 19, 2010:

Maybe it would be a good idea to ask a smaller number of broader questions. I don’t know. What do you think, guys?

Actually you should get an impression of what kind of customer you’re dealing with. Is he an expert or someone who uses a computer for email and internet?

You might even make preassumptions based on:
-typing speed (the faster the more savvy)
-browser (Google Chrome vs IE 7?)
-OS (Linux vs Windows XP)

In general, I would tend to ask questions that 95% of the internet population understand (not the geeks):
-number of movies/music/pictures instead of asking for harddisk capacity
-gaming instead of asking for graphical card.

-browser (Google Chrome vs IE 7?)
I don’t know about that one. You wouldn’t believe the number of grannys I’ve seen with chrome on their desktop, and actually using it too (cause it installs as the default).

How many desktops of grannys did you see :D ?