How can I help you? Design principles for task-oriented speech dialog systems in customer service

Organizations are increasingly delegating customer inquiries to speech dialog systems (SDSs) to save personnel resources. However, customers often report frustration when interacting with SDSs due to poorly designed solutions. Despite these issues, design knowledge for SDSs in customer service remains elusive. To address this research gap, we employ the design science approach and devise a design theory for SDSs in customer service. The design theory, including 14 requirements and five design principles, draws on the principles of dialog theory and undergoes validation in three iterations using five hypotheses. A summative evaluation comprising a two-phase experiment with 205 participants yields positive results regarding the user experience of the artifact. This study contributes to design knowledge for SDSs in customer service and supports practitioners striving to implement similar systems in their organizations.

     

The unsteady hydrodynamic force during the collision of two spheres in a viscous fluid

The time-dependent Stokes equations were solved in the vicinity of two spheres colliding in a viscous fluid with viscosity ν to determine the rate of change of the hydrodynamic forces during large accelerations associated with Hertzian mechanical contact of small duration \({\tau_{\rm c}}\). It was assumed that the gap clearance remains finite during contact and is approximately equal to the height σ of surface micro-asperities. The initial condition corresponds to the steady-state axisymmetric solution of Cooley and O’Neill (Mathematika 16:37–49, 1969), and the initial value problem for the time-dependent Stokes streamfunction was solved using Laplace transform methods. Assuming that σ is small compared to the sphere radius a, we used singular perturbation expansions and tangent-sphere coordinates to obtain an asymptotic solution for the viscous flow in the gap and around the moving sphere. The solution provides the dependence of the resistance, added mass and history forces on σ, the sphere velocity and acceleration, and the ratio of the sphere diameters. We found that the relative importance of viscous and mechanical forces during contact depends on a new Stokes number \({St_{\rm c}=\sigma^2/\nu \tau_{\rm c}}\). Integration of Newton’s equation for the motion of the sphere during mechanical contact showed that there is a critical \({St_{\rm c}=O(\sigma/a)}\) for which there is no rebound at the end of contact.     

Two-stage stochastic master production scheduling under demand uncertainty in a rolling planning environment

This paper proposes a scenario-based two-stage stochastic programming model with recourse for master production scheduling under demand uncertainty. We integrate the model into a hierarchical production planning and control system that is common in industrial practice. To reduce the problem of the disaggregation of the master production schedule, we use a relatively low aggregation level (compared to other work on stochastic programming for production planning). Consequently, we must consider many more scenarios to model demand uncertainty. Additionally, we modify standard modelling approaches for stochastic programming because they lead to the occurrence of many infeasible problems due to rolling planning horizons and interdependencies between master production scheduling and successive planning levels. To evaluate the performance of the proposed models, we generate a customer order arrival process, execute production planning in a rolling horizon environment and simulate the realisation of the planning results. In our experiments, the tardiness of customer orders can be nearly eliminated by the use of the proposed stochastic programming model at the cost of increasing inventory levels and using additional capacity.     

Efficiently solving linear bilevel programming problems using off-the-shelf optimization software

Many optimization models in engineering are formulated as bilevel problems. Bilevel optimization problems are mathematical programs where a subset of variables is constrained to be an optimal solution of another mathematical program. Due to the lack of optimization software that can directly handle and solve bilevel problems, most existing solution methods reformulate the bilevel problem as a mathematical program with complementarity conditions (MPCC) by replacing the lower-level problem with its necessary and sufficient optimality conditions. MPCCs are single-level non-convex optimization problems that do not satisfy the standard constraint qualifications and therefore, nonlinear solvers may fail to provide even local optimal solutions. In this paper we propose a method that first solves iteratively a set of regularized MPCCs using an off-the-shelf nonlinear solver to find a local optimal solution. Local optimal information is then used to reduce the computational burden of solving the Fortuny-Amat reformulation of the MPCC to global optimality using off-the-shelf mixed-integer solvers. This method is tested using a wide range of randomly generated examples. The results show that our method outperforms existing general-purpose methods in terms of computational burden and global optimality.     

Building 2D quasicrystals from 5-fold symmetric corannulene molecules

Nano Research - The formation of long-range ordered aperiodic molecular films on quasicrystalline substrates is a new challenge that provides an opportunity for further surface functionalization....     

Axial tolerance in the position of aberration compensators placed in a converging beam

To perform a null test of aspherical surfaces we used a computer-generated hologram or a lens or a mirror compensator to compensate the aspherical aberration. When compensating in a convergent light beam the axial position of this hologram or compensator is critical. A holographic compensator to be used in the convergent beam of light was designed and constructed. We have established some relations to determine the tolerance in the axial positioning of these compensators.     

Influence of external factors in resistance of Corynebacterium urealyticum to antimicrobial agents

Corynebacterium urealyticum is usually resistant to multiple antibiotics. We analyzed whether previous hospitalization and/or the use of antibiotics was a factor associated with the appearance of resistance to different antibiotics in C. urealyticum. Our findings suggest that resistant strains of C. urealyticum are likely to be acquired directly from the hospital environment and that the use of antibiotics in the hospital setting could favor the appearance of multiresistant strains.     

Will the experience of playing a violent role in a video game influence people’s judgments of violent crimes?

The present study investigates the impact of the experience of role playing a violent character in a video game on attitudes towards violent crimes and criminals. People who played the violent game were found to be more acceptable of crimes and criminals compared to people who did not play the violent game. More importantly, interaction effects were found such that people were more acceptable of crimes and criminals outside the game if the criminals were matched with the role they played in the game and the criminal actions were similar to the activities they perpetrated during the game. The results indicate that people’s virtual experience through role-playing games can influence their attitudes and judgments of similar real-life crimes, especially if the crimes are similar to what they conducted while playing games. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

A quality evaluation methodology for health-related websites based on a 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic approach

Nowadays, the patients and physicians use the health-related websites as an important information source and, therefore, it is critical the quality evaluation of health- related websites. The quality assessment of health-related websites becomes especially relevant because their use imply the existence of a wide range of threats which can affect people’s health. Additionally, website quality evaluation can also contribute to maximize the exploitation of invested resources by organizations in the development of user-perceived quality websites. But there is not yet a clear and unambiguous definition of the concept of website quality and the debate about quality evaluation on the Web remains open. In this paper, we present a qualitative and user-oriented methodology for assessing quality of health-related websites based on a 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic approach. To identify the quality criteria set, a qualitative research has been carried out using the focus groups technique. The measurement method generates linguistic quality assessments considering the visitors’ judgements with respect to those quality criteria. The combination of the linguistic judgements is implemented without a loss of information by applying a 2-tuple linguistic weighted average operator. This methodology means an improvement on quality evaluation of health websites through the commitment to put users first.     

Computational intelligence tools for next generation quality of service management

In this paper we explore the interest of computational intelligence tools in the management of heterogeneous communication networks, specifically to predict congestion, failures and other anomalies in the network that may eventually lead to degradation of the quality of offered services. We show two different applications based on neural and neuro-fuzzy systems for quality of service (QoS) management in next generation networks for voice and video service over heterogeneous Internet protocol (V2oIP) services. The two examples explained in this paper attempt to predict the communication network resources for new incoming calls, and visualizing the QoS of a communication network by means of self-organizing maps.