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Enabling Smart Answer (Workflow Decision Point)

One of the key capabilities of Smart Answer is to automatically respond to inbound customer inquiries without human intervention and to automatically suggest answers to an agent who is manually responding to an email message. The eMail Response - Process Message workflow calls several subprocesses that analyze the message and ultimately send an auto-response message back to the customer. Figure 10 illustrates this process. For more details about these capabilities, see Siebel Smart Answer Administration Guide.

Figure 10.  Smart Answer Enabled?

The eMail Response - Process Message workflow first determines if Smart Answer is enabled and if the administrator has enabled Smart Answer, then calls a subprocess, eMail Response - Analyze Message. The Analyze Message subprocess performs the following tasks:

• Message categorization. Analyzes the body of the email message using a series of natural language processing techniques to determine what the customer wants to know. The results of these routines are used to associate the message with one or more categories of potential solutions to the message. These categories are used in the eMail Response - Process Message workflow to automatically respond to the message or automatically suggest answers to an agent for approval.
  • Auto Respond? decision point (automatically respond to the email). An auto-response message is sent when each of the following events occur:

    The Analyze Message subprocess returns matching categories that exceed the accuracy levels established by the administrator.

    The message is not a follow-up message.

    The message is not a loopback candidate. Siebel Email Response identifies a loopback candidate by determining how many messages have been received from a particular email address in a given period of time. For more information, see information about driver parameters for the Internet SMTP/POP3 Server communications driver in Siebel Communications Server Administration Guide.

    After an automatic response message is sent, an activity record is created for the auto-response message and the inbound activity record status is set to Auto Responded.

  • Automatically suggest a reply. If auto-response criteria are not met, an auto-acknowledgement message is sent to the customer and the message and suggested answers are routed to an agent for approval.