AI-based Merchant Service For Alibaba

—— Chat Bot，Self-Service，Human Support

provided an overall framework for building assistive products, outlining the integration of products with three forms of assistance.2022.02

Topic 1: Construction of self-service products for merchants

Regarding the design of self-service products, I summarized it a year ago. see more

In the past year, I focused on designing self-help features for merchant assistance, covering interactive frameworks for self-help requests, B2B user search scenarios, self-help tool SOP players, and service progress notifications. The key aspects include designing the solution path and content tailored to merchants' needs. Considering different scenarios, detailed and specific designs are implemented. The project aims to integrate multiple self-help products after establishing self-help capabilities

Topic 2：Integrated Self-Help, AI, and Human Assistance

01. background

In self-help services, there are three common product forms: self-service hall search, chatbots, and human consultation. In past projects, product iterations were done separately for each form, catering to different help scenarios, and each was relatively independent.

Essentially, these three product forms represent different designs for merchants' help paths at different stages:

1、Human assistance: Simple but requires ample manpower and trained service personnel.

2、Chatbots: Address self-help issues with natural language understanding but have limited efficiency.

3、Self-service hall: Increases capacity for presenting issues, enabling quick access to common problems and keyword searches, suitable for complex issues with detailed knowledge distribution.

02. Problem Analysis

While the entrance has been initially established, the experience lacks coherence:

1、Users repeat issue descriptions in each process, leading to a poor experience.

2、Lack of planned overall flow due to disparate product forms, resulting in weak progress perception.

3、Independence prevents seamless service, hindering traceability, evaluation, and measurement."

03. Solution Strategy

The approach involves integrating the hierarchy of the three forms to consider their relationships comprehensively. In the first iteration, the goal is to build a cohesive experience with a well-structured framework focusing on key elements.

The breakdown of the strategy addresses the three major pain points, continuing with three overarching strategies, considering the experiential relationships between layers.

(1) Initially, establish a unified framework for consistent entry and return paths.

(2) Consider the relationship between the help page and the environment, balancing the perception of service strength.

3) Address the relationships between layers, progressing layer by layer, ensuring different product forms cater to various user demands.

Topic 3: Capability Openness & Backend Configuration

Treating merchant product capabilities as universal outputs. This project provided a new perspective on viewing the service hall product—'How to modularize and deliver high-quality output if treated as a universal capability.'

Topic 4: Open Platform: SaaS-ifying Platform Capabilities

Considerations include:

1、User-friendly, akin to a (semi) commercial product.

2、Balancing granularity vs. efficient maintenance of 100 pages.

3、Transitioning from help to service insights.

(Updating)