Conversator
Chat bot conversations router: framework to connect users to operators (humans or bots).
NOTE: This is just a DRAFT readme/manifesto**.
Motivation / Goal
Working around conversational commerce messaging apps, and specifically thinking about a chat bots on the telegram instant messaging platform, I faced with a typical call center/help desk/customer care task: to route incoming customers requests to a chat bot to a pool of operators.
The gist here is to realize a bot framework that act as multiplexer/demultiplexer routing incoming users/customers requests to some operators, that could be or humans or bots applications (NLP-enabled to converstate with users).
This is useful for a standard customer care scenario: customers contact a contact center (realized here through a Telegram bot account) to talk with an operator, to have any sort of service: getting some info, or to solve an issue with the help pf an expert (see healthcare assistance/patient monitoring), or to purchase something (conversational ecommerce).
A bot act as a front-end to customers,
- verifying id user is new, or retrieving his previous session data
- dispatching the incoming messaging call to a back-end operator
The important point is: WHO is the operator ?
- Operator is an Human operator Is really a person! A human being.
- Operator is a bot (again!) The bot talk with user in his natural language and the bot could substitute human operator to solve simple requests (depending on the context), chatting with user as "first level helpdesk".
Architecture
The multiplexing logic could be decided by an hypervisor/scheduler (round robin routing among available operators). Profiling logics could be implemented easily. A profit scenario could foresee to let the user talk with a specific Person, maybe a very specilized operator, etc. etc.
Routing have to be dynamic: as soon a conversation between an user and an operator end, the operator pass from state busy to free and could converse with a new user. A human operator could decide himself to become available for a new conversation (e.g. submitting a /start command to the hypervisor bot), and where a conversation is concluded (e.g. submitting a /stop command to the hypervisor bot). Afterall, with some implicit logic, a bot operator could do the same :-).
+-----------------------------------------------+
| hypervisor logic / scheduler | <-- HUMAN Administrator
| |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| ^
v |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| |
User ------> | <---------------+ +-----------------> | <-- HUMAN Operator: Giorgio
| | | |
User ------> | <---+ +-----|---------|-----------------> | <-- HUMAN Operator: Giuditta
| | | | | |
User ------> | <---|-----|-----|---------|-----+ +----> | <-- HUMAN Operator: Luca
| | | | | | | |
User ------> | | | | | +------|----> | <-- BOT Operator (fallback)
| +-----|-----|---------|------------+ |
User ------> | <---------+ +---------|-----------------> | <-- BOT Operator (fallback)
| | |
User ------> | <-------------------------+ | <-- BOT Operator (fallback)
| |
+-----------------------------------------------+
COMING SOON Source Code
The conversator alghorithm is pretty simple; using the Telegram Bot platform, everyone connected to a bot (specifically in this context: an user, an operator) is identified by a permenent chat_id. Conversational sessions statuses, profilings, routes data, could be stored and retrieved to implement the routing logic.
Pseudocode:
const chatId = message.chat_id
const text = message.text
// incoming update message from an user ?
if ( isUser(chatId) ) {
if (activeConversation(chatId))
forwardMessageTo(assigned_operator)
else
forwardMessageTo(new_operator)
}
// incoming update message from an operator ?
if ( isOperator(chatId) ) {
if ( isCommand(text) ) {
// operator command management (internal admins/operations), e.g. /commands
execCommand(text)
}
else {
// forwarding message to user
if ( activeConversation(chatId) )
forwardMessageTo( assigned_operator )
else
forwardMessageTo( new_operator )
}
}Contact
- If you like this project,
- Give a START to the project here!,
- share and contribute!
- Contact me, via email
- mail: giorgio.robino@gmail.com
- blog: @solyarisoftware