JP2003076686A - Decision support method and decision support device that can use the method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve such a conventional problem that the classification of contents is difficult unless an inquiry from a customer is inputted in a fixed form. SOLUTION: In a decision making support device 12, a sentence acceptance part 22 receives data of the inquiry, a character string sampling part 24 samples a plurality of characteristic character strings from the data to form a concept, and a classification processing part 30 compares it with classification conditions for classification. A process processing part 32 samples the optimum operation process based on the classification from a process holding part 36 in correspondence to the inquiry and performs processing based on it.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a decision support method and apparatus. The present invention particularly relates to a technique of classifying text data based on content and performing subsequent processing based on the classification result.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, as symbolized by words such as computer society and network society, personal computers and the Internet have become widespread in the general society. Even within a company, multiple departments and multiple employees are connected by a network, making it easy to share documents and electronically communicate with each other regardless of location. Such technology is also applied to virtual group work and so-called electronic conferences, and has the potential to be used not only as a tool for connecting individuals but also in the form of joint work that controls the entire company.

On the other hand, based on notifications from outside such as customers,
There are situations in which decision-making as a company is necessary. In the past, a person in charge such as a call center generally received a report from a customer, grasped the content, and notified the appropriate department at his / her own discretion. However, if an error or delay occurs in such a series of judgments, it may possibly affect the entire company. For example, in the case of a food manufacturer, delay in responding to complaints may affect the health of customers. Other companies are often sued for failing to respond appropriately. As a result, responding to inquiries tends to be positioned as a more important issue for each company.

[0004]

Recently, many companies accept information from customers by e-mail. Many of them form a standardized e-mail by providing a predetermined form on a web page, inputting necessary information in the form, and transmitting the form. This is to make it easier for companies to classify inquiries. However, this means forcing the customer to fit the boilerplate items. In addition, the content that the customer originally wants to inquire may not be applicable, and it is not possible to sufficiently respond to diversifying requests and complaints. Therefore, improvement in processing efficiency cannot be expected, and as a result, a delay in handling is usually caused.

The present inventor has made the present invention based on the above recognition, and its purpose is to provide a technique for promptly and appropriately responding to an inquiry.

[0006]

One aspect of the present invention relates to a decision support method. This method receives the cause data in which the information that causes the situation that requires decision making is described in atypical sentences, reads the classification conditions for classifying the cause data by its contents, and The content of the data is compared with the classification conditions, and the decision-making process for dealing with the situation is determined based on the comparison result.

The "information that causes recognition of a situation that requires decision making" is, for example, product requests, trouble inquiries, complaints, etc., received from customers of companies, etc., and the information was received. Information that would require the decision-making body to take some action or measure in response to this. The "atypical text" is intended to exclude a text when necessary items are filled in an input form, and indicates so-called flat text data regardless of the text format.

The "decision-making process" indicates a process for formulating some measure to deal with the cause data, and is defined with respect to the department to make a decision, the content to make a decision, and the like. This decision-making process may be defined in advance in the form of a business flow, or it may be past correspondence history, in-house organization chart,
You may make a judgment based on the personnel allocation table, the authority table, and the like. As for the business flow, the overall flow up to the final decision may be defined, or only the department that makes the initial situation determination may be defined, and subsequent processes may be fluidly defined. . Alternatively, it may be set loosely in the form of a flow divided into cases together with some options.

Another aspect of the present invention is a decision support device. This device is a sentence receiving unit that receives the input of the cause data in which the information that causes the situation that requires decision making is described in an atypical sentence, and the cause data for classifying the cause data according to the contents. Based on the content of the cause data and the classification condition, a classification condition holding unit that stores the classification condition, a process holding unit that stores the multiple decision-making processes for dealing with the cause in correspondence with the classification based on the classification condition, A classification processing unit that classifies the cause data, and a process processing unit that extracts a decision making process corresponding to the classification by the classification processing unit from the process holding unit and performs processing based on the decision making process.

Yet another aspect of the present invention is a computer program. This program has a function that accepts the input of the cause data in which the information that causes the cause of recognizing the situation that requires decision making is described in atypical text, and a classification condition for classifying the cause data by its contents. A function of storing the plurality of decision making processes for dealing with the cause in correspondence with the classification based on the classification condition, and a function of classifying the cause data based on the content of the cause data and the classification condition, A function of extracting a decision making process corresponding to the classification by the classification processing unit from the process holding unit and performing processing based on the decision making process is caused to be exhibited by the computer.

Any combination of the above components,
It is also effective as an aspect of the present invention that the components and expressions of the present invention are mutually replaced among methods, devices, systems, computer programs, recording media storing computer programs, and the like.

[0012]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION In the present embodiment, the content of an inquiry from a customer is received as atypical text data and analyzed. A plurality of characteristic phrases extracted as a result of the analysis form a concept that symbolizes the content of the inquiry. This is classified based on a comparison with a predetermined classification condition, and a business process according to the classification result is executed.
If appropriate classification conditions are set in advance, the contents of the inquiry can be automatically grasped without inputting the inquiry into a certain form, and the optimum business process can be determined.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of the decision support system in this embodiment. The decision support system 10 has a decision support device 12 which is the core of the system, and terminals of respective departments connected via a network 14. In this embodiment,
Sales department 16a, manufacturing department 16b, research and development department 16
The terminals c, the management department 16d, the public relations department 16e, and the marketing department 16f are connected. Also, a terminal outside the company, for example, a customer terminal may be connected to the network 14 via a server or a router.

FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of the decision support device in this embodiment. The decision support device 12 includes a communication unit 20, a sentence reception unit 22, a character string extraction unit 24, an emergency processing unit 26, an emergency condition holding unit 28, a classification processing unit 30, a process processing unit 32, a classification condition holding unit 34,
It has a process holding unit 36 and a related information holding unit 38.

The decision support device 12 can be realized by hardware such as a CPU of a computer, and software by a program having a language analysis function. It depicts the functional blocks realized by the cooperation of. Therefore, these functional blocks can be realized in various ways depending on the combination of hardware and software.

The communication unit 20 transmits / receives data to / from each department via the network 14. The communication unit 20 may have a router function and a server function in addition to the data transmission / reception function. The text reception unit 22 receives input of the causal data in which the information that causes the recognition of the situation requiring decision making is described in an atypical text. The text reception unit 22 in the present embodiment receives an inquiry about work as cause data. The cause data is sent from another department in the company or an outside customer via the network 14. For example, it may be an email from a customer or a message written on a bulletin board on a web page, or may be a form in which an operator inputs data for a report to a call center.

The classification condition holding unit 34 stores a classification condition for classifying the cause data by its contents. The classification condition holding unit 34 in the present embodiment stores a condition for classifying the content of an inquiry as a classification condition. The classification condition is composed of a plurality of condition files having a plurality of words and phrases that can serve as a criterion for classification. The condition file is created in advance based on an arbitrary plurality of document files, and is formed by weighting the words and phrases common to those document files and the words and phrases based on the appearance frequency. A set of a plurality of terms and their weightings included in the condition file represents the concept of the contents of the condition file. Extraction of each word and weight is processed by the character string extraction unit 24 described later.

When the condition file contains n words and phrases, the vector length is determined based on the appearance frequency of each word and phrase in the n-dimensional vector space. Such a vector space represents the "concept" indicated by the condition file. The condition file is an object to be compared with the cause data, and is classified according to which condition file the cause data is conceptually similar to. The classification accuracy can be further improved by giving the condition file feedback based on another document file.

The character string extraction unit 24 has a function of extracting a plurality of words and phrases from the cause data and the condition file, and the word and phrase extraction unit 40, the control processing unit 42, and the weighting processing unit 4 are included.
Including 4. The word / phrase extracting unit 40 extracts a plurality of characteristic words / phrases based on the appearance frequency from both the cause data and the condition file. In the present embodiment, characteristic words and phrases are extracted in advance from the condition file and stored in the classification condition holding unit 34. Therefore, when the cause data is received, only the word and phrase extraction from the cause data is processed.

The weighting processing unit 44 weights each of a plurality of words / phrases contained in one file according to the frequency of appearance, and lowers the weight of words / words having a high frequency of appearance also in other files. Makes the word peculiar to the file manifest. The control processing unit 42 stores a dictionary relating to conceptual similarity between words and phrases, and detects the appearance frequency in consideration of the similarity between words and phrases. The dictionary stored here defines relationships between conceptually common terms such as so-called controlled words, synonyms, and synonyms. This makes it possible to absorb ignorable conceptual differences between words and phrases, and the classification processing unit 30 to be described later.
The comparison result can be improved.

The classification processing unit 30 has a function of classifying the cause data based on the concept and the classification condition formed by the plurality of extracted characteristic words, and includes the comparison processing unit 46 and the similarity determination unit 48. . The comparison processing unit 46 determines the degree of similarity between the concept formed by a plurality of words and phrases extracted from the cause data and the concept formed by a plurality of words and phrases extracted from the condition file.

As described above, since the language analysis processing by the character string extraction unit 24 and the classification processing unit 30 does not need to standardize the cause data in advance, even flat text data can be appropriately processed.

The process holding unit 36 stores a plurality of examples of business processes for dealing with inquiries as decision making processes. Each business process has a classification condition holding unit 34.
Are stored in correspondence with each of the plurality of condition files stored by. In the business process, there is defined a handling outline that defines the contact information of one or more departments in charge of handling the inquiry. Note that the business process is defined by the name of the department in charge, not by the name of the specific person in charge, so that an appropriate person can be selected even if there is a change such as a personnel change in the future.

The related information holding unit 38 stores related information to be used as a reference in decision making in association with classification according to classification conditions. For example, materials such as past response history, trouble case cause report, product information, sales record, and improvement examples correspond to the related information.

The process processing unit 32 stores the business process corresponding to the classification by the classification processing unit 30 in the process holding unit 36.
It is extracted from and processed based on the business process.
The process processing unit 32 includes a process extraction unit 50, a transfer processing unit 52, an emergency contact unit 54, and a related extraction unit 56. The process extraction unit 50 extracts the business process from the process holding unit 36 based on the similarity determined by the similarity determination unit 48. The process extraction unit 50 may extract a plurality of business processes and determine the optimum process from them.

The transfer processing unit 52 transfers the origin data to the contact information defined in the extracted business process. The relation extraction unit 56 extracts the relevant information corresponding to the classification by the classification processing unit 30 from the relevant information holding unit 38, and the transfer processing unit 52 reports this together with the cause data. The emergency contact unit 54 will be described later.

The urgent condition holding unit 28 stores urgent conditions for judging the urgency of decision making on the origin data. The emergency condition defines a plurality of words that are likely to be included in a sentence in which an urgent matter is described. By defining multiple words that are likely to be included in a sentence that describes important matters, the emergency condition is configured so that various levels of urgency or importance can be judged.

The urgent processing section 26 judges the urgency from the contents of the cause data based on the urgent condition. Emergency processing unit 26
Extracts a phrase defined as an urgent condition from the cause data and comprehensively determines the urgency or importance based on the appearance frequency, the meaning of the phrase, and the like. Emergency processing unit 26
Sends an instruction to the relation extracting unit 56 to perform processing different from the business process in the case of low urgency when the urgency exceeds a predetermined standard. Based on this instruction, the emergency contact section 5
In parallel with the business process extracted when the degree of urgency is low, 4 transfers the cause data to a department having a higher decision authority, such as the management department. By thus performing different processing depending on the urgency, it is possible to flexibly respond to inquiries.

FIG. 3 shows the process of classifying the queries and processing them according to the corresponding business process. The inquiry data 60 is classified based on the classification condition 62. The classification condition 62 includes a plurality of condition files. Each condition file is associated with a business process as a decision making process 64, and a business process corresponding to the inquiry classification is extracted. In this business process, the department to be in charge is defined, and the inquiry is transferred to the department.

The operation of the above configuration will be described below. FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the operation of the decision support device 12 in this embodiment. First, an inquiry is received (S10), and the urgency of decision making is judged from the content of the inquiry (S12). Next, a characteristic word or phrase is extracted from the text of the inquiry content (S16), and the concept of the inquiry content is formed by adding weighting to each of them based on the appearance frequency (S18). The similarities between the concepts with the condition file are judged (S20), and the inquiry contents are classified according to the similarities (S22). The business process is extracted based on the classification (S
24), related information is extracted based on the classification (S2).
6). If the urgency is high (S27Y), the inquiry content and related information are transferred to the management department (S2).
8) If the urgency is not high (S27N), the inquiry content and related information are transferred to a plurality of business departments based on the extracted business process (S29).

Final decision making is made based on the answers from the departments in charge of each operation (S30), and the answers are published (S3).
4), execute processing according to the determined countermeasure (S3)
6). In addition, in S28, the inquiry content and the related information may be transferred in parallel not only to the management department but also to each business department.

FIG. 5 shows the contents reported on the terminal screen in the department in charge of business in an emergency. The urgency column 80 displays the urgency of the contents of this screen. In the figure, a mark is displayed on an item indicating an emergency. The inquiry data column 82 shows the content of the inquiry, which is the cause data, the date and time of receipt, and the route of receipt. The inquiry content shown in the figure is a complaint about the quality of the product and is positioned as an urgent content.

In the reference material column 84, a link to reference material such as a manufacturing process design drawing and a quality control inspection result is displayed as one of related information. In the similar information column 86, a link to similar information such as a correspondence history and a cause report in a past case is displayed as one of related information.

The correspondence history column 88 shows a link to additional information added so far in the business process for dealing with the inquiry. The figure shows that the detailed status report was added in the sales department at the previous stage. The work flow column 90 shows the flow of the decision-making process determined as a response to the inquiry, the contents to be judged by each department, and the current process. The processing level column 92 indicates whether the department needs to respond to the inquiry. The figure shows that the department should take some action.

FIG. 6 shows the contents normally reported on the terminal screen in the department in charge of business. In the importance column 100,
The importance of the contents of this screen is displayed. In the figure, a mark is displayed on an item indicating important information. In the inquiry data column 102, the content of the inquiry, which is the cause data,
The date and time of receipt and the route of receipt are shown. The inquiry content shown in the figure is a request for improvement of the characteristics of the product, and it is positioned as a content of high importance although it is not urgent.

In the reference material column 104, links to reference materials such as sales data and product detailed data are displayed as one of related information. In the similar information column 106, a link to similar information such as past improvement history and sales data before and after improvement is displayed as one of related information.

The correspondence history column 108 shows a link to additional information added so far in the business process for responding to the inquiry. The figure shows that the market research report was added in the marketing department at the previous stage. In the business flow column 110,
It shows the flow of the decision-making process that was decided to respond to inquiries, the contents to be judged by each department, and the current process. The processing level column 112 indicates whether the department needs to respond to the inquiry. The figure shows that the department does not need to take any action, and at least stays at the level to be referred to.

(Second Embodiment) In the present embodiment,
This is different from the first embodiment in that the overall business flow is not determined at once as a decision making process, but only the department in charge of which the situation should be grasped first is determined. The decision support device 12 of the present embodiment has almost the same configuration as that shown in FIG. 2, and only different functions will be described below.

The process processing unit 32 in this embodiment
First receives the inquiry content, determines the department in charge of grasping the situation, and transfers the inquiry content to the department. Upon receiving this, the department in charge decides the person in charge, grasps the situation, and returns the reply to this device. The text reception unit 22 receives this answer as new cause data. The character string extraction unit 24 and the emergency processing unit 2 are applied to the cause data.
6, the classification processing unit 30, and the process processing unit 32 perform respective processing.

The process processing section 32 takes into account the answers from a plurality of departments in charge in the decision making process and processes the decision making step by step while repeating the transfer to the next department. That is, the process processing unit 32
Implements stepwise decision making by transferring the answers obtained at each stage and the reference information added at each stage to the department in charge at the next stage. In this way, by flexibly making decisions without fixing the business flow, inquiries can be dealt with flexibly.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing the operation of the decision support device 12 in this embodiment. In this figure, S50 to S69 are the same as S10 to S29 in FIG. 4, so S70 and subsequent steps will be described.

If the response from the business unit to which the cause data and related information are transferred in S68 is not the final decision (S70N), the response is received as new cause data (S72), and based on the cause data. S5
2 to S69 are processed. After repeating these processes,
When an answer is received as the final decision (S70)
Y), the answer is announced (S74), and the process according to the determined countermeasure is performed (S76).

The present invention has been described above based on the embodiments. It should be understood by those skilled in the art that this embodiment is an exemplification, that various modifications can be made to the combinations of the respective constituent elements and the respective processing processes, and that such modifications are within the scope of the present invention. . Hereinafter, modified examples will be described.

In this embodiment, the inquiry contents are transferred to the management department when the inquiry contents are highly urgent. In a modified example, the processing may be speeded up by simultaneously transferring to a plurality of business departments defined in the business process. Or
The business flow defined as the business process may be partially modified and the intermediate process may be omitted.

According to the present invention, the decision making process can be efficiently advanced.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration of a decision support system in the present embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration of a decision support device according to this embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a process of classifying inquiries and processing them based on a corresponding business process.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the operation of the decision support device according to this embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing contents reported on a terminal screen in a business department in an emergency.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing the contents reported on the terminal screen in the department in charge of business during normal operation.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing the operation of the decision support device in the present embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

12 decision support device, 22 text reception section, 24
Character string extraction unit, 26 emergency processing unit, 28 emergency condition holding unit, 30 classification processing unit, 32 process processing unit, 34 classification condition holding unit, 36 process holding unit, 38 related information holding unit, 60 inquiry data, 62 classification condition , 64 Decision-making process.

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Claims (10)

[Claims] 1. Receiving causal data in which information that is causative of recognizing a situation requiring decision making is described in atypical sentences, and reading out classification conditions for classifying the causal data by its contents. A method for supporting decision making, comprising: comparing the content of the cause data with the classification condition and determining a decision making process for coping with the situation based on the comparison result. 2. A sentence receiving unit that receives input of cause data in which information that causes the recognition of a situation requiring decision making is described in an atypical sentence, and the cause data is classified according to its content. A classification condition holding unit that stores a classification condition for, a process holding unit that stores a plurality of decision making processes for dealing with the cause in association with a classification based on the classification condition, and the content of the cause data and A classification processing unit that classifies the attribute data based on the classification condition, and a process process that extracts a decision-making process corresponding to the classification performed by the classification processing unit from the process holding unit and performs a process based on the decision-making process. A decision support device comprising: 3. The sentence receiving unit receives an inquiry about business as the cause data, the classification condition holding unit stores a condition for classifying the content of the inquiry as the classification condition, and the process holding unit. The decision support device according to claim 2, wherein a plurality of business processes for dealing with the inquiry are stored as the decision process. 4. The character string extraction unit that extracts a plurality of characteristic words and phrases based on the appearance frequency from the cause data, wherein the classification processing unit is formed by the plurality of extracted characteristic words and phrases. The decision support device according to claim 2 or 3, wherein the cause data is classified based on the concept to be considered and the classification condition. 5. The classification condition holding unit stores, as the classification condition, a plurality of condition files having a plurality of words and phrases that can be a judgment material of the classification, and the process holding unit stores the classification condition holding unit. The decision making process is stored in correspondence with each of a plurality of condition files to be stored, and the character string extraction unit extracts a plurality of characteristic words and phrases based on appearance frequency from both the cause data and the condition file. However, the classification processing unit determines the similarity between the concept formed by a plurality of words and phrases extracted from the cause data and the concept formed by a plurality of words and phrases extracted from the condition file, The decision support device according to any one of claims 2 to 4, wherein the process processing unit extracts the decision making process based on the similarity. . 6. An urgent condition holding unit that stores an urgent condition for judging urgency of decision-making for the cause data, and an urgent process for judging the urgency from the contents of the cause data based on the urgent condition. 6. The decision support device according to claim 2, wherein the process processing unit performs processing according to the urgency. 7. The process holding unit stores, as the decision making process, a handling summary in which contact information of one or more responsible departments to deal with the cause data is stored, and the process processing unit extracts the extracted The decision support device according to any one of claims 2 to 6, wherein the cause data is transferred to a contact specified in the decision making process. 8. The sentence receiving unit receives, as new cause data, a reply from a department in charge to which the cause data is transferred, and the process processing unit considers the answers from a plurality of departments in charge in a decision making process. 8. The decision support device according to claim 7, wherein the decision making process is performed stepwise. 9. The method further includes a related information holding unit that stores related information to be used as a reference in the decision making in association with the classification according to the classification condition, and the process processing unit corresponds to the classification by the classification processing unit. 9. The decision support device according to claim 2, wherein the relevant information is extracted from the relevant information holding unit and the relevant information is reported based on the decision making process. 10. A function for accepting an input of cause data in which information that causes cause to recognize a situation requiring decision making is described in an atypical sentence, and a function for classifying the cause data by the content thereof. A function of storing a classification condition, a function of storing a plurality of decision making processes for dealing with the cause in association with a classification based on the classification condition, the cause based on the content of the cause data and the classification condition A function of classifying data, a function of extracting a decision-making process corresponding to the classification by the classification processing unit from the process holding unit, and performing a process based on the decision-making process, in a computer. A computer program to do.