chapter 11 dialogues. - 2 - (c) 2000 dr. ralph bergmann and prof. dr. michael m. richter,...

Chapter 11

Dialogues

- 2 - (c) 2000 Dr. Ralph Bergmann and Prof. Dr. Michael M. Richter, Universität Kaiserslautern

Recommended References• Cykopath (2000). Killer Applications on the Web.

URL: http//www.cycopath.com/ 12.12.2000.

• Göker, M. H.; Thompson, C. (2000). The Adaptive Place Advisor: A

Conversational Recommendation System. In: Proc. of the 8th German

Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning, GWCBR2000, März 2000.

• Richter,M. M.,Schmitt, S.: Kundenmodellierung und Dialogführung: Eine

Herausforderung für eCRM. In: Festschrift für F. Bliemel, to appear.

• Wallner, S. (2000): Näher mein Kunde, zu Dir! In: Electronic Commerce

Magazin 4/2000. IWT Magazin Verlags-GmbH.

• M.M. Richter: Prinzipien der Künstlichen Intelligenz, §12. Teubner

Verlag.


The Sales Process and Dynamically Presented CSP’s (1)

• A customer demand presents a CSP with hard and weak constraints (see chapter 4): The solution is a product which solves the CSP in an optimal way.

• The CSP is dynamically presented: – The customer describes the demand incompletely and the supplier

has to complete it, i.e. to find out what the demand really is (collecting new constraints).

– During the sales process several decisions can be made which generate new constraints:

• The choice of a portable TV generates limits on the screen size• The choice of a laptop results in the need of a battery


The Sales Process and Dynamically Presented CSP’s (2)

• The purpose of the sales dialogue is therefore twofold:– to complete the demand – to solve the problem, i.e. to present a wanted product.

• The purpose of the dialogue is to achieve both goals by interleaving the solution for both problems.

• These goals require knowledge about customer classes which are also initially unknown. As a third goal the determination of the class arises.

• This may result in changing the demands, i.e. in changing the CSP:– Compare chapter chapter 4 for hard and weak constraints.


Optimality Criteria (1)

• Optimality criteria for completing the demand:• Efficiency criteria:• Collect as few constraints as possible, e.g.:

– Constraints which are redundant for a solution are unnecessary

– Postpone collection of correctible constraints

• Customer treatment criteria:– Customer should be able to understand the sequence of

collecting constraints– Customers integrity should be respected

• These to types of criteria may be in conflict.


Optimality Criteria (2)

• Optimality criteria for solving the problem:• Criteria from customer’s utility:

– The best available product satisfying the demands should be found. The key for solving this optimization problem is the similarity measure which is supposed to reflect the CSP.

– The best available product may not be sufficiently good. In this case the demand has to be analysed and possible revised. This requires to convince the customer that this is in his interest.

– The customer may not be well informed about the product and possible misunderstandings should be clarified.

– The customer may be sloppy in expressing the demand. E.g. the customer mentions Malta for the vacations but means Mediterranian.

• These examples show that the true utility of the customer may be difficult to determine.


Optimality Criteria (3)• Criteria from suppliers utility:

– Focus on products which the supplier wants most to sell– Have the keep phase in mind: Look for long term customers– These two criteria are often in conflict!

• The interleaving problem:– The optimization problems have to be solved in one process– Consequence: The different kinds of optimization problems have

to be combined in one complex multi-criteria problem where usually only a Pareto-optimum can be expected.

• The purpose of the dialogue is to achieve this. Because we deal with knowledge intensive problems the dialogue component needs to be supported by the knowledge manager.


Dialogue and Search Space

Search space

Search spaceafter a dialoguestep

Searchpartiallycompleted

The dialogue navigates through the search space and reduces it at the same time.


Dialogues and Search

• The most comprehensive source of information for any customer is the internet.

• Why not using a search machine as in the internet ?

• This question cannot be answered in general.• The answer depends on the specific information

requested, on the way the information is placed and indexed in the net, and on the knowledge and experience of the customer.

• There are several differences between unsupported search in the net and knowledge based search as provided by similarity based support.


Search Machine

Similarity

•General: Indexing the WWW•Search for Sites/Documents•Document oriented•Guess and pray principle•Search for keywords•query oriented •No specific know-how

•Application specific•Data base- / document oriented•Search for concepts/terms•Customer- & process oriented•specific know-how

Similarity and Search Machines


From Catalogues to Dialogues• We see an increasing scale of customer interaction:

– Catalogues– Static forms– Dynamic forms– Dialogues

• On each stage– there is more involvement of the customer– there is more understanding of the customer required– there is more knowledge on the suppliers side required– there is more flexibility required.

• In principle– also dialogues can be represented as trees– each argument which applies to dialogues also applies to the

previous stages, only in a simpler form.


TreesVacations in summer or winter ?

Summer Winter

Invisible ifnot applicable

The search for a product can in principle be represented in the form of a tree. Catalogues and static form are useful only for very small trees. Dynamic forms can deal with larger trees. For very largetrees a dialogue may be necessary.


Utterances

• Dialogues consist of a sequence of utterances• Each utterance has a source and a target• In a free dialogue there are several levels of

discussing an utterance• Each level leads to an increased understanding of

the utterance• Such considerations are in particular necessary if the

source and the target language are different (e.g. german-english).


Interlingua

SourceSource TargetTarget

SemanticsBedeutung

Syntax Syntax

Words Words

Semantics


Choice of the Language Level

• Products can be described along two orthogonal dimensions (see chapter 9):– Descriptions of products and of functionalities– Levels of abstraction (is-a and part-of hierarchy).

• The chosen language level has to be done with respect to– description has to be understood by the customer (influenced

mainly by the customer class)– description has to be adequate for selecting a product (influenced

mainly by technical needs).

• These criteria are often in conflict with each other.This conflict has to solved at compile time.


Preconditions for a Dialogue• If partners communicate a minimal requirement is

that they speak the same language (unless there is a translator) and at least understand the main terms.

• If technical and unfamiliar terms are involved this is in the sales process often not the case.

• It is mainly the suppliers task to take care of a language level which is accessible to both partners.

• On the other hand, this language level should be invisible to the customer who does not want to learn a new language for some few sales.

• If both partners use the same terms they still have to agree on the pragmatics and what they consider as relevant.


The Twofold Gap (1)

The supplier offers products, services etc. which really exist

The supplier has preferences what to sell

Customers desires:about productsabout functionalities about servicesetc.The customer has preferences costs/utilities

Two different worlds and views give rise to gaps:

Customer and supplier have a different terminology and intentions in their descriptions.


The Twofold Gap (2)

• The first gap:– Communication despite the different terminologies

of customer and supplier:• Find language level (mediator level) which can

be reached by both• The second gap:

– Which properties of the offered products are relevant for the preferences of the user ?

• Problem of utility and sensitivity analysis (see chapter 6)

• In order to sell a product these gaps has to be to closed


Holiday type Activity Duration PriceNumber ofpersons

Summervacations

Florida Sport,Discos

2 Weeks

< 2000 2

8 83 5 strict strict

Technical Data

The weights reflect the utilities of the customer.

Instance:Customer preferences

Region

Supplier and customer have the same terminology

A Simple Problem: Travel Agency


Discussion

• There are 6 attributes with symbolic or numeric domains. On each domain a local similarity function has to be defined. Strict requests have a filtering function.

• If the customer finds these attributes and their domains in some catalogue he has no problems to understand them. Additional attributes for the supplier like travel code is of no interest for the customer.

• The customer will also have no difficulty in expressing preferences using weights.

• The choice of suitable local measures may cause a difficulty because this can depend on the customer type (see chapter 10).


FFT of 256 Samples,0.8 million samples/sec

Clock

Data Paths Pipeline Stages

Vcc = 5V RegistersVcc = 5V

High level machine instructions

High level machine instructions

Function Product

Bridge attribute

Mediator level

Mediator Level:Electronic Switches


Discussion (1)

• Here we observe a large terminological gap between the user (who describes the intended functionality) and the supplier (who describes technical properties of the product).

• There is only one attribute used in both descriptions (the voltage). We call such attributes bridge attributes. In this example in addition the values agree (namely 5 V).

• The usual way to define similarity measures by– first defining local measures on domains of attributes

– using the local-global principal to define the final measure

does not work here: The only common attribute is voltage!


Discussion (2)

• In order to define a measure one needs a communication level on which the local measures can be defined. This level is called the mediator level.

• The expressions from both sides (functions, products) have to be mapped to the mediator level:– Terms

– Weights

• The terminology on the mediator level can be regarded as the introduction of virtual attributes.

• This level is not explitly visible to the customer. The virtual attributes will, however, be used in the dialogue and have therefore be understood by the customer.


The Purpose of the Dialogue• The purpose is in general twofold:

– Getting and providing information: Here the cooperative character of the dialogue dominates.

– Coming to some agreement with the partner: Here the competitive character of the dialogue plays a role

• This looks different from the customers and the suppliers side:– Each side has its own view on the information gaps– Each side has its own utilities and preferences

• This leads to a distinction between dialogue types:– Information type dialogue (also: sales talk)– Negotiation type dialogue

• Each type has again two instances, one for the customer and one for the supplier.


Active and Passive Roles

• Each partner in the dialogue can play an active and a passive role and these roles can change. In the active as well as in the passive role partners perform actions:

• Active partners present– questions– demands – information without being asked (pro-active)

• Passive partners present– answers to questions

• Due to their different situations and utilities customers and suppliers have different instances of these roles


Dialogues as Recursive Processes

Information or negotiation situationof the active partner

Improved informationor negotiation situationof the active partner

Process for each partner:-- Analyse the situation-- Keep or change role ?-- Select action-- Get to a new situation

Intention and knowledge of the passive partner, new situation

query, demand, information

reply


Dialogue Strategies• Dialogues have an analogy to two persons games:

– Each partner has objectives to be satisfied. The objectives do not necessarily contradict each other, so both partners can win. The “win” is not “yes-or-no” but measured in degrees.

– Each partner can act (make moves).– A partner can perform a sequence of actions but the partners

cannot act at the same time.– After each action a new game situation is achieved.– These kinds of dialogues are cooperative.

• A strategy is mapping

{Set of situations} {Set of actions}• The strategy depends on the type of the partner and the

type of the dialogue.


Search for... ... Products / Service ... Information ... Service / Support

Search for... ... Products / Service ... Information ... Service / Support

Presentation of...... Product Portfolio... Examples / Advantages Solutions

Customer CompanyInformation & Communication

Information Type Dialogue (1)


Information Type Dialogue (2)

Data base for products :Product1

Product2

.

.Productn

Dialogue component

Presentationcomponent

Customer

Supplier

Search

foundproduct

Question

Answer

Productpresentation

The dialogue is not symmetric: The customer wants information about products,the supplier about demands. Only the supplier can present products.


Information Type Dialogue: Customers View (1)

• We distinguish between customers who are– individual, “naive” partners and– commercial, “advanced” partners.

• This distinction is not identical with B2C versus B2B!

• The first group performs the dialogue as humans do and follow only a very personal,informal strategy. They will, however, appreciate a convenient dialogue and may quit it otherwise.

• Commercial partners can be supported (partially or total) by an automatic dialogue support. The main problem is the search for partners which in E-C reduces to internet search. It is especially important if there are many suppliers (see chapter 14).


Information Type Dialogue: Customers View (2)

• Initially the customer plays the active role and approaches the supplier with some question or demand.

• Later on the customer is mostly passive:– makes information about wishes more precise,– completes information,– reacts on suggestions from the supplier.

• Role changes to active modus:– if demands are modified or replaced by others,– if demands can only partially be fulfilled or if unsatisfied and

dialogue is interrupted or closed,– if dialogue is successfully closed.


Information Type Dialogue: Suppliers View (1)

• The supplier first has the passive role and gives a reply to the customers initiative.

• Actions to analyse the situation:– to understand customers utterances, – detecting impreciseness and incompleteness– checking if demands can be satisfied

• Change of role (from passive to active) if– customers demands are not understood, too imprecise or too

incomplete: Query to fill the information gap– product cannot be delivered as demanded: Make suggestion for

different product, suggest to deliver a part and recommend a supplier for the rest or quit.

• Later in the dialogue the supplier will be mainly active.


Demands on Suppliers Actions and Strategy (1)

• To avoid customer’s disappointment :– the questions have to be comprehensible

– the evaluation of the sales talk should be transparent

– it should be possible to navigate freely within the acquisition process

• Don`t ask questions• which are considered as to much inquiry

• where knowledge says that the answer is

– already known or can be inferred

– not helpful for the goal

– not known by the user (this depends on the knowledge level of the user and therefore on the customer class).



• Questions to the customer should– be goal directed: How to reduce the search space most

(information gain aspect).

• It should be checked whether products are– Directly on stock: This is relevant if no adaptation is possible

and the product base is very large. Example: Travel details are often completed although no such travel is available any more (data base calls are too costly to be performed often).

– Available by adaptation or configuration: Here the completion has to be interleaved with the adaptation/configuration which may again cause difficulties. It can today only be realized in simple situations.

– Only partially available: Here other suppliers have to be contacted, see chapter 14.



• Suggestions of alternatives for products should make sense to the customer.

• The form of suppliers utterances should be considered– textual (cheap)– graphics, images, sound, video (expensive but more

effective).

• The supplier should have included in the strategy– which products to sell first– which customers to serve first– what competitors do (see chapter 14)– elements to keep the customer.



• The system must be easily maintainable– when products or their properties change, new customer types

are added,...

• The system must be flexible– dialogue strategies are usually not optimal and need to be

improved

• The process must be evaluable– this requires to experiment with the strategies

• Dialogue strategies should be easily transferable into the dialogue

• Customer data (histories) and results from data mining must be usable in order to increase customer satisfaction.


Use of Knowledge in the Dialogue

• There are several knowledge types for the supplier:

– Knowledge about customers (customer classes, individual customer histories)

• preferences and utilities, interpretation of terms, how serious to take details, questions not understandable to the customer, products excluded, mentioning of constraints ...

– Knowledge about products:• properties of functionalities and products, relations between

them, availabilty, constraints, correctible constraints,...

– Knowledge about relations between them.

– The knowledge can be represented in semantic nets (see chapter 9).


Conventional vs. VirtualSales Talk (I)

Conventional sales talk: Supplier is a human (sales assistant).– supplier tries to find out about the customer‘s requirements

provides information about appropriate products– talk can contain all elements of communication (audio, visual...)

interaction very important– supplier‘s behaviour determined by the customer‘s reactions– supplier‘s knowledge from preparatory training, personal

experiences, and logical conclusions

• But: Sales agent – may not be completely informed and/or commit errors– cannot be adapted due to different customers showing up– is only available during certain times of the day etc.


Conventional vs. VirtualSales Talk (II)

Virtual sales talk:– supplier only represented by a software agent– sales knowledge is especially in product describing attributes– logical relationships between components, resulting

consequences, and processing strategies for the sales talk are part of supplier‘s knowledge

– customer will only continue dialogue with the software agent as long as relationships between answers and inquiries can be noticed

knowledge about customers needs to be formalized


The Formal Dialogue Process

• Shop-builder are responsible for defining all aspects of the virtual sales talk in a formal way.– One needs to define a model describing all aspects occurring in the

informal model, e.g.

• the strategy how to guide the customer to an adequate product

• the properties of the products and the customers

• the dependencies between components of the products

• the questions to pose to the customer

• the dependencies between the questions

• etc.

– One needs a mechanism to operationalize the model

• to bring the questioning strategy into initial state

• to select questions and ensuing questions

• to assign values to attributes

• etc.


What has to be Formalized ?• The general concepts and operations to be

formalized are:• Roles • Information situations• Customer classes • Analysis actions • Dialogue actions

– queries, demands, replies, interrupts, finish

• Selections (of roles, dialogue actions)• Execution and reception of actions• Strategies


Suppliers View: Basic Concepts Formally (1)• We assume first some formal representation language with

different levels of abstraction. It can later be transferred into an interchange format as XML.

• For the expressions used – synonyms may exist;– also quasi-synonyms may exist.

• Levels of abstraction, synonyms and quasi-synonyms are used and understood by particular customer classes.

• The language used internally by the supplier is fixed.• The language used in the dialogue is chosen on the

customer class. • Part of the internal language describes the similarity where

the weights are partially determined by the customer class.


Basic Concepts Formally (2)

• Basic concepts are:– possible products (in particular their attributes and their

domains)– possible functionalities (in particular there attributes and

their domains)– the relation product realizes a functionality (and satisfies in

particular the constraints).

• These concepts can be represented e.g. in a net where the products and functionalities are attached to the nodes. The relation realizes is represented as an edge (without labels this is a binary relation without degrees).


Basic Concepts Formally (3)• Similarity measures between

• products and products• functionalities and functionalities• functionalities and products (degree of realization)

• They are represented as labelled edges.• Further binary relations:

– Technical product description (is-a and part-of relation): attached to edges.

– Customer related relations: partially represented in the measure and optional other attachment to the edges.

• Data bases: – Data base of available products– Data base of available functionalities– Thesaurus: Dictionary of synonyms


Basic Concepts Formally (4)

• Customer classes:• List of classes• Properties for determination of the class from

customer’s utterances or history• List of properties of treatment in the dialogue

– interpretation of terms used (in the thesaurus)– questions to ask or to avoid– preferences

• Influence on the similarity measure (weights)


Levels of Actions

• We consider schemata of actions organize them in type levels:– The type of actions distinguishes questions, demands, answers,

offers, replies,..(concerned mainly with general concepts)

– The subtypes distinguishes kinds of questions, offers, answers,...(sales process oriented)

– The instantiation looks for specific examples like “how many horsepowers has motor A?” (domain oriented)

• The actions are combined into pairs, e.g. answer a belongs to question q. This is important to organize a meaningful dialogue and will be formulated in rules.

• Meaningful means mainly: An answer is a statement which is not only true but an answer to the question (the logic of question and answer).


Questions and Answers (1)

• ?- domain(attribute)• ?-specific attribute values

available• ?-product properties• ?-product has property• ?-product has functionality

• ?-which product has functionality

• ?-combination of properties

• domain(attribute)• yes, no, partial list, approximate

values, constraints• relevant properties, postponed• yes, no, degrees, constraints• yes, no, degrees, alternatives,

postponed• product, list, many, none, possible

degrees• yes, no, constraint, products

Question Answer

Assumption: Information sufficiently complete and precise

“postponed” is answered if demand is correctible


Questions and Answers (2)

• ?-product properties• ?-product has property

• ?-product has functionality

• ?-which product has functionality

• ?-combination of properties

• Give details of property• Give details about property, or

product• Give details about properties or

functionality, name new constraints • Give details about products or

functionality • Give details about products,

properties or functionality

Information too incomplete or imprecise: Change to active role.The specific reply is generated by the analysis action.

Question Reply


Demands and Offers

• Product named precisely

• Product with properties named• Product for intended

functionality• Demand inconsistent

(condition)

• Offer, offer of alternatives or parts, quit

• Offer, offer of alternative with similar properties or of parts, quit

• Offer, offer of products with similar functionality

• Name conflict, suggest solution

Demand Offer

Assumption: Information sufficiently complete and precise

Offering an alternative is essentially a change of the demand.If the information too incomplete or imprecise then the reply is essentially the same as for questions.


Formal Situations• A situation is a vector sit with the following components

– role (active, passive)– information state :

• information on functionalities;• information on products;• inconsistencies;• terms not understood;• degree of completeness (qualitative estimate: small,

medium, high, full);• correctible demands• dialogue performed so far• last customer action (query, demand).

– customer class information


Information State on Functionalities and Products

• List of properties on functionalities given by the customer (with relevances)

• List of interpreted properties on the mediator level• List of properties on products given by the customer or

obtained from intended functionalities with relevances• List of properties too vague or general

– the thesaurus needs entries for such terms and suggestions for questions, possibly indexed by customer class

• List of terms not understood• List of inconsistencies and correctible demands• Information sufficient for determining few products ? • Are there products as demanded ? (yes, no, similar ones)


Customer Class Information

• Entries in class descriptions observed from utterances or known from history

• Classes with highest degree of membership• Several classes:

– Intersection class meaningful ? The smaller the class the better the actions are.

– Conflict state: Do these classes suggest contradicting actions ? (yes, no).

• Treatments suggested for customer class with highest probability (otherwise default treatment)– e.g. which kind of product presentation (e.g. pictures) is chosen.


Formal Actions (1)• Choice of language level• Change of role (from passive to active)• Questions

– by customer– by supplier

• Demands (by customer)• Answers

– by customer and by supplier

• Offers and product presentation• Analyzing actions• Update information state• Actions are generally described by rules (ECA-rules, see

chapter 15). Performed actions are events.


Formal Actions (2)• Actions performed by the customer are events in the view of the

supplier and can therefore occur as preconditions.• Rules for questions, demands, replies and offers:

IF question and (information complete and precise) THEN answer

IF question and (information incomplete or imprecise) THEN reply

IF demand and (information complete and precise) THEN offer

IF demand and (information incomplete or imprecise) THEN reply

• Remarks:– Reply includes change of roles– The first part of the precondition is the event, the second part the

condition– Questions, demands, are variables for events; the special instances of the

actions answer and reply are determined by the analysis and the strategy.


Formal Actions (3)

• Analyzing actions are triggered by question and demands and refer to situations

• Checking consistency– Consistency checker

• Checking preciseness – Use thesaurus

• Checking completeness: Essentially the same as in any diagnostic situation– Properties from a list of specially named necessary properties– Too many similar objects

• Determining correctible demands


Execution and Receive

• There is a difference between planning and executing an action: An executed action changes the situation and allows no backtracking.– An offending utterance cannot be withdrawn– a named property of a product will not be forgotten

• To execute an action may need further information– which modus for presentation is chosen– in which way is the query presented to the customer

• Update of dialogues have to be executed.• The receive of an action requires an update of the

situation, in particular the information state.


A Simple Strategy

• Suppose a situation sit is given. The simple strategy S acts as follows:

Take last customer action:

IF inconsistent THEN reply

IF answer or offer possible THEN give answer or offer IF reply necessary THEN request details or precision with respect to:

• information which is relevant to the customer• postponing correctible demands• reduce the search space as much as possible• avoidance of repetitions.


Formal Description Languages

• Description language developed on basis of the meta language XML Document Type Definition (DTD)

• Four major elements in the description language– Network– Attribute– Question– QuestionNode

Define a Dialog Control Network (DCN)


Formal RepresentationElement Network

Element Attribute

Element Question

Element QuestionNode

Entity Value

Entity Value Range

Element Dependence

Element QID

Entity Condition

Entity Action

Element QID

Entity Condition

Element QID

strategy

nameweightthemecomplexitymodetesthelp_textatt_id...

namequ_id...

qn_nametheme...


Processing Questioning Strategies (I)

• The electronic shop needs a component for processing the sales talk with the customer

Dialog Control Component (DCC)

• Steps to take:1. Instantiate the model (DCN)

2. Process the dialog

3. Generate a query to the product retrieval system


Processing Questioning Strategies (II)

Start

Generate DCN

Select Question

Questionfound?

Pose Question

Propagate Answer

Generate Query

End

no

yes


Processing Questioning Strategies (III)

DCNGeneration

QuestionGeneration

QuestionSelection

DecisionRetraction

AnswerPropagation

QueryGeneration

Data Structure

Dialog Control Network

Adaptation

Linking

Generation


Useful Static Forms

• Static forms represent degenerated dialogues• These forms can be very useful• The are easy to use and very successful• The answers can contain useful but not demanded

information• They can allow handwritten entries.• If they are represented as a dialogue, in particular

with spoken language many problems arise (although in a human communication they would be regarded as trivial dialogues)


Sample Dialogue

• Taken from: www.cykopaths.com• This example pathway shows how a user can be

guided through the selection of a mobile phone: Who offers the most suitable contract to me ? (a rather incompletely described demand!)

• The opening question is presented as a picture which then takes the user through a series of further questions

• These questions are carefully chosen in order to– make the dialogue short and efficient– ask question which are meaningful to the customer


First Question

Which of the following images best describes how you will be using your phone ?This questions uses a picture !


Following Questions

Will you use the phone mainly during business times?• Y N

• How many minutes do you expect to spend on calls per day?• 120• What is your monthly cell-phone allowance (in Euro)? • 500• Do you need to control the cost of your usage?

Y N


Result• You are a business user with a cell-phone allowance of

€500 per month. • We are pleased to recommend Talk 100+ which we feel

will meet your needs. • To see more click here.

(It follows e.g. the offer of special numbers with low costs).

Comments:

- The first three questions complete the information for selecting the product. They are meaningful to the customer because he knows that such information is important. No answer is redundant.

- The last question is used for the form of payment and also considered as useful.


Application: Used Cars Saleslive.tecinno.de/Projects/carsmart24com

• Demo application for technology demonstration

• Different Dialogue modes

• Free Text

• Forms

• Active Questions


Negotiation Type of Dialogue

• Negotiations are in principle not of cooperative but of competitive character. Both sides are, however, interested in a result (i.e. in a successful termination) of the negotiation.

• One can distinguish between dialogues– which are preformatted:

• in a fixed format;• in a dynamically extensible format;

– completely free.

• The preformatted dialogue should be dynamic– only those queries should occur which need to be raised.

• The negotiation will be discussed in chapter 14.


Summary

• The dialogue is between partners is between partners who both have a view on it; both change between active and passive roles.

• The successful performance of a dialogue requires– access to knowledge;– a strategy.

• In order to perform dialogues automatically all relevant elements have to be formalized– objects under consideration– actions– situations– strategy