Modelling user-initiative in an automatic help desk system

In the following we describe the system KoHDaS1 which is an automatic help desk system in a call center that basically leaves the dialogue initiative with the user as far as (s)he wants. The user’s turn circumscribing the problem as a whole is handed to a hierarchy of recurrent plausibility networks which classify the according problem. In the next step the system extracts even only implicitly mentioned task parameters of this problem class from the turn by a graph-matching technique. Remaining or unidentified task parameters required to solve the problem are asked by the system in an ordinary question-answering manner. The whole concept can easily be adapted to new domains.