Using Social Media to Answer Support Questions

Users frustrated with corporate helpdesks are utilizing internet searches and social media sites for support purposes. There is a wealth of support-related content available publicly; supplier’s web sites, blogs, product forums are just some examples. HP is in an optimal position to deliver a platform that utilizes the publicly available content to automatically answer corporate users’ support questions. We identify three primary technical challenges on the design of an automated platform that uses social media to answer support questions: understanding the context in which the question is asked, finding and retrieving the resources in the social media where the question has been discussed, and organizing the content retrieved from the social media resources in a user-friendly way. We apply novel statistical clustering and data mining techniques to address these challenges on the design of an automated platform that answers support questions based on content from social media.