Monmouth students team up to improve customer service

WEST LONG BRANCH - The teams at Monmouth University on Saturday rolled out cutting-edge ideas to improve customer service for schools, grocery stores and retailers, but by the end of the day their most valuable lesson came sharply into focus: They need each other.

The team called Binary Trio was one of them. It created a chatbot computer program to help Monmouth University answer questions from prospective students only by using the business skills of Anthony Vazzana, the marketing skills of Nicole Puccio and the technical skills of Giuseppe Licata.

"I think that's how it should be," Vazzana, 23, a finance and economics major, said. "After doing something like this it should almost be a requirement where you as a business student should be forced to go partner with a student from another department."

The event marked the finale of the chatbot competition, bringing together Monmouth students from different disciplines who needed to think of not only a cutting-edge idea, but also a way to bring it to market.

It is part of a bid by RightAnswers Inc., an Edison technology company that helps companies manage their customer service, to help the Shore regain a foothold on technology and innovation that it once was known for, but has seen slip away. RightAnswers sponsored the program.

"One of the things about (entrepreneurship) in New Jersey is there’s a lot of movement around incubation, incubators and venture capital funds and all those things about how to get more technology companies starting," said Jeff Weinstein, RightAnswers' chief executive officer who graduated from Monmouth University with an MBA. "I think there might be more of a grassroots level that might need to occur at the university level."

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Just nine students participated, forming three teams. But their ideas seemed promising. Bot City came up with a chatbot that could help consumers get healthy food and recipes. C++ Gets Degrees designed a system that provides safety information to hikers and campers.

All of the teams shed insight into the future of customer service, where consumers can have conversations with robots through their smartphones to get the answers they need. It spells trouble for customer service representatives. But it could help companies handle questions and complaints more efficiently. And at times, it looked like the robots were programmed to provide responses that were friendlier and wittier than humans.

The competition fit into Monmouth's strategic plan that calls for academic programs to team up more often, preparing students for a business world in which numbers crunchers, marketers and computer scientists routinely work together.

"This is where complete strangers in different programs came together," said Jamie Kretsch, department chairwoman for computer sciences and software engineering. "They literally met at a kickoff meeting where it was the Sharks and the Jets. It was the business students (on one side) and it was the computer sciences, software engineering students (on the other)."

"They’ll be doing that, totally, in the real world," she said. "Once they get out of here they're not going to be in teams of everybody else just like them who know the exact same things. They have to work in teams where they each have individual strengths, often in many different areas."

The teams vied for a $1,500 prize from RightAnswers. They presented their cases to RightAnswers executives, family and friends. And they answered questions from the judges and the audience.

When it was over, Binary Trio took home the prize. And Vazzana, Puccio and Licata sounded like they would lean on the experience when they begin their careers. They graduate in May.

"I knew nothing about computer science, so I learned a lot about that side of business," Puccio, 22, said. "I actually have a real estate background, so this was very new to me, but it’s opening up my mind."

Michael L. Diamond; 732-643-4038; mdiamond@gannettnj.com