RightAnswers, Inc.<\/a>, the Edison, N.J.-based firm recognized as a leading provider of knowledge management, enterprise search and social knowledge software and brought together students from the Leon Hess Business School and the department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.<\/p>\nThe winning team, called Binary Trio, consisted of MBA students Anthony Vazzana of Freehold, N.J., and Nicole Puccio of Marlboro, N.J., and senior computer science major Giuseppe Lacata of Manalapan, N.J. The team shared a $1,500 cash prize from RightAnswers.<\/p>\n
A chatbot is a computer program which conducts a conversation with a human using either speech recognition or text inputs. These programs are designed to simulate actual human-to-human interaction. Since the advent of chatbots more than a half-century ago, most of them have relied on recognition of cue words and phrases to elicit a response. Only recently, as messaging systems have grown, have chatbots been found more frequently on websites to answer consumer questions.<\/p>\n
Jeff Weinstein, the CEO of RightAnswers who received his MBA at Monmouth University, said that chatbots were a new avenue that his firm was exploring and that since younger people are significant users of messaging, he was interested in how the students would relate to this new technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the university\u2019s perspective,\u201d said Weinstein, \u201cyou are able to give students exposure to what product development is really like. And for me, it helped me take the pulse of where the talent is today.\u201d<\/p>\n
MBA Program Director Susan Forquer Gupta was also enthusiastic about the partnership. \u201cThis competition surpassed our expectations in what [the students] were able to accomplish. The more our programs can do to prepare students with these critical skills, the better their prospects on the job market and in their careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what they need to do,\u201d said Jamie Kretch, chairperson of the computer science and software engineering department. \u201cThis is life after Monmouth. The students got a chance to step out of the classroom and meet challenges, meet different people from different backgrounds and come together and work together on a project.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more interactivity we have with businesses, the better it is for our students,\u201d Kretsch said.<\/p>\n
An important part to the competition was giving the students the opportunity and benefit of being mentored by the RightAnswers team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe worked to ensure a good balance between providing too much guidance and giving them practical elements to consider, so they could deliver a solid business case and product demonstration,\u201d Weinstein said. \u201cIf we gave a team too much specific direction, that could have limited their thinking. In the end we really saw how creative they all were.\u201d<\/p>\n
The winning competitors all gave Weinstein and his company high marks for helping the team grow and for encouraging them to develop something that may have been outside of their comfort zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had never done a competition like this,\u201d said Puccio. In fact, she said, she didn\u2019t even know anything about chatbots at the outset.<\/p>\n
It was Vazzana who urged Puccio to compete. The two MBA candidates, who also received their undergraduate degrees at Monmouth, met Lacata at an initial development meeting and decided that their backgrounds and personalities meshed well. Vazzana and Puccio also were quick to give plenty of credit to their undergraduate colleague for the ultimate success of their project.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiuseppe knew much more about chatbots than we did,\u201d said Vazzana, \u201cbut it clicked when he was explaining it to me. He said, \u2018You want the chatbot to be smarter than the person using it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Their chatbot was designed to answer questions that a prospective Monmouth University student might have when visiting the university\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a lot of research when we developed the business plan,\u201d explained Puccio, \u201cand everything we found was that people want to use a messaging platform. They like to talk to people that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t want to talk face-to-face with other people,\u201d continued Vazzana. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to talk on the phone. They don\u2019t even want to send e-mail anymore. They would rather message somebody \u2014 or some thing \u2014 and have it spit back information instantly.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Lacata, he thinks chatbot technology is going to grow exponentially over the next year or two. \u201cWebsites are all going to have them. It\u2019s going to be everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weinstein said he hoped that developing a focus simultaneously from a business and marketing perspective and from a technology perspective would be a meaningful exercise for the participants.<\/p>\n
Vazzana agreed. \u201cHaving to apply everything we\u2019ve learned in the classroom in a different way \u2014 and doing it under a time crunch \u2014 was really cool because in the business world you don\u2019t have all the time in the world to do things. There\u2019s never a perfect time to do everything. [This competition] will prepare us more for whatever we decide to do in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two additional teams of Monmouth students presented their chatbots in the completion of the challenge: C++ Gets Degrees (John Dixon, Mada Al-Mansour, Jasmine Walker) and Bot City (Zahra Yarahmadi, Phil DiMarco, Darius Jenkins).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Technology Could be at Forefront of Revolution in Web-based Customer Service WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. (Feb. 15, 2017) \u2014 Three Monmouth University students have developed a cutting-edge solution to a customer service problem to win the university\u2019s first-ever chatbot challenge. The competition was sponsored by RightAnswers, Inc., the Edison, N.J.-based firm recognized as a leading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":40802219558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,218,417,215,319],"tags":[],"person":[],"audience":[14,17,11,8],"school":[5,68],"program":[],"class_list":["post-40802213225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-excellence","category-accomplished-alumni","category-awards-publications-research","category-experiential-education","category-mu-in-the-news","mediacontact-mark-blackmon-director-news-public-affairs","audience-alumni","audience-community-member","audience-current-student","audience-faculty","school-leon-hess-business-school","school-school-of-science"],"squareimage":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802213225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802213225"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802213225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802239961,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802213225\/revisions\/40802239961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40802219558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802213225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802213225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802213225"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=40802213225"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=40802213225"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=40802213225"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=40802213225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}