We have explored the role of user modelling in live help systems for e-commerce web sites. There are several potential benefits
with user modelling in this context: 1) Human assistants can use the personal information in the user models to provide the
users with efficient support tailored to their personal needs; 2) Assistants can be more comfortable in their supporting role;
3) Consultation resources can be saved, and thus, financial savings can be made for the e-commerce company. A user modelling
approachh as been implemented and deployed in a real web environment as part of a live help system. Following the deployment
we have analysed consultation dialogue logs and answers to a questionnaire for participating assistants. This paper elaborates
on these results, which show that assistants consider user modelling to be helpful and that consultation dialogues can be
an important source for user model data collection. Based on lessons learned from the study, future directions for researchand
development are carefully analysed and laid out.
Originally we used the term web assistant system. However, similar system have recently begun to appear on e-commerce sites, commonly referred to as live help systems. To
avoid future confusion we now refer to our work using this newly adopted terminology.