AUTOMATICALLY SUGGESTING MACROS TO HELP AGENTS PROCESS TICKETS IN AN ONLINE CUSTOMER-SUPPORT SYSTEM

1 . A method for automatically suggesting macros to help customer-support agents process customer-support tickets in an online customer-support system, comprising:

receiving a customer-support ticket, which is associated with a request from a customer in the customer-support system, wherein the request relates to a product or a service used by the customer;

converting text from the customer-support ticket into a ticket embedding in a vector space;

feeding the ticket embedding into a macro-suggestion model, which correlates ticket embeddings with macros, wherein each of the macros comprises a sequence of commands that performs an operation to facilitate processing of the customer-support ticket;

if the macro-suggestion model produces suggested macros, presenting the suggested macros to a customer-support agent; and

if the customer-support agent selects a suggested macro, facilitating application of the selected macro to the customer-support ticket.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein facilitating application of the selected macro to the customer-support ticket comprises:

executing the sequence of commands from the selected macro to generate modifications to the customer-support ticket; and

enabling the customer-support agent to commit the modifications to the customer-support ticket.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein after executing the sequence of commands from the selected macro, the method further comprises allowing the customer-support agent to manually modify the customer-support ticket prior to committing the modifications.

4 . The method of claim 2 , wherein after one or more modifications are committed to a customer-support ticket, the method further comprises performing one or more cascading actions based on the committed modifications.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein if none of the suggested macros is relevant, the method further comprises enabling the customer-support agent to provide feedback for the macro-suggestion model

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein converting the text from the customer-support ticket into the ticket embedding comprises applying a universal sentence encoder to the text to produce the ticket embedding.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the macro-suggestion model operates by:

using a binary classifier to determine whether any macros are applicable to the ticket; and

if so, using a recommendation model to return the suggested macros, wherein the suggested macros comprise a subset of the macros that have the highest probabilities of being applicable to the ticket.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the macro-suggestion model includes a feed-forward neural network.

9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein prior to receiving the customer-support ticket, the method further comprises training the macro-suggestion model, which involves:

obtaining a training data set comprising a set of observations, wherein each observation includes text from a customer-support ticket and an associated identifier for a macro that a customer-support agent manually applied to the customer-support ticket; and

training the macro-suggestion model based on the training data set.

10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein an account-specific macro-suggestion model is used to process customer-support tickets associated with each account in the customer-support system.

11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises filtering suggested macros based on agent groups so that certain macros are accessible by specific agents or specific groups of agents.

12 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the macros can perform one or more of the following operations on customer-support tickets:

modifying a ticket field;

adding a comment to a ticket;

adding an attachment to a ticket comment;

adding a cc to a ticket;

adding or removing a ticket tag;

changing a priority of a ticket;

setting or changing a subject of a ticket;

setting or changing a status of a ticket;

setting or changing an assignee of a ticket; and

modifying a custom field in a ticket.

13 . A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method for automatically suggesting macros to help customer-support agents process customer-support tickets in an online customer-support system, the method comprising:

receiving a customer-support ticket, which is associated with a request from a customer in the customer-support system, wherein the request relates to a product or a service used by the customer;

converting text from the customer-support ticket into a ticket embedding in a vector space;

feeding the ticket embedding into a macro-suggestion model, which correlates ticket embeddings with macros, wherein each of the macros comprises a sequence of commands that performs an operation to facilitate processing of the customer-support ticket;

if the macro-suggestion model produces suggested macros, presenting the suggested macros to a customer-support agent; and

if the customer-support agent selects a suggested macro, facilitating application of the selected macro to the customer-support ticket.

14 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein facilitating application of the selected macro to the customer-support ticket comprises:

executing the sequence of commands from the selected macro to generate modifications to the customer-support ticket; and

enabling the customer-support agent to commit the modifications to the customer-support ticket.

15 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 14 , wherein after executing the sequence of commands from the selected macro, the method further comprises allowing the customer-support agent to manually modify the customer-support ticket prior to committing the modifications.

16 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 14 , wherein after one or more modifications are committed to a customer-support ticket, the method further comprises performing one or more cascading actions based on the committed modifications.

17 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein if none of the suggested macros is relevant, the method further comprises enabling the customer-support agent to provide feedback for the macro-suggestion model.

18 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein converting the text from the customer-support ticket into the ticket embedding comprises applying a universal sentence encoder to the text to produce the ticket embedding.

19 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the macro-suggestion model operates by:

using a binary classifier to determine whether any macros are applicable to the ticket; and

if so, using a recommendation model to return the suggested macros, wherein the suggested macros comprise a subset of the macros that have the highest probabilities of being applicable to the ticket.

20 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the macro-suggestion model includes a feed-forward neural network.

21 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein prior to receiving the customer-support ticket, the method further comprises training the macro-suggestion model, which involves:

obtaining a training data set comprising a set of observations, wherein each observation includes text from a customer-support ticket and an associated identifier for a macro that a customer-support agent manually applied to the customer-support ticket; and

training the macro-suggestion model based on the training data set.

22 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein an account-specific macro-suggestion model is used to process customer-support tickets associated with each account in the customer-support system.

23 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the method further comprises filtering suggested macros based on agent groups so that certain macros are accessible by specific agents or specific groups of agents.

24 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the macros can perform one or more of the following operations on customer-support tickets:

modifying a ticket field;

adding a comment to a ticket;

adding an attachment to a ticket comment;

adding a cc to a ticket;

adding or removing a ticket tag;

changing a priority of a ticket;

setting or changing a subject of a ticket;

setting or changing a status of a ticket;

setting or changing an assignee of a ticket; and

modifying a custom field in a ticket.

25 . A system that automatically suggests macros to help customer-support agents process customer-support tickets in an online customer-support system, comprising:

at least one processor and at least one associated memory; and

a suggestion mechanism, which executes on the at least one processor, wherein during operation, the suggestion mechanism:

receives a customer-support ticket, which is associated with a request from a customer in the customer-support system, wherein the request relates to a product or a service used by the customer;

converts text from the customer-support ticket into a ticket embedding in a vector space;

feeds the ticket embedding into a macro-suggestion model, which correlates ticket embeddings with macros, wherein each of the macros comprises a sequence of commands that performs an operation to facilitate processing of the customer-support ticket;

if the macro-suggestion model produces suggested macros, presents the suggested macros to a customer-support agent; and

if the customer-support agent selects a suggested macro, facilitates application of the selected macro to the customer-support ticket.

26 . The system of claim 25 , wherein while facilitating application of the selected macro to the customer-support ticket, the suggestion mechanism:

executes the sequence of commands from the selected macro to generate modifications to the customer-support ticket; and

enables the customer-support agent to commit the modifications to the customer-support ticket.

27 . The system of claim 26 , wherein after executing the sequence of commands from the selected macro, the suggestion mechanism allows the customer-support agent to manually modify the customer-support ticket prior to committing the modifications.

28 . The system of claim 26 , wherein after one or more modifications are committed to a customer-support ticket, the suggestion mechanism performs one or more cascading actions based on the committed modifications.

29 . The system of claim 25 , wherein if none of the suggested macros is relevant, the suggestion mechanism enables the customer-support agent to provide feedback for the macro-suggestion model.