Senior Project - SWIFT

Avolent, Inc. is an emerging technology firm focused on providing advanced Internet Customer Care (ICC) and Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBP&P) solutions for industries including communications, utility and financial services. Avolent's clients use the Avolent product either on their own websites, or via a web site hosted by Avolent for that company.

In these products, the end user, i.e. the customers of Avolent's clients, has the ability to access their account for personal information at their convenience. Avolent's interactive customer care allows the customer to contact a customer service representative via e-mail or via an interactive "chat" session.

The goal of this project was to create a working prototype of this Avolent Interactive Session functionality. In this prototype, the customer simply clicks a button labeled "Contact Customer Service Representative" on any of the Avolent web pages. This brings up an applet allowing the customer to choose to have a Customer Service Representative (CSR) call them back or to engage in an interactive chat session with a CSR.

If a CSR callback is selected, the user enters their name and phone number, along with a brief description of their problem. This information is placed into a callback queue, from which any one of the CSRs may retrieve an item, return the call to the customer, and assist the customer with any problems they are having.

If an interactive chat session with a CSR is selected, the customer provides information on their problem, which is placed into a chat session queue. CSRs select items from this queue, automatically establishing a text-based interactive chat session between the CSR and the customer, and again allowing the CSR to assist the customer with any problems. An interesting feature is that at any point during the chat session the customer has the option to "connect" with the CSR. In doing so, the CSR can move and control the direction of the customer's browser and bring them to the necessary web pages to complete their transactions.

The project was implemented using Java in a web-based environment.