Canned responses are predetermined responses to common questions.
In fields such as
technical support
Technical support (abbreviated as tech support) is a call centre type customer service provided by companies to advise and assist registered users with issues concerning their technical products. Traditionally done on the phone, technical suppor ...
, canned responses to
frequently asked questions may be an effective solution for both the customer and the technical adviser, as they offer the possibility to provide a quick answer to common inquiries while requiring little human intervention.
Improperly used, canned responses can prove frustrating to users by providing inadequate answers.
Technical support
Assisting human operators
In text-based technical support systems, the
operator may insert a canned response triggered by keystrokes or from a drop-down menu, rather than typing the same answer repeatedly or pasting from some other resource. For example, if a support representative at an
ISP
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
's technical support team is asked to explain how to add an
attachment to an email, rather than typing in all the details, the support representative may choose the response from a drop down menu, and it gets inserted into the response.
The representative is more productive this way, and the user receives a more carefully crafted answer. Some programs have built-in functions which allow canned responses, and other software is available which can insert canned responses into any other application.
Canned responses, however, can have disadvantages. Sloppy or pressured support people could end up using canned responses as a quick fix when they actually do not really resolve the customer's problem or are only tangentially relevant to the user's problem.
Chatbots
Chatbots
A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would behav ...
can be used to provide users with a fully automated access to a broad set of canned responses. Chatbots can vary in sophistication, from rule-based programs offering the same answer to every user to programs using technologies such as
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
to adapt answers to the particular situation of the user.
Use in email clients
Since 2008, the term has also referred to quick answers that
email clients
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...
provide to their users to reply to common messages they may receive.
Gmail
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and ...
introduced the feature in 2011 as part of Gmail Labs.
In 2015, the company rolled out Smart Reply, a feature that scans and recognizes the types of messages that need responses and uses machine learning to provide the user with personalised canned responses.
See also
*
Autopen
An autopen (or signing machine) is a device used for the automatic signing of a signature. Prominent individuals may be asked to provide their signatures many times a day, such as celebrities receiving requests for autographs, or politicians sig ...
References
User interface techniques
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canned responses