ImpReSS: Implicit Recommender System for Support Conversations

Abstract: Following recent advancements in LLMs, LLM-based chatbots have transformed customer support by automating interactions and providing consistent, scalable service. While LLM-based conversational recommender systems (CRSs) have attracted attention for their ability to enhance the quality of recommendations, limited research has addressed the implicit integration of recommendations within customer support interactions. In this work, we introduce ImpReSS, an implicit recommender system designed for customer support conversations. ImpReSS operates alongside existing support chatbots, where users report issues and chatbots provide solutions. Based on a customer support conversation, ImpReSS identifies opportunities to recommend relevant solution product categories (SPCs) that help resolve the issue or prevent its recurrence -- thereby also supporting business growth. Unlike traditional CRSs, ImpReSS functions entirely implicitly and does not rely on any assumption of a user's purchasing intent. Our empirical evaluation of ImpReSS's ability to recommend relevant SPCs that can help address issues raised in support conversations shows promising results, including an MRR@1 (and recall@3) of 0.72 (0.89) for general problem solving, 0.82 (0.83) for information security support, and 0.85 (0.67) for cybersecurity troubleshooting. To support future research, our data and code will be shared upon request.