For a concept of something contemporary that does a job like what FAQs did
when Jonathan first put news.answers online, consider the following:
-- quoting from memo in trace.wisc.edu context
This reminds me that there was a consensus best practice setup for public
I&R interfaces reiterated by someone at the Home Care Technologies
workshop. I was surprised to have someone just list off the same thing
that I think is the right answer. So I should share it.
The front line is a website, a mailbox/mailbot, and a phone number. The
phonebot answering the phones has an IVR system with the same Q&A
information as the website. Anyone can get a person on the phone just by
asking/waiting. This person has an industrial strength interface to the
same I&R database as is served by phonebot and web. Mail that comes to the
info mailbox is auto-answered with a FAQ -- some explanation of the
information options plus the top ten questions that people actually ask and
for which there is a known answer. But this mail is also read and manually
answered later. I believe one can see such a FAQbot in action at
info@npr.org.
The back line is a roster of subject area experts that answer questions by
email for the front line I&R staff. For Trace, I am assuming that these
are focus-area email 'desk' addresses backed by distribution lists such as
web@ and system@ etc. What I am suggesting here is that if someone is on a
specific area of the website and has a content question one could let them
go straight to that mailbox. It might lure a few questions that would
otherwise go un-asked. I don't know that this is superior to having One
Front Door as far as info@trace.wisc.edu is concerned.
Al
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