Graphical Entity Model for Privacy-Safe Customer Engagement
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Solution Overview
Problem
Online providers face challenges in matching their offerings with customer needs due to customers' reluctance to provide personal information, leading to missed opportunities for both parties.
Innovation Solution
A model-based customer engagement system that uses a graphical user interface to allow users to construct a visual representation of an entity by selecting characteristic icons, determining corresponding graphical representations, and combining them to form a model, which suggests products without requiring explicit user preferences or registration.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If providers ask potential customers to provide identifying information and ratings, then the provider can find matched offerings and establish relationships, but potential customers are hesitant to provide such information due to privacy concerns and time requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a virtual entity model as an intermediary between the customer and the provider. Instead of directly collecting personal information from customers, the system creates virtual representations (avatars) that embody customer preferences and characteristics. This intermediary allows the provider to gather necessary information while customers only need to interact with the virtual model, reducing privacy concerns and effort.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables customers to build and customize their own virtual entity models through interactive interfaces. Customers actively participate in creating their digital representations by selecting characteristics, preferences, and attributes, making the information collection process self-directed and engaging rather than imposed, thereby reducing perceived effort and increasing willingness to provide data.
2Loss of information
If providers ask potential customers to spend more time at their website and fill out registration forms, then it becomes more likely that the provider may find an offering matched to customer needs, but customers are reluctant to spend time filling out forms
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically generating virtual entity models based on limited initial customer inputs or even anonymous browsing behavior. Rather than requiring customers to complete extensive forms before receiving value, the system pre-processes available data to create functional virtual representations that can immediately be used for personalized recommendations, reducing the time customers must invest upfront.
Solution Approach 2:
The virtual entity model serves as a mediator that captures customer preferences indirectly. Instead of requiring customers to explicitly answer numerous questions about their preferences, the system infers these preferences through the virtual model's characteristics and behavior patterns, significantly reducing the time customers need to spend while still gathering comprehensive preference information.
3Measurement precision
If providers collect detailed customer information to provide personalized recommendations, then they can improve matching accuracy, but customers have privacy concerns about information distribution and undesired solicitations
Solution Approach 1:
The virtual entity model acts as a privacy-protecting intermediary that decouples personal information from preference data. The system stores and processes preferences within the virtual model rather than directly associating them with the customer's real identity. This allows accurate personalized recommendations while maintaining customer privacy, as the virtual entity serves as a buffer between the customer's personal information and the provider's data systems.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a copy of the customer's preferences and characteristics in the form of a virtual entity model, rather than storing and processing the actual personal information directly. This digital twin or copy contains all the necessary data for personalized recommendations but is separate from the customer's real identity, thereby enabling accurate matching while protecting privacy by working with copies rather than originals of personal data.
Data Source
AI summary
The graphical user interface may include a first portion configured to display a plurality of selectable entity characteristic icons, to receive selections from a user of a first selected entity characteristic and of a second selected entity characteristic thereby, and to provide in response at least a first graphical representation and a second graphical representation thereof, respectively. The graphical user interface also may include a second portion configured to display a graphical entity model that includes a combination of the first graphical representation and the second graphical representation, and a third portion configured to display at least a first suggested product to the user, based on the graphical entity model.