Sococoin is an Ethereum token that follows the ERC20 specification.
The SoCo (short for Socialement Compétents = Socially Competent) ecosystem aims to push people comfortable with IT and the internet to help, in an autonomous and decentralized way, users less aware of new technologies in general and the internet in particular.
This was built in 3 days during the 2018 Pôle Emploi (French unemployment
services) hackaton, where 80 teams had to compete to find the best way to
help Pôle Emploi applicants to use their website
(https://www.pole-emploi.fr/accueil/).
Our platform wasn't strongly linked with Pôle Emploi and could be used with
any website, just by importing a JavaScript file (our socomodule, see below).
Socomodule is a non intrusive chat module (Intercom-style)
Socoperator is a web application used by operators (see below)
Sococoin is the ERC20 Ethereum Token described in this repository
Socoback is the application back-end that allows communication between the other components
User: Someone that requires help using the website. He would click on the chat icon available on the bottom right of the page, and be connected to the next available operator.
Operator: Someone comfortable with new technologies that will help, thanks to the Socoperator platform, people in difficulty, by chat.
Organisation: Company, public institution, NGO or even a single developer that uses the socomodule on their website.
Tokens will be rewarded to operators after each help operation, according to several criteria:
- duration of the intervention
- perception by the user (was the user satisfied?)
- type of help
- ...
The organization installs the socomodule on its website, which will add a non-intrusive chat module on each of the desired pages.
Users of this website will have the opportunity to open a conversation, to ask for help (by sending a message in the chat).
All operators will see this new conversation appear: they will then have the opportunity to assign it to themselves, simply by responding. A conversation that is assigned to an operator is neither visible nor accessible by other operators.
A single operator, with a single account, can interact with and help a user who is on any web platform, while remaining on the same application, Socoperator.
The Socially Competent Ecosystem focuses on public institutions. It is particularly suitable for small organizations (small towns, boroughs...) and small businesses that have neither the means nor the wish to have a dedicated IT support service. Any company, NGO, institution or simple developer can include the Socomodule integration on their website with a simple copy and paste (see the CodePen demo).
Examples of good use cases for end uses:
- Pôle emploi procedures
- Tax filing
- any other administrative procedure
- help using a website
Earned SocoCoins could be sold or exchanged or redeemed for non-financial rewards.
A few examples:
Pôle emploi: free training, priviledged access to some job offers...
Discount on public transports
Discount on cultural events
We have identified a number of challenges that will be taken into account when building a production version of the application.
First, it will reward the best operators, promoting positive behavior and reducing rewards for negative behavior. This will require in-depth study and thinking, as it is easy to hijack a system that claims to be beneficial by not "playing the game".
Indeed, fraud is possible: two accomplices can create an unlimited number of conversations, and close them instantly to receive rewards without real world added value. Several levers can be used to counter this problem: check, thanks to AI/Machine learning, if the messages are generated by a human or a machine; evaluate the duration of the intervention against similar problems; check the timing of interventions for each operator; limit the number of simultaneous conversations/number of conversations in a day...
Finally, we should give organisations the opportunity to certify operators by themselves. In the case of Pôle Emploi, for example, Pôle Emploi should have the possibility to authorize, or not, an operator to help users on their platform. Pôle Emploi could offer operator training that would provide access, on the "Socoperator" platform, to help users of the Pôle Emploi website.
Without going into details:
It would be possible to do a user facial expression analysis to determine his satisfaction, and adapt the operator rewards accordingly. Possible technical solution: trained TensorFlow model.
It would also be wise to store as much information as possible about problem solving, and intelligently analyze recurring problems, operator performance, and areas for improvement. Possible technical solution: a classic BigData stack (Hadoop, MapReduce...).
Operators can easily be replaced by a ChatBot, in a technical point of view. The rewards can then be omitted, or awarded to the ChatBot owners. Possible technical solutions: decision tree ChatBot, ChatBot with an AI-driven model.