With its Automated Service Agent platform Microsoft is looking to change the face of Web-based customer service by providing more intuitive interaction between online merchants and people doing business.

Automated Service Agent (ASA) "is a product that uses natural language to be able to interact and converse with people in a way that we normally talk," said Clinton Dickey, Microsoft director of program management, during a presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Plans call for extending the cloud-based service in July with a software development kit, which will allow partners and customers to build their own applications. "Today, it takes my team to go build the ASA," Dickey said.

Also on the drawing board is support for Microsoft's Silverlight browser plug-in technology, which would bring in the ability to access videos and graphics within the client.

Microsoft's platform is based on technology gained through the company's 2006 acquisition of natural language processing provider Colloquis.

Conventional online support systems, Dickey said, might provide a whole list of prices based on an inquiry or require more manual intervention to find information. He argued that self-service online systems plateaued at a 15 percent annual growth rate the last three years because users cannot get the right answers to questions.

To demonstrate the difference with ASA, Dickey asked "how much is Xbox Live" in a conventional online support system and received back many possible solutions to the question. With ASA-based Xbox support, exact pricing was delivered.

With ASA, normal English-based questions are asked on different topics; the system also compensates for bad grammar or misspellings. Since ASA is SaaS-based, no infrastructure expenditures are required.  "We actually have these groups of servers running at a Microsoft datacenter that support each individual customer," said Dickey.

Users also can get back more detailed information such as an article about the Xbox 360.

ASA bridges the gap between traditional attended customer service, which is highly responsive but expensive, and inexpensive-but-flawed conventional online customer service, Dickey argued. "Where ASA falls is right in the middle," he said.

ASA is powered by an algorithm and a knowledge management server console that features reporting and analytics, workflow and performance auditing. Content management is included as well.

The most common inquiry Microsoft receives with ASA is from users asking how to reset a password, Dickey said. Microsoft currently has 12 ASA customers but is doubling revenue every year, he said. Pricing costs 50 cents per session for an unlimited number of queries, with discounts available.