@inproceedings{chen-etal-2026-focus,
title = "{FOCUS}: A Fine-Grained Customer-Oriented Sentiment Dialogue Summarization Dataset for {C}hinese Customer Service",
author = "Chen, Qian and
Hu, Mengqiang and
Guo, Xin",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1141/",
pages = "22744--22764",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "Dialogue summarization (DS) plays a vital role in improving customer service efficiency by automatically generating concise summaries from lengthy multi-turn dialogues. However, existing studies largely overlook the fine-grained sentiment dynamics expressed by customers, and most DS datasets lack detailed sentiment annotations. These limitations hinder both accurate service quality assessment and the development of sentiment-aware summarization models. To address these challenges, we propose a three-stage approach to building an aspect-aware sentiment dataset, comprising: (1) aspect-anchored dialogue rewriting, (2) dialogue-anchored explainable label generation, and (3) label-dialogue integrated summarization. Building upon this scheme, we construct FOCUS, a $\textbf{F}$ine-grained customer-$\textbf{O}$riented $\textbf{C}$hinese dialog$\textbf{U}$e $\textbf{S}$ummarization dataset. FOCUS is the first Chinese dataset with 12,948 dialogues annotated for multi-level aspects, sentiment polarity, opinion content, emotions, as well as customer-oriented formatted and free-style sentiment summaries. To demonstrate the challenges and utility of FOCUS, we benchmark a range of summarization models on FOCUS and observe that current methods often exhibit misalignment between aspects and sentiments. Meanwhile, we find that a Chain-of-Thought approach can enhance faithfulness and interpretability, highlighting promising directions for future research on this dataset. FOCUS serves as a valuable resource to advance research in sentiment-aware DS and related tasks."
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<abstract>Dialogue summarization (DS) plays a vital role in improving customer service efficiency by automatically generating concise summaries from lengthy multi-turn dialogues. However, existing studies largely overlook the fine-grained sentiment dynamics expressed by customers, and most DS datasets lack detailed sentiment annotations. These limitations hinder both accurate service quality assessment and the development of sentiment-aware summarization models. To address these challenges, we propose a three-stage approach to building an aspect-aware sentiment dataset, comprising: (1) aspect-anchored dialogue rewriting, (2) dialogue-anchored explainable label generation, and (3) label-dialogue integrated summarization. Building upon this scheme, we construct FOCUS, a Fine-grained customer-Oriented Chinese dialogUe Summarization dataset. FOCUS is the first Chinese dataset with 12,948 dialogues annotated for multi-level aspects, sentiment polarity, opinion content, emotions, as well as customer-oriented formatted and free-style sentiment summaries. To demonstrate the challenges and utility of FOCUS, we benchmark a range of summarization models on FOCUS and observe that current methods often exhibit misalignment between aspects and sentiments. Meanwhile, we find that a Chain-of-Thought approach can enhance faithfulness and interpretability, highlighting promising directions for future research on this dataset. FOCUS serves as a valuable resource to advance research in sentiment-aware DS and related tasks.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T FOCUS: A Fine-Grained Customer-Oriented Sentiment Dialogue Summarization Dataset for Chinese Customer Service
%A Chen, Qian
%A Hu, Mengqiang
%A Guo, Xin
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F chen-etal-2026-focus
%X Dialogue summarization (DS) plays a vital role in improving customer service efficiency by automatically generating concise summaries from lengthy multi-turn dialogues. However, existing studies largely overlook the fine-grained sentiment dynamics expressed by customers, and most DS datasets lack detailed sentiment annotations. These limitations hinder both accurate service quality assessment and the development of sentiment-aware summarization models. To address these challenges, we propose a three-stage approach to building an aspect-aware sentiment dataset, comprising: (1) aspect-anchored dialogue rewriting, (2) dialogue-anchored explainable label generation, and (3) label-dialogue integrated summarization. Building upon this scheme, we construct FOCUS, a Fine-grained customer-Oriented Chinese dialogUe Summarization dataset. FOCUS is the first Chinese dataset with 12,948 dialogues annotated for multi-level aspects, sentiment polarity, opinion content, emotions, as well as customer-oriented formatted and free-style sentiment summaries. To demonstrate the challenges and utility of FOCUS, we benchmark a range of summarization models on FOCUS and observe that current methods often exhibit misalignment between aspects and sentiments. Meanwhile, we find that a Chain-of-Thought approach can enhance faithfulness and interpretability, highlighting promising directions for future research on this dataset. FOCUS serves as a valuable resource to advance research in sentiment-aware DS and related tasks.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1141/
%P 22744-22764
Markdown (Informal)
[FOCUS: A Fine-Grained Customer-Oriented Sentiment Dialogue Summarization Dataset for Chinese Customer Service](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1141/) (Chen et al., Findings 2026)
ACL