Class / Patent application number | Description | Number of patent applications / Date published |
379265130 | Based on type of call | 33 |
20090060165 | Method and System for Customer Transaction Request Routing | 03-05-2009 |
20090190748 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ROUTING CALLERS TO AN AGENT IN A CONTACT CENTER - Methods are disclosed for routing callers to agents in a contact center, along with an intelligent routing system. One or more agents are graded on achieving an optimal interaction, such as increasing revenue, decreasing cost, or increasing customer satisfaction. Callers are then preferentially routed to a graded agent to obtain an increased chance at obtaining a chosen optimal interaction. In a more advanced embodiment, caller and agent demographic and psychographic characteristics can also be determined and used in a pattern matching algorithm to preferentially route a caller with certain characteristics to an agent with certain characteristics to increase the chance of an optimal interaction. | 07-30-2009 |
20090279684 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CALL CENTER SCREENING - Methods and systems are provided for call center screening that enable a network service provider to dynamically control service request traffic directed to selected service centers. An Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) service is configured to intercept calls originating from calling parties and directed to trigger numbers designated for processing predetermined service requests. Depending upon the trigger number, the AIN may play an announcement asking a calling party to designate the service requested. Following a calling party's valid response, a second announcement is played asking the calling party to select the type of service associated with the first response. Depending upon the calling party's responses and calling party's location, the AIN may route the call to selected service centers, in order to control the traffic to overloaded service centers. | 11-12-2009 |
20090310774 | CUSTOMER SERVICE METHODS, APPARATUS AND REPORT/ALERT GENERATION BASED ON CUSTOMER SERVICE CALL INFORMATION - Methods and apparatus that provide customer service representatives with information for supporting a customer service call are described. Also described are method and apparatus for collecting customer service call information and generating reports and/or alerts there from. Through the use of customer service call data from multiple divisions, problems and/or underperformance at a division can be identified and rectified in a timely manner. Information from one division can also be used to predict possible problems at other divisions allowing problems to be addressed, in some cases, prior to customer complaints at a division to be addressed in some cases before an increase in the number of customer service calls at the individual division triggers an alert. | 12-17-2009 |
20100061544 | SYSTEM, METHOD AND SOFTWARE FOR TRANSITIONING BETWEEN SPEECH-ENABLED APPLICATIONS USING ACTION-OBJECT MATRICES - A system, method and software are described for facilitating transitions between speech-enabled applications employing action-object matrices. In an exemplary embodiment, an automatic call router determines a service agent destination by identifying an action-object combination included in a user utterance. In addition to forwarding the user to the service agent destination, the automatic call router sends one or more aspects of the user utterance to the service agent for use therewith. The service agent may then use aspects of the forwarded information to request further information from the user or to begin performance of a user desired transaction. | 03-11-2010 |
20100111287 | POOLING CALLERS FOR MATCHING TO AGENTS BASED ON PATTERN MATCHING ALGORITHMS - Methods and systems are provided for routing callers to agents in a call-center routing environment. An exemplary method includes identifying caller data for at least one of a set of callers on hold and causing a caller of the set of callers to be routed to an agent based on a comparison of the caller data and the agent data. The caller data and agent data may be compared via a pattern matching algorithm and/or computer model for predicting a caller-agent pair having the highest probability of a desired outcome. As such, callers may be pooled and routed to agents based on comparisons of available caller and agent data, rather than a conventional queue order fashion. If a caller is held beyond a hold threshold the caller may be routed to the next available agent. The hold threshold may include a predetermined time, “cost” function, number of times the caller may be skipped by other callers, and so on. | 05-06-2010 |
20100183139 | CATEGORIZATION AND ROUTING OF CALLS BASED ON GENRE - A network component in communication with a call message system is disclosed. The network component includes a configurable communications portion and a configurable processor portion. The communications portion is configured to detect a call indicative of a call to a mobile device. The processor portion is configured to determine an originator of the call. The processor portion is also configured to determine a genre of the call. The determination of the genre of the call is based at least in part on the originator of the call. The genre of the call is compared to a predetermined genre. The processor portion is configured to terminate the call or to provide the call to the call message system based on the comparison of the genre of the call to the predetermined genre. | 07-22-2010 |
20110216897 | Providing Information by a Contact Center - A method for a contact center to provide information to one or more users in response to one or more inquiries from the one or more users is presented. For example, the method includes accessing, using at least one client adaptor, at least one agent group that includes at least one agent having knowledge regarding the one or more inquiries. The method further includes the at least one agent responding to the one or more inquiries using the at least one client adaptor. The at least one agent group has pre-existing communications infrastructure that is accessed by a computing platform of the contact center using the at least one client adaptor. | 09-08-2011 |
20120148040 | INTELLIGENT CALL TRANSFER - A method may include receiving, at a first call center, a call from a caller, forwarding the call to an agent workstation and determining that the call must be transferred. The method may also include providing, at the agent workstation, a user interface identifying a number of items associated with possible reasons for the call and receiving, via the user interface, input selecting one of the items. The method may further include appending information to the call based on the received input and forwarding the call with the appended information to a network device associated with a number of call centers. | 06-14-2012 |
20120250851 | System and Method for Automating Customer Relations in a Communications Environment - A method includes receiving performance data associated with a service provided by at least one component of a communication network to one or more subscribers. The performance data may be gathered by one or more passive listening devices that monitor a performance characteristic of the at least one component of the communication network. The method further includes identifying the at least one component that provides a particular service to a particular subscriber based on a subscriber inquiry received from the particular subscriber. The method further includes identifying particular performance data within the received performance data. The particular performance data may be associated with the particular service provided by the at least one component. The method further includes determining a performance status of the at least one component, based on the particular performance data. | 10-04-2012 |
20130182835 | System and Method of Intelligent Call Routing for Cross Sell Offer Selection based on Optimization Parameters or Account-level Data - An apparatus and methods for a call routing system is disclosed whereby the call routing service provider is associated with a series of partners. By providing a system supporting not only the main user, but also the partners, efficiencies are gained through cost-spreading. Agents can be qualified to field calls for multiple business entities. Cross-selling and proactive servicing based on caller demographic and profile data can be effectuated. The system employs a centralized or global bank of shared Interactive Voice Response (IVR) units so that unnecessary post-routing and call site interflow are reduced. The system comprises a central server system that interfaces with a long distance provider so that route requests are received, caller data is retrieved from one or more databases, routing and handling strategies are developed, load balancing is effectuated, and calls are appropriately routed to one of a plurality of geographically separated call center systems with queues staffed by agents. Each call center system is designed to support various queues, and agents may be qualified or assigned to various queues based on their skill sets and skill levels. | 07-18-2013 |
20130216038 | Managing a Contact Center Based on the Devices Available for Use by an Agent - In a contact center, agents are assigned to support customers using various media, such as audio, video, and/or text communications. The various media types have a related application. The mediums that an agent can support are determined. In addition, an agent has devices that are available for use by the agent. For example, the agent may have a cellular telephone and a tablet device available for use. The related application(s) are associated with the devices available for use by the agent based on a capability of at least one device. This is done in relation to the medium(s) supported by the agent. For example, an audio application can be associated with a cellular telephone and a text application can be associated with a tablet device. As the devices or mediums supported by the agent changes, the system can re-associate the related application(s) based on the new configuration. | 08-22-2013 |
20130216039 | Processing Telephone Calls - Methods, apparatus and computer program products for indicating availability in a telecommunications network are provided. An availability alerting service is initiated in response to a trigger associated with non-completion of an initial call from a calling party to a called party, the availability alerting service provides the calling party with availability alert information to solicit a follow-up call from the calling party when the called party has a given availability state after the initial call. The availability alerting service detects a first availability status change after initiation of the alerting service, and transmits a first availability update message to the calling party to solicit the follow-up call. A second availability status change is detected, subsequent to the first availability status change, and a second availability update message is transmitted to the calling party to inhibit the follow-up call. | 08-22-2013 |
20130223617 | CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAMING - The present disclosure describes various ways of providing agents with a configurable mechanism by which they may bid on training opportunities with contacts in a given contact center. Specifically, an architecture providing a team of agents and agents-in-training to service a contact or set of contacts and methods of employing that team architecture are described. The bids of one or more agents may be collected and evaluated to determine at least one winning agent that will team together with at least one subject matter expert, qualified agent, or team in handling a contact for the purposes of training. | 08-29-2013 |
20140037083 | SYSTEM FOR AND METHOD OF INFORMATION ENCODING - A system for and method of information encoding is presented. The system and method includes encoding information within other information of a protocol, and then decoding the information and performing actions based on the decoded information. | 02-06-2014 |
20140072116 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING TRAFFIC BURSTS FOR A PLURALITY OF TENANTS - A system that supports multiple contact centers includes a communications network that is coupled between a private network (e.g. MPLS network) and a remote computing environment (e.g. cloud environment). A server system in the remote computing environment monitors health of different network segments (e.g. bandwidth of the connection between the communications network and the remote computing environment, bandwidth of a link used by a tenant to access the private network, etc.). When it is determined that quality of service for voice conversations for one or more contact centers is at risk due to a health status parameter of a network segment reaching a threshold, an appropriate system reaction is triggered. The system reaction may be to offload future calls to a peer remote computing environment to service future calls. The system reaction may also be to cancel outbound campaigns, provide pre-determined “sorry” messages, and the like. | 03-13-2014 |
20140140498 | BEST MATCH INTERACTION SET ROUTING - A method for routing activities in a contact center to contact center agents includes: concurrently selecting, by a processor, N activities, wherein N is an integer greater than 1; concurrently identifying, by the processor, N contact center agents; identifying, by the processor, one or more sets of preferences associated with the N activities and the N contact center agents; matching, by the processor, the N activities and the N contact center agents based on the one or more sets of preferences; and routing, by the processor, one or more of the N activities to the matched contact center agents. | 05-22-2014 |
20140177820 | Computer-Implemented System and Method for Automating Call Center Phone Calls - A system and method for processing a call between a caller and a live agent is provided. A stream of verbal speech utterances is received from the caller and converted into text. Text messages are received from the agent in response to the stream of verbal speech utterances and converted into synthesized speech utterances. The synthesized speech utterances are provided to the caller. A record of the call is processed and presented to a further live agent for manipulation. The manipulated record is stored. | 06-26-2014 |
20140270145 | ANSWER BASED AGENT ROUTING AND DISPLAY METHOD - A system can determine a best routing of a customer contact based on analysis of one or more automatically generated answers. A customer may provide an inquiry through a social media contact. The contact center can analyze the inquiry to generate one or more automated answers. The system then analyzes the automated answers. The analysis may include studying various attributes of the answer, either in relation to the inquiry or based in historical data. From the analysis, the system can modify the answers and/or provide a different or improved pool of agents to handle the contact. Thus, an improved set of answers and agents is provided for managing the contact. | 09-18-2014 |
20140270146 | BACK OFFICE SERVICES OF AN INTELLIGENT AUTOMATED AGENT FOR A CONTACT CENTER - A back office services of an intelligent automated agent for a contact center is provided. The back office services is configured to run on a processor coupled to a non-transitory storage device. The back office services includes: a customer profile module configured to access a profile of a customer from a customer profile database stored on the storage device, the profile of the customer including interaction data from interactions involving the customer and the contact center, and analysis results from analyzing the interaction data between the interactions involving the customer and the contact center; and a content analysis module configured to generate new analysis results by performing the analyzing of the interaction data between consecutive interactions of the interactions involving the customer and the contact center, and update the analysis results of the profile of the customer on the storage device to reflect the new analysis results. | 09-18-2014 |
20140321635 | CALL PRIORITIZATION METHODS IN A CALL CENTER - According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of allocating calls coming into a call center from a caller location remote from the call center, receiving a call from a caller which includes information from an RFID chip located in close proximity to the caller location; decoding the information from the RFID chip to determine one or more parameters relating to the information; using said one or more parameters to allocate the call from the caller at the call center to ensure calls are handled in accordance with the parameters. This has the advantage of much more efficient management of the of the calls within the call center and ensures that the calls are sent to the agent with the most appropriate skill set. | 10-30-2014 |
20140376715 | Method for Automated Handling of Outbound Contacts Requiring Assured Connection to a Live Agent - A system for assuring agent connection for outbound calls placed in an automated outbound calling campaign includes an outbound dialing server, a digital data repository coupled to the outbound dialing server, the data repository storing outbound dialing records for automated outbound dialing, and software executing on the outbound dialing server from a non-transitory physical medium, the software providing a first function for determining for a specific outbound dialing record if the connection to a live agent must be an assured connection, a second function for dialing and engaging an agent via an internal call for reservation of the agent, and a third function for bridging the call connections forged between the system and the agent and the system and the outbound party upon answer of the outbound call. | 12-25-2014 |
20150036816 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATICALLY ROUTING A TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION - A method for automatically routing a telephonic communication to at least one of a plurality of communication destination addresses is provided. The method is implemented by a computer readable medium having a plurality of code segments. The method comprises the step of receiving customer identifier and communicating with a customer history database configured to store historic data. The method also includes determining whether the received customer identifier corresponds to a stored customer identifier in the customer history database. Historic data corresponding to the stored customer number is identified based on the comparison of the received customer identifier and the stored customer identifier. The telephonic communication is associated with a predetermined communication destination based on the identified historic data. The associated communication data is transmitted to a switching signal. | 02-05-2015 |
20150071428 | MANAGING TRANSACTION COMPLEXITY IN A CONTACT CENTER - A contact is received in a contact center. For example, an incoming voice call or email is received by the contact center. A complexity of the contact is determined. The complexity of the contact is how difficult the contact will be to process by an agent. For instance, the agent may have to do additional work outside the call based on the type of contact. In response to determining the complexity of the contact, the contact is routed to an agent of the contact center and a compensation of the agent is adjusted for servicing the contact. | 03-12-2015 |
20150103997 | SYSTEM FOR COMMUNICATION ROUTING - A system, method, apparatus, means, and computer program code is provided wherein an electronic communication is received. A communication routing matrix is accessed, from a relational database platform, to select a service representative for the received communication. It may then be arranged for the received communication to be routed in accordance with the selected service representative. | 04-16-2015 |
20150124956 | COMMUNICATION DISPOSITION DETERMINATION FOR UNIFIED RECOVERY SYSTEM FOR PAYMENTS IN ARREARS - Embodiments of the invention are directed to a system, method, or computer program product for providing a unified representation of all customer relationships within an entity. This representation focuses on customer products in arrears that are to be recovered. The invention requires disposition input from the system and the representative immediately after a customer communication. This way, the invention aids in providing an overarching view of all customer relationships to a representative. The automatic information regarding the communication includes the date, time of day, duration, and the like associated with the communication. The invention requires the representative to input manually a disposition from each communication, such as what was discussed during the communication. As such, the invention allows for subsequent representatives to make decision and take appropriate actions immediately based on the entire relationship, including the results of previous customer communications. | 05-07-2015 |
20150326725 | SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATICALLY ROUTING A COMMUNICATION - A method for automatically routing a telephonic communication to at least one of a plurality of communication destination addresses is provided. The method is implemented by a computer readable medium having a plurality of code segments. The method comprises the step of receiving customer identifier and communicating with a customer history database configured to store historic data. The method also includes determining whether the received customer identifier corresponds to a stored customer identifier in the customer history database, wherein the customer profile included in the stored historic data is based on one or more components of a customer's demographic identity. Historic data corresponding to the stored customer number is identified based on the comparison of the received customer identifier and the stored customer identifier. The telephonic communication is associated with a predetermined communication destination based on the identified historic data. The associated communication data is transmitted to a switching signal. | 11-12-2015 |
20150350443 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING INTERACTION FLOW FOR CONTACT CENTERS - In a system for managing an interaction flow, the system includes: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory has stored thereon, instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: receive a communication from a user device; store data corresponding to one or more topics of the communication in the memory; compare the data with parameters a plurality of predesigned interaction flows for identifying one or more of the predesigned interaction flows relevant to the communication; and route the communication to a corresponding contact center resource in response to identifying the one or more of the predesigned interaction flows relevant to the communication. | 12-03-2015 |
20150350444 | METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR PROVIDING A MULTI-CHANNEL CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT EXPERIENCE - A multi-channel communication system may include a plurality of agent electronic devices associated with a customer center, and a context electronic device including a processor and a session database. The context electronic device may be communication with each of the plurality of agent electronic devices such that each of the plurality of agent electronic devices is able to access information stored in the session database. The system may include a proxy in communication with one or more user electronic devices and the context electronic device, where the proxy may be configured to route a communication from the user electronic devices to a designated agent electronic device from the plurality of agent electronic devices that is associated with a communication channel, where the communication occurs via the communication channel, and the context electronic device. The context electronic device may be configured to store received context information associated with the communication in the session database. | 12-03-2015 |
20160036973 | SOCIAL MEDIA FEEDBACK FOR ROUTING USER COMMUNICATIONS - A call handling platform receives a call placed by a caller to a calling number. The platform examines parameters of the call, determines identifying information of the caller and matches the identifying information with a social network username corresponding to a social media network. The platform obtains the caller's social network data from the social media network. Using the social network data, the platform computes a social network influence score for the caller. The platform compares the social network influence score to a predetermined influence score threshold value and determines that the social network influence score for the caller indicates that the activity of the caller in the social media network has a high level of impact. The platform accordingly selects a first human agent at a call center and routes the call to the first human agent at the call center. | 02-04-2016 |
20160105558 | METHOD FOR AUTOMATED HANDLING OF OUTBOUND CONTACTS REQUIRING ASSURED CONNECTION TO A LIVE AGENT - A system for assuring agent connection for outbound calls placed in an automated outbound calling campaign includes an outbound dialing server, a digital data repository coupled to the outbound dialing server, the data repository storing outbound dialing records for automated outbound dialing, and software executing on the outbound dialing server from a non-transitory physical medium, the software providing a first function for determining for a specific outbound dialing record if the connection to a live agent must be an assured connection, a second function for dialing and engaging an agent via an internal call for reservation of the agent, and a third function for bridging the call connections forged between the system and the agent and the system and the outbound party upon answer of the outbound call. | 04-14-2016 |
20160105564 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MANAGING INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGNS WITH CALL PACING - A Web-based hosted system through which business entities create and manage communications campaigns. The system carries out a communications campaign on behalf of a client. A campaign is a series of calls to a contact list using one or more sub-campaigns. A sub-campaign associates a list of contacts, a script, and a timeframe. An agent typically is a contact center operator. A skill group is a set of agents that are trained to handle a given script. Call pacing enhancements are implemented to allow simultaneous progress on multiple sub-campaigns under a skill group. The techniques enable control over the pacing of individual sub-campaigns when multiple sub-campaigns are running under a single skill group. The service also provides a framework by which a set of “pluggable” pacing models are provisioned and managed, preferably on a per-model basis. | 04-14-2016 |
20160127556 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SELECTING AN AGENT IN AN ENTERPRISE - An agent selector computer system for selecting at least one agent for at least one communication session in an enterprise is disclosed. The agent selector computer system includes a monitoring module for monitoring one or more parameters of the at least one communication session. The agent selector computer system further includes an agent list generation module for generating at least one list of agents based on the one or more monitored parameters. The agent selector computer system further includes an agent selection module for receiving one or more agent selection inputs from at least one user to select at least one agent. The agent selector computer system further includes a routing module for routing the at least one communication session to the at least one selected agent. | 05-05-2016 |