Online dynamic solution retrieval based on automatic keyword selection during customer dialogue

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10235411-B2
Application number	US-201514733600-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 8, 2015
Priority date	Jun 8, 2015
Publication date	Mar 19, 2019
Grant date	Mar 19, 2019

Abstract

A system and method provide assistance to an agent in responding to a customer query. A dialog including communications between a customer and an agent is displayed to an agent on a display device. During the dialog, keywords are extracted from at least one of the customer's text communications. This includes identifying keywords that are found in a set of terms extracted from a knowledge base. A search query is generated, based on the extracted keywords. Results of the search query are retrieved from at least one of the knowledge base and an external website. The results are displayed on the display device contemporaneously with at least a portion of the text communications, allowing the agent to quickly copy and paste text from one of the results into his response without having to leave the window in which the communications are displayed.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for assisting an agent comprising:
providing access to a knowledge base which is structured as a set of problems with a device or service, each problem being linked to a set of one or more solutions to the problem, the knowledge base having been pre-processed to extract a set of terms occurring in the knowledge base, each of the terms in the set of terms extracted from the knowledge base being associated with a salience;
during a dialogue comprising text communications between a customer and an agent, generating and displaying a graphical user interface in which the text communications are displayed to an agent on a display device in a first region of a window, the communications including customer text communications generated by the customer and agent text communications generated by the agent;
determining that the agent's cursor is hovering over the first region;
in response to the determination, activating an automatic search function, including:
extracting keywords from at least one of the customer text communications, the extraction comprising identifying keywords in the customer text communication that are found in the set of terms extracted from the knowledge base;
generating a search query based on the keywords extracted from the at least one customer communication;
submitting the search query to the knowledge base and to an external website;
retrieving results of the search query from at least one of the knowledge base and an external website;
ranking the retrieved results; and
during the dialogue, providing for at least one of the highest-ranked results of the search query to be displayed on the display device contemporaneously with at least a portion of the text communications, including generating and displaying a graphical user interface in which the text communications are displayed in the first region of a window and the at least one result is displayed in a second region of the same window,
wherein the salience of the terms corresponding to the extracted keywords is used in at least one of the generating of the search query and the ranking of the retrieved results, and
wherein the providing access, generating and displaying an interface, determining the agent's cursor, extracting keywords, generating a search query, retrieving results of the search query, and providing for the display of the result are performed with a computer processor.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises providing for the agent to copy and paste text from the displayed result into a text communication from the agent to the customer.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the ranking of the retrieved results includes applying a higher weighting to results that are retrieved from the knowledge base than to results that are retrieved from the external website.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising updating the search query when keywords extracted from a later of the customer text communications differ from keywords extracted from at least one earlier one of the customer text communications.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method comprises extracting keywords each time a new customer text communication is received and, if the keywords are different, updating the search query based on the keywords extracted from the at least one customer communication.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method further includes determining whether a search status is active and, only if the search status is active, providing for results of an updated search query to be displayed on the display device.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the search status is activatable by the agent.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising providing for the agent to modify the identified keywords on which the search query is based.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the salience of each term is based on a measure of occurrence of each term in the knowledge base.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifying of the keywords in the text communication comprising identifying a set of keywords corresponding to terms having a highest salience.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the extracting keywords further includes extracting keywords from at least one of the agent's text communications in the dialogue.

12. A computer product comprising a non-transitory storage medium storing instructions, which when executed by a computer, perform the method of:
providing access to a knowledge base which is structured as a set of problems with a device or service, each problem being linked to a set of one or more solutions to the problem, the knowledge base having been pre-processed to extract a set of terms occurring in the knowledge base, each of the terms in the set of terms extracted from the knowledge base being associated with a salience;
during a dialogue comprising text communications between a customer and an agent, generating and displaying a graphical user interface in which the text communications which are displayed to an agent on a display device in a first region of a window, the communications including customer text communications generated by the customer and agent text communications generated by the agent;
determining that the agent's cursor is hovering over the first region;
in response to the determination, activating an automatic search function, including:
extracting keywords from at least one of the customer text communications, the extraction comprising identifying keywords in the customer text communication that are found in the set of terms extracted from the knowledge base;
generating a search query based on the keywords extracted from the at least one customer communication;
submitting the search query to the knowledge base and to an external website;
retrieving results of the search query from at least one of the knowledge base and an external website;
ranking the retrieved results; and
during the dialogue, providing for at least one of the highest-ranked results of the search query to be displayed on the display device contemporaneously with at least a portion of the text communications, including generating and displaying a graphical user interface in which the text communications are displayed in a first region of a window and the at least one result is displayed in a second region of the same window,
wherein the salience of the terms corresponding to the extracted keywords is used in at least one of the generating of the search query and the ranking of the retrieved results.

13. A system comprising memory which stores instructions for performing the method of claim 1 and a processor in communication with the memory for executing the instructions.

14. A system for assisting an agent comprising:
a knowledge base structured as a set of problems with a device or service, each problem being linked to a set of one or more solutions to the problem, the knowledge base having been pre-processed to extract a set of terms occurring in the knowledge base;
a graphical user interface generating component which generates and displays a graphical user interface in which the text communications are displayed to an agent on a display device in a first region of a window, the communications including customer test communications generated by the customer and agent text communications generated by the agent;
memory which stores the set of terms extracted from a knowledge base, each of the terms in the set of terms extracted from the knowledge base being associated with a salience, the salience of each term in the set of terms being based on a measure of occurrence of each term in the knowle

Assignees

• Conduent Business Services Llc

Inventors

• Lagos Nikolaos
• Aït-Mokhtar Salah

Classifications

• G06Q30/0625 Primary

  by formulating product or service queries, e.g. using keywords or predefined options · CPC title

• G06F17/30554

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06Q30/02

  Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising · CPC title

• G06F17/30867

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/30401 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic