Agent assisting system for processing customer enquiries in a contact center

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9848082-B1
Application number	US-201615082301-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Mar 28, 2016
Priority date	Mar 28, 2016
Publication date	Dec 19, 2017
Grant date	Dec 19, 2017

Abstract

A system is disclosed that assists contact center agents with servicing customer enquiries. A wireless caller with an enquiry calls a contact center and is prompted to leave a voice message and accept a text callback as a response. The voice message is processed by a speech analytics system that extracts certain keywords in the voice message and develops a transcript as well. Upon selecting an available agent to provide the response, the keywords and transcript are presented to the agent along with a draft text response, formulated by the system using the identified keywords. Additional resources may be provided as necessary to the agent, who can also review the original audio recording. Upon reviewing and potentially editing the text response, the agent causes the text to be sent to the wireless caller, which may be sent as an SMS text, or in some other form.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A system for responding to an enquiry from a caller, comprising:
a call handler configured to:
receive a voice call from the caller, wherein the voice call originates from a wireless device,
answer the voice call,
place the voice call in a hold queue,
play a first announcement to the caller indicating the voice call is in the hold queue,
ascertain the voice call originated from a wireless telephone number,
in response to ascertaining the voice call originated from the wireless telephone number, play a second announcement to the caller requesting a voice message be left by the caller in order to subsequently receive a response comprising a short message service (“SMS”) text message, and
receive the voice message;

a speech analytics subsystem configured to:
process the voice message to generate a transcript of the voice message; and

a caller enquiry agent assisting module configured to:
select an agent of a contact center to receive information about the voice message,
present the transcript on a display of a computer used by the agent selected to receive the information about the voice message,
display an icon to the agent on the display of the computer for playing audio of the voice message,
receive a selection of the icon from the computer for playing the audio of the voice message,
in response to receiving the selection of the icon, cause the audio of the voice message to be played to the agent,
receive input from the computer after the audio of the voice message is played to the agent, wherein the input is used to produce the SMS text message,
receive a command from the computer in response to the agent requesting to send the SMS text message to the caller as the response, and
cause the SMS text message to be sent to the wireless telephone number.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the caller enquiry agent assisting module is further configured to:
generate a draft SMS text message; and
present the draft SMS text message to the agent on the display, wherein the input from the agent used to generate the SMS text message comprises editing the draft SMS text message.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the caller enquiry agent assisting module is further configured to:
receive one or more keywords detected by the speech analytics subsystem in the voice message;
use the one or more keywords as search terms to identify a plurality of resources; and
present a plurality of links corresponding to the plurality of resources on the display to the agent.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the caller enquiry agent assisting module is further configured to:
receive one or more keywords detected by the speech analytics subsystem in the voice message; and
present the one or more keywords on the display to the agent.

5. The system of claim 3 , wherein the caller enquiry agent assisting module is further configured to:
receive a selection input from the computer used by the agent to select one of the plurality of links; and
displaying one of the plurality of resources corresponding to the selected one of the plurality of links on the display to the agent.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the caller enquiry agent assisting module is further configured to:
receive account information associated with an account associated with the wireless telephone number; and
present at least a subset of the account information on the display of a computer used by the agent selected to receive the information about the voice message.

7. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to:
receive a voice call from a caller, wherein the voice call originates from a wireless device;
place the voice call in a hold queue,
play a first announcement to the caller indicating the voice call is in the hold queue;
ascertain the voice call originated from a wireless telephone number;
in response to ascertaining the voice call originated from the wireless telephone number, play a second announcement to the caller requesting a voice message be left by the caller in order to subsequently receive a response comprising a short message service (“SMS”) text message;
receive the voice message;
receive a transcript from a speech analytics system generated from the speech analytics system processing the voice message left by a caller after originating the voice call to a contact center;
select an agent from a plurality of agents of the contact center to receive the transcript;
transmit the transcript for display on a monitor of a computer used by the agent;
retrieve account information of an account associated with the wireless telephone number used by the caller;
transmit the account information for display on a monitor of a computer used by the agent;
display an icon to the agent for playing audio of the voice message;
receive a selection of the icon from the agent for playing the audio of the voice message;
in response to receiving the selection of the icon, play the audio of the voice message to the agent, wherein the audio is played prior to receiving an input from the agent used to generate the SMS text message;
receive the input received from the computer used by the agent providing text to be sent in the SMS text message to the wireless telephone number; and
process a command received from the computer used by the agent to cause the SMS text message to be sent to the wireless telephone number.

8. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 7 storing further instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to:
generate a draft SMS text message; and
transmit the draft SMS text message for display on the monitor of the computer used by the agent, wherein the input from the agent providing the text message comprises editing the draft SMS text message.

9. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 7 storing further instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to:
process one or more keywords received from the speech analytics system derived from processing the voice message; and
display the one or more keywords on the monitor of the computer.

10. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 7 storing further instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to:
process one or more keywords received from the speech analytics system derived from processing the voice message;
use the one or more keywords to search a knowledge base to identify one or more resources; and
transmit one or more links corresponding to the one or more resources for display on the monitor of the computer.

11. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to:
receive a voice call from a caller, wherein the voice call originates from a wireless device;
answer the voice call,
place the voice call in a hold queue,
play a first announcement to the caller indicating the call is in the hold queue;
ascertain the voice call originated from a wireless telephone number;
in response to ascertaining the voice call originated from the wireless telephone number, play a second announcement to the caller requesting a voice message be left by the caller in order to subsequently receive a response comprising a short message service (“SMS”) text message;
receive the voice message;
receive a transcript from a speech analytics system generated from processing the voice message left by the caller after originating the voice call to a contact center;
select an agent from a plurality of agents of the contact center to receive the transcript;

Assignees

• Noble Systems Corp

Inventors

• Lillard Brian T
• Koster Karl H

Classifications

• H04M3/53308

  Message originator indirectly connected to the message centre, e.g. after detection of busy or absent state of a called party · CPC title

• G10L15/26

  Speech to text systems (G10L15/08 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H04W4/14

  Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD] · CPC title

• H04M2201/40

  using speech recognition · CPC title

• H04M3/5141 Primary

  Details of processing calls and other types of contacts in an unified manner (unified messaging in packet-switching networks H04L51/56) · CPC title