Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Voice activation or recognition
Reexamination Certificate
1998-07-29
2001-07-31
Smith, Creighton (Department: 2742)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Voice activation or recognition
C704S009000, C382S159000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06269153
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to call routing systems. More particularly, the invention relates to an information retrieval based system for telephone call routing.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Almost all organizations of significant size receive numerous telephone calls which must be appropriately handled based on the desires of the caller. This handling or routing is generally performed by human or automated call routing systems. Information is received from the caller, and the call is directed based on the information received. Human operators typically perform this function accurately and efficiently, but at a relatively high cost. Automated systems of the prior art typically employ hierarchical menus in which a caller is confronted with a list of choices from which to select. The caller typically selects menu options by making entries from a telephone keypad. Often, making a choice opens up a menu of further choices. In complex organizations, the menu hierarchy can be quite elaborate, requiring several choices by a caller, and requiring a caller to listen to an elaborate menu in order to understand the available choices. Such menus are a widespread cause of caller dissatisfaction with automated routing systems.
A direct, natural language call routing system, in which a caller asks for a specific destination or describes a function to be performed, would greatly simplify the call routing process, but significant obstacles to such a system exist. Callers typically phrase their requests by giving a destination name, by describing the activity they would like to perform, or else they have difficulty in formulating their requests, and instead provide a roundabout description of what they would like to do. Sometimes the destination name given is ambiguous, in that the organization may have several organizations falling under a similar heading. For example, a request for ‘women's clothing’ may be appropriately routed to ‘women's formal clothing’ or ‘women's casual clothing’ in an organization having such departments but no overarching destination ‘women's clothing’. In such an instance, a routing system must determine which of the two destinations is appropriate.
A description of an activity may include words relevant to more than one area in the organization, or may describe a task to be performed with the assistance of two or more destinations in the organization. For example, a request to ‘check the balance on my car loan and make a payment from my checking account’ describes functions to be performed by a loan department and a checking department of a bank. An automated system must choose a proper first destination to which to route the call.
A roundabout explanation of a desired activity may be too difficult for an automated routing system to resolve. A routing system should be able to recognize a response beyond its capacity, and then route the call to a human operator.
In prior art call routing systems, voice recognition, when it is used, is typically used to substitute for keypad entries. That is, the caller is allowed to voice a number as an alternative to making a keypad entry. The caller is not typically able to describe his desired function to an automated system and have the automated system direct the call according to the description. As presently used in call routing systems, therefore, automated voice recognition does little to simplify the process.
There exists, therefore, a need in the art for a call routing system which can receive voice inputs from a caller and process the voice inputs directly to route a call.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A call routing system according to the present invention poses questions to a caller and receives and interprets vocal responses from the caller. The call routing system extracts terms from the vocal responses to form a query which is used to make a selection from a corpus, the corpus consisting of a plurality of documents, each document comprising a transcription of calls intended for a particular destination. In one aspect, the system matches a query to a document based on a match of the terms contained in the query with the terms contained in the document. The system may respond to ambiguous responses by posing clarifying questions or referring the call to a human operator. The routing system uses statistical scoring methods to match query terms with documents, and to make decisions about clarifying questions to be asked and about referral to a human operator.
A more complete understanding of the present invention, as well as further features and advantages of the invention, will be apparent from the following Detailed Description and the accompanying drawings.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5371807 (1994-12-01), Register et al.
patent: 5917890 (1999-06-01), Brotman et al.
patent: 6049594 (2000-04-01), Furman et al.
A.L. Gorin, G. Riccardi and J.H. Wright, “How May I Help You?”, Speech Communication, pp. 1-32.
Carpenter Robert Lee
Chu-Carroll Jennifer
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
Priest & Goldstein PLLC
Smith Creighton
LandOfFree
Methods and apparatus for automatic call routing including... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Methods and apparatus for automatic call routing including..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Methods and apparatus for automatic call routing including... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2464599