Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer conferencing – Demand based messaging
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-03
2004-04-06
Coulter, Kenneth R. (Department: 2142)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer conferencing
Demand based messaging
C715S252000, C715S252000, C709S204000, C709S207000, C706S012000, C706S045000, C706S047000, C707S793000, C704S001000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06718368
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention pertains to the arts of automatic analysis, classification, characterization, routing and response to text-based messages in electronic asynchronous messaging systems, and especially to electronic mail and facsimile systems.
INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE
The above referenced application Ser. No. 09/323,312, filed on Jun. 1, 1999, by V. A Shiva Ayyadurai, is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, including drawings, and hereby is made a part of this application.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Electronic mail and facsimile (“fax”) messaging have become critical tools of everyday personal and business life. Most corporations, government agencies, organizations, and institutions have established fax numbers and e-mail addresses for a wide variety of contact purposes, including requesting information such as literature and office locations from the entity, requesting investment information, requesting service on or technical support for a product, reporting a product problem or failure, submitting suggestions for products and service improvements, submitting complimentary comments, and in some cases, carrying on dialogues with personalities and celebrities associated with the entity. Fax and email messaging have converged in electronic form, as messages originating in the form of fax are commonly captured by computers with fax/modem interfaces and optically converted to text files, and as many services offer low cost fax message delivery via e-mail-based interfaces.
Underlying the tremendous proliferation of fax and email are several factors, including wide-spread availability of inexpensive e-mail clients such as personal computers, and inexpensive fax machines, and the development of common standards for exchange of electronic text messages between computers, including RFC821 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (“SMTP”) from the Internet Network Information Center, and Recommendation X.400 from the International Telecommunications Union (“ITU”).
Consequently, corporations, government agencies, and other entities which successfully promote the availability of their fax telephone numbers and e-mail addresses can receive thousands to tens-of-thousands of messages per day.
Traditionally, all of the electronic messages are received in a general repository, or “mailbox”, and reviewed by human agents for their content, intent, at which time a determination of the correct disposition of the email is made. This may involve sending the author a standard reply, and/or copying or forwarding the e-mail to one or more divisions, departments, or individuals within the organization for further handling. In the later case where multiple parties must be consulted, the consolidation of replies from all of the parties can be cumbersome and overwhelming, given the volume of messages to be handled.
For example, assume a company receives five thousand messages per day. Further assume that on average each one of those messages contains issues or requests that involve an average of 3 departments or individual. The original message must be read once by the reviewing agent who forwards the message to the 3 individuals or departments. The receiving departments may read the forwarded message one to three times per department before it reaches the person who can respond. In total, 5,000 received e-mails may result in up to 20,000 to 50,000 reviews of the messages within the company. In many cases, the final recipient may need to instigate a short dialogue over several message exchanges with the author to ascertain exactly what the author needs or how the author can be serviced. Consequently, a daily volume of 5,000 new messages may reasonably result in a total network volume and work load of tens-of-thousands to a hundred-thousand messages per day.
To deal with this volume of messages and to attempt to provide a timely response to these messages, some systems have been developed which allow the human reviewer to combine and create or select a response from libraries of standard responses. For example,
FIG. 1
shows a prior art method wherein a customer for a company creates an initial message using an e-mail viewer and editor (
1
), and transmits (
2
) that message into an e-mail routing system (
3
). The corporation will receive (
4
) the message and an agent will read it using another e-mail viewer and editor (
5
). As the agent manually analyzes the message content (
7
), he or she may search (
8
) a file or database (
15
) which contains text replies to the most commonly asked questions. The agent then selects one or more of the text replies, uses a “cut and paste” user interface function (
11
) to compose the basis for an e-mail reply, composes the remainder of the reply (that which is not drawn from the database or not provided for by the database), and sends (
12
) that message back to the customer via the e-mail routing system (
3
) using the e-mail view and editor (
5
) send or reply function. Finally, the customer may receive his or her reply by retrieving (
14
) the message from the e-mail routing system (
3
), and reading it with his or her e-mail viewer (
1
). This “cut and paste” method can reduce the amount of labor required to respond to only a low percentage of the messages received as the database will contain answers only to commonly asked questions. Complicated questions and follow-up messages may not be able to be handled by this method, so ultimately, some percentage of these messages are not handled with this method and are transferred or forwarded to one or more recipients for manual disposition.
For example, a typical two-issue email is given in TABLE 1.
TABLE 1
Typical Two-Issue Email
To:
info@xyzcorp.com
FROM:
john_customer@an_isp.net
SUBJECT:
Model 999 of your product and your service centers
MESSAGE:
Please send me the technical specs for your Model 999
widget, especially the standard battery life. And, if it
breaks, where is the closest service center to my home
town, Smithville, or do I have to ship it back to you for
repair? Thanks, John.
Using the method of
FIG. 1
, an agent would search the sample responses for the response to the first issue, the request for technical specifications, and would cut and paste the following text into a new or reply e-mail, as shown in TABLE 2.
TABLE 2
First Cut and Paste for Reply
To:
john_customer@an_isp.net
FROM:
info@xyzcorp.com
SUBJECT:
Re: Model 999 of your product and your service centers
MESSAGE:
“The Model 999 typically operates for up to 4 hours
between battery charges”.
Then, the agent would search for a response to the second issue, the request for the nearest service center, and would paste text into the message as shown in TABLE 3.
TABLE 3
First Cut and Paste for Reply
To:
john_customer@an_isp.net
FROM:
info@xyzcorp.com
SUBJECT:
Re: Model 999 of your product and your service centers
MESSAGE:
Dear John,
The Model 999 typically operates for up to 4 hours between
battery charges. “Bob's Hardware Store, 19 Main Street,
Smithville, Telephone: 1-800-999-8888.”
Finally, the agent would complete the composition by adding connective text to complete a comprehendible message, as shown in TABLE 4.
TABLE 4
Final Edit for Reply
To:
john_customer@an_isp.net
FROM:
info@xyzcorp.com
SUBJECT:
Re: Model 999 of your product and your service centers
MESSAGE:
Dear John,
Thank you for your recent message. To answer your first
question, the Model 999 typically operates for up to 4 hours
between battery charges. As for your second question, your
closest authorized repair facility is Bob's Hardware Store,
19 Main Street, Smithville, Telephone: 1-800-999-8888. I
hope this has provided the answers you need, but if not,
please feel free to contact us again.
Best Regards, Suzy, Customer Service Agent 19.
If some of the issues presented by the initial message from the customer are not provided for by the sample reply database, the agent may need to manually forward the message to one or more specialists or departments, finally merging their r
Burns Doane , Swecker, Mathis LLP
Coulter Kenneth R.
General Interactive, Inc.
Nguyen Hai V.
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