Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Voice activation or recognition
Reexamination Certificate
1998-02-25
2001-01-09
Weaver, Scott L. (Department: 2748)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Voice activation or recognition
C379S067100, C379S088180, C379S088240, C379S093240
Reexamination Certificate
active
06173042
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to interactive voice response systems that enable a user, in response to prerecorded prompts, to navigate through a hierarchical menu of choices by means of the touch tone signals generated at the user's telephone to access a particular feature or service that is desired and, in particular, to a system that enables the user to automatically effect the same operation via a modem-equipped personal computer.
PROBLEM
It is a problem in the field of customer service systems to provide the customers with inexpensive yet efficient access to the desired services. In order to limit the expense involved in providing operators, many customer service systems include an Interactive Voice Response system (IVR) front end that serves to interface with the calling party to provide prompts to the calling party to enable the interactive voice response system to acquire sufficient customer information to direct the call in an appropriate and efficient manner. In particular, the interactive voice response system typically comprises a hierarchically ordered series of audio messages, each of which comprises a listing of the various choices available to the calling party at that particular juncture of the hierarchy. In response to presentation of these choices, the calling party typically elects to traverse another level of the hierarchy by selecting one of the options that were offered by the particular audio segment that was most recently presented to the calling party. The calling party presents their selection by operating a touch tone key on the telephone station set to thereby indicate the one of the plurality of choices that were offered. The interactive voice response system monitors the communication connection for the presence of touch tone signals that are indicative of a calling party selection of one of the menu options that is presently being offered. In response to receipt of a touch tone signal, the interactive voice response system traverses the hierarchy to the particular selection that was indicated by the presented touch tone signal. In this manner, the interactive voice response system enables the calling party to traverse a plurality of hierarchically organized choices to reach a particular service or feature that is of interest to the calling party.
By using the automated interactive voice response system, the customer service system avoids the need to provide human operators to perform the particular function that is provided by the interactive voice response system. This enables the provision of the features and services to be effected in an inexpensive and efficient manner. However, a limitation of such systems is that the calling party who is equipped with a personal computer cannot utilize the capability of the personal computer to proceed through the interactive voice response system to the desired feature or service, especially if the desired feature or service entails data interaction via the personal computer. It would be greatly advantageous to enable the interactive voice response system to interact with a personal computer to thereby enable the calling party at the personal computer to traverse the interactive voice response system to a particular destination wherein the calling party can use the personal computer to retrieve data from the customer service system and provide information such as customer order information to the customer service system.
A system for enabling a computer to interconnect with an interactive voice response system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,935,954 and comprises apparatus that automatically polls a plurality of message service systems to obtain messages for a user. The apparatus is a computer that is attached to both the user's telephone station set and the communications switching system. The computer responds to control signals received from the communication switching system indicative of the arrival of a message that is stored on a message service system by periodically polling a number of message service systems to automatically retrieve messages for the user. The computer automatically performs the logon and message access procedures with the various message service systems. If the message service system is a voice messaging system, the computer generates audio tones and interprets the voice prompts presented by the voice messaging system to implement the above noted logon and message access procedures.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,121,421 discloses an interactive telephone communication system that enables a hearing impaired person, using a TDD, to send and receive information over a conventional telephone communication network without communicating directly with another person. The apparatus receives control signals from the hearing impaired user that are used to address a control matrix to locate a prestored text response. This response is then transmitted to the hearing impaired caller for display in text form on the TDD.
The above-noted automated systems therefore either elicit prestored text message responses from a memory to present to a user or automatically access a plurality of message storage systems seriatim to retrieve stored messages. The automated message retrieval system presents an immutable sequence of operations, in that the user is not involved in the operation of this system. In contrast, the message response system simply outputs a prestored text message in response to a user provided input control signal via a special terminal and does not enable users who are not equipped with such a terminal to communicate with such a system. Therefore, there is no known system that would enable a user equipped with a personal computer to navigate through an interactive voice response system using a personal computer to access a data server that provides a set of services whereby the user can input data to the server via the personal computer.
SOLUTION
The above described problem are solved and a technical advance achieved by the present system for providing personal computer access to an interactive voice response system that enables a personal computer to traverse the selections of an Interactive Voice Response system to access the back-end computer accessible service providing apparatus of the accessed site.
In particular, the personal computer is typically equipped with a modem that enables the user to dial through the Public Telephone Switched Network (PTSN) to access the Interactive Voice Response system. Once connected to the Interactive Voice Response System, the present system for providing personal computer access to an interactive voice response system (termed the “IVR access system” herein) uses the touch-tone generation capability of the personal computer to implement a predefined script to navigate through the Interactive Voice Response System. The navigation path is defined by the selections provided by the Interactive Voice Response System to enable a user to reach a computer interaction site that represents one of the back-end selections served by the Interactive Voice Response System. Thus, once the Interactive Voice Response System is traversed, the user can interact with the computer site to perform the desired tasks or the personal computer can automatically execute the transaction independent of the user.
The present IVR access system enables the service provider to use the Interactive Voice Response System to serve both human users who are equipped with only a touch tone telephone as well as human users who are equipped with a personal computer and a modem. The service provider therefore avoids the need to have multiple dedicated lines, each equipped with a modem, to serve the personal computer users and instead can use the existing Interactive Voice Response System to serve both types of users.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4785408 (1988-11-01), Britton et al.
patent: 4935954 (1990-06-01), Thompson et al.
patent: 5121421 (1992-06-01), Alheim
patent: 5530740 (1996-06-01), Irribarren et al.
patent: 5568540 (1996-10-01), Greco et al.
patent: 5737393 (1998-04-01),
Duft, Graziano & Forest, P.C.
Hoosain Allan
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
Weaver Scott L.
LandOfFree
System for enabling personal computer access to an... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with System for enabling personal computer access to an..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and System for enabling personal computer access to an... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2538415