Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Voice message synthesis
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-29
2002-01-01
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Voice message synthesis
C379S088170, C379S201030, C709S241000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06335964
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to voice processing systems which connect to multiple telephone lines for call processing applications.
Voice processing systems are very well-known in the art and are used to perform a wide range of functions. For example, a common form of voice processing system is a voice response unit (VRU), which can be installed at a call centre, and can be used to process incoming calls, often as an initial screening process, or when no human agent is currently available. Thus a typical application might be for the call to come through to the VRU, which plays out to the caller a pre-recorded prompt presenting the caller with a set of options. The caller can then select the desired option by pressing a particular dual tone multiple frequency (DTMF) key on their telephone, and the VRU then performs the requested function. One option for example may simply be for the caller to hear more information (eg about ticket availability), whilst another option may result in the caller being transferred to a live agent (eg to make a ticket reservation). The dialogue between the caller and the VRU can be quite complex, for example, the caller may be required to input a range of dates for which information about ticket availability is required.
An example of a voice processing system is the DirectTalk for AIX voice processing system available from IBM Corporation, and described in the manual “DirectTalk for AIX, General Information and Planning”, reference number GC33-1840-00, plus the other manuals referenced therein. Like many modern voice processing systems, the DirectTalk system is based on a general-purpose computer (in this case an RS/6000 workstation) with additional hardware and software for the telephony and voice processing functions. (DirectTalk, AIX, and RS/6000 are trademarks of IBM Corporation).
It is possible to develop very sophisticated applications on the DirectTalk voice processing system, using the wide range of supported features which include: speech recognition (normally as a substitute for DTMF input); FAX; voice mail; use of Automatic Number Identification/Dialled Number Identification Service (ANI/DNIS) information that identifies the calling/called number respectively; text to speech conversion; and remote data-base access.
The structure of a conventional voice processing application is shown in
FIG. 1
, which illustrates an application
200
, the DirectTalk software
210
, and an operating system
220
all resident on a single workstation. The DirectTalk software
210
is responsible for accepting the state tables and other components of the customer application
200
, and executing as appropriate in conjunction with the operating system
220
for the voice processing system to perform the desired functions. In some cases it may be desirable for the application to access data from a remote system
230
, which it would do by exploiting the communications facilities of the operating system (in this case the application may interact directly with the operating system, rather than having to use the DirectTalk software as an intermediary).
Applications for the DirectTalk voice processing system are based on state tables, which essentially list the prompts to be played to a caller and the different actions to be performed dependent on the caller response, plus optional custom servers, which allow more direct program control of the voice processing resources. Thus the development of an application requires the construction of one or more state tables, together with associated prompts and any other more specialised items such as custom servers (for example to provide access to a voice recognition resource). The DirectTalk voice processing system provides a graphical programming tool to facilitate application development. It will be appreciated that the need to develop such programming tools is somewhat burdensome for a voice processing system supplier, since the technology is normally outside the core telephony/IVR expertise of the supplier, and the opportunity to recoup investment in such tools is limited.
As previously mentioned, voice processing applications can become quite complex and also are normally bespoke, in that they are particular to each individual installation. Thus it is difficult for a customer to buy an off-the-shelf solution to satisfy their precise voice processing requirements. Rather, they must first purchase the base voice processing system, and then develop the required application.
In many cases, a customer will contract with some third party to provide a total voice processing solution, including the desired application. This third party is often the manufacturer of the voice processing system, because such manufacturer generally has most expertise in developing applications for their system. This approach can be satisfactory where the voice processing application is essentially a stand-alone operation. However, it is becoming increasingly common to integrate such voice processing applications more and more tightly into the core information systems of a business. For example, it may be desirable to try to match the calling number for all incoming calls against a customer database, to retrieve in real-time information which may be of assistance in processing this call. A customer may be reluctant for a VRU manufacturer to perform such integration for a variety of reasons, perhaps because the manufacturer has insufficient expertise in certain areas of software technology, or perhaps simply because for security reasons it may be undesirable to give a third party too much access to business-critical computer systems.
Furthermore, once a customer has used a third party to develop a voice processing application, they may become dependent on that third party for service and maintenance, which can, in some circumstances, have unfortunate cost implications.
An alternative possibility therefore is for the customer to perform its own voice processing application development in-house, since this gives the customer maximum control over the voice processing application. However, this requires customer software engineers to be skilled in application development on the voice processing system. Such skills are often very rare in the marketplace, given that the absolute number of installations of any one type of voice processing system is rather small, and moreover for this reason, it is rather unattractive for software engineers to focus on such skills, given that they may not significantly enhance their employment prospects. In addition, it is often necessary to have specialised telephony knowledge in order to develop such voice processing applications. Thus it may be difficult for a customer to acquire and retain personnel with the suitable skills required to develop and maintain their own voice processing applications.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention provides a voice processing system having means for connecting to multiple telephone lines, and comprising a set of line objects, each associated with one of said telephone lines, and each line object including a set of methods which may be invoked by other objects for performing operations on the telephone line associated with that line object.
The line objects therefore effectively provide voice response server functionality, which may be invoked as and when desired by user applications. Thus the user applications are effectively separated by this client server relationship from details of the voice processing system, unlike prior art systems where the application had to run in the voice processing environment for that particular platform. This separation bring significant benefits, in that the application development is no longer tied to the relevant voice processing environment, but rather can utilise generic programming tools and skills. This makes application development much quicker and more cost-effective, since high quality generic programming tools and skills are much more readily available in the marketplace than IVR-specific
Bowater Ronald John
Butler Nicholas David
Clarke David Andrew
Renshaw David Seager
Tuttle Graham Hugh
Herndon Jerry W.
International Business Machines Corp.
Tsang Fan
LandOfFree
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