Call analysis

• US 20030154072A1
• Filed: 01/16/2003
• Published: 08/14/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/1998
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: ScanSoft, Inc. n/k/a Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: ScanSoft, Inc. n/k/a Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Young, Jonathan Hood, Jackson, Mark, Howes, Bradley Ray, Morse, John A., True, Sean D., McAʼnulty, Megan M., Ray, David Meyer, Wahlberg, Jakob
• Application Number:
  US10/345,146
• Publication Number:
  US 20030154072A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/40 of multimedia data, e.g. slideshows comprising image and additional audio data retrieval of still image data G06F16/50; retrieval of audio data G06F16/60; retrieval of video data G06F16/70
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/40 using speech recognition speech recognition per se G10L15/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/51 Centralised call answering arrangements requiring operator intervention , e.g. call or contact centers for telemarketing
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5175 Call or contact centers supervision arrangements

Abstract

A method of analyzing a collection of calls at one or more call center stations. The method includes receiving lexical content of a telephone call handled by a call center agent and identifying one or more features of the telephone call based on the received lexical content. The method also includes collectively analyzing the stored features along with the stored features of other telephone calls and reporting results of the analyzing.

Claims

1. A method of analyzing a collection of calls at one or more call center stations, the method comprising:

receiving lexical content of a telephone call handled by a call center agent, the lexical content being identified by a speech recognition system;

identifying one or more features of the telephone call based on the received lexical content;

storing the one or more identified features along with one or more identified features of another telephone call;

collectively analyzing the stored features of the telephone calls; and

reporting results of the analyzing.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising

receiving acoustic data signals corresponding to the telephone call, and

performing speech recognition on the received acoustic data to determine the lexical content of the call.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving descriptive information for a call.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the descriptive information comprises at least one of the following:

call duration, call time, caller identification, and agent identification.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein identifying features comprises identifying features based on the descriptive information.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein lexical content comprises words.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein one of the one or more features comprises at least one term frequency feature.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein one of the one or more features comprises a readability feature.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein one of the one or more features comprises a feature classifying utterances.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein classifying utterances comprises classifying an utterance as at least one of the following:

a question, an answer, and a hesitation.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein one of the one or more features comprises a feature representing the agent'"'"'s adherence to a script.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving identification of a speaker of identified lexical content.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising identifying a speaker of identified lexical content.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein one of the one or more features comprises a feature measuring agent speaking time.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein one of the one or more features comprises a feature measuring caller speaking time.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein analysis comprises representing at least some of the calls in a vector space model.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising determining clusters of calls in the vector space model.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein determining clusters comprises k-means clustering.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising tracking clusters of calls over time.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein tracking comprises identifying new clusters.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein tracking comprises identifying changes in a cluster.

22. The method of claim 16, further comprising using the vector space model to identify calls similar to a call having specified properties.

23. The method of claim 16, further comprising using the vector space model to identify calls similar to a specified call.

24. The method of claim 1, wherein collectively analyzing comprises receiving an ad-hoc query and ranking calls based on the query.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the query comprises a boolean query.

26. The method of claim 24, wherein ranking comprises determining the term frequency of terms in call.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein ranking comprises determining the term frequency of terms in a corpus of calls and using an inverse document frequency statistic.

28. The method of claim 1, wherein collectively analyzing comprises analyzing using a natural language processing technique.

29. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing audio signal data for at least some of the calls.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein reporting comprises providing the audio signal data for playback.

31. The method of claim 1, wherein collectively analyzing comprises identifying call topics handled by call center agents.

32. The method of claim 1, wherein collectively analyzing comprises determining the performance of call center agents.

33. Software disposed on a computer readable medium, for use at a call center having one or more agents handling calls at one or more call center stations, the software including instructions for causing a processor to:

receive lexical content of a telephone call handled by a call center agent, the lexical content being identified by a speech recognition system;

identify one or more features of the telephone call based on the received lexical content;

store the identified features along with the identified features of other telephone calls;

collectively analyze the features of telephone calls; and

report the analysis.