Apparatus and Methods for Coordinating Telephone and Data Communications

• US 20080043728A1
• Filed: 10/26/2007
• Published: 02/21/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/19/1997
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Alec Miloslavsky, Douglas Gisby, Gregory Pogossiants, Igor Neyman, Konstantin Kishinsky, Nikolay Anisimov, Oleg Bondarenko, Oleg Turovsky, Paul Cronin, Pavel Postupalski, Yuri Shtivelman
• Original Assignee: Alec Miloslavsky, Douglas Gisby, Gregory Pogossiants, Igor Neyman, Konstantin Kishinsky, Nikolay Anisimov, Oleg Bondarenko, Oleg Turovsky, Paul Cronin, Pavel Postupalski, Yuri Shtivelman
• Inventors: Anisimov, Nikolay, Bondarenko, Oleg, Miloslavsky, Alec, Neyman, Igor, Gisby, Douglas, Pogossiants, Gregory, Cronin, Paul, Shtivelman, Yuri, Turovsky, Oleg, Kishinsky, Konstantin, Postupalski, Pavel
• Application Number:
  US11/924,773
• Publication Number:
  US 20080043728A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/352
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5191 interacting with the Internet
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5237 Interconnection arrangements between ACD systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/0027 Collaboration services where a computer is used for data transfer and the telephone is used for telephonic communication

Abstract

A computerized telephony call center for serving a customer base has a central switch connected to a plurality of telephones at operator workstations and adapted to route calls to individual ones of the telephones, and also connected to a public switched telephone network, and a first processor connected to the central switch by a high-speed data link and to the telephone network by a digital network connection. The first processor is adapted to monitor transactional activity of the central switch, to process the activity information according to selected routines in the processor, and to communicate processed information to a second processor over the digital network connection. The digital network connection may be a TCP\IP connection. In a preferred embodiment the first processor is connected by a local area network (LAN) to network interfaces including a video display unit (VDU) and input apparatus proximate individual ones of the plurality of telephones connected to the central switch. In some embodiments the LAN is also connected to a data server running an instance of a database. In other embodiments the call center, and other similar call centers are all part of a call routing system wherein calls are routed from Service Control Points to call centers over telephone lines, and data is routed to the call centers over a separate digital network connection between processors coupled to the Service Control Points and to the call center central switches. In various embodiments aspects of the invention apply to Internet protocol network telephony (IPNT) calls as well as to conventional telephony calls.

Claims

1. (canceled)

2. A communication system comprising:

a presentation server connected to a wide area network (WAN) and adapted for data connection to a computer at a customer location via the WAN, whereby a customer may interact with a presentation provided by the presentation server; and

a Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)-enhanced communication center having a telephony switch connected to a CTI server executing CTI applications and connected to a telephony trunk, the CTI server also connected by a digital data link to the presentation server, and the telephony switch connected to telephones in plural agent stations at the communication center, the plural agent stations also having computer stations with video display units (PC/VDU);

wherein a customer-initiated interaction with the presentation causes the presentation server to request, via the digital data link to the CTI server, a voice telephony connection between one of the agent stations and the customer, and wherein the CTI server in response to the request returns a telephone number of a routing point at the CTI enhanced call center to the presentation server via the digital data link, the presentation server provides the routing point number to the customer in the presentation, the CTI server routes an incoming call placed by the customer to the routing point to a selected agent station and informs the presentation server of the agent selected, and the presentation server connects the presentation to the selected agent station.