System and Method for Real Time Support for Agents in Contact Center Environments

• US 20100274618A1
• Filed: 04/23/2009
• Published: 10/28/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Byrd, Roy J., Cheng, Keh-Shin F., Teiken, Wilfried, Park, Youngja, Gates, Stephen Carl, Neff, Mary S.
• Granted Patent: US 8,370,155 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/357 Autocues for dialog assistance
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/51 Centralised call answering arrangements requiring operator intervention , e.g. call or contact centers for telemarketing

Abstract

A real-time method and system are described for automatically extracting text from the customer-agent interaction at a contact center, analyzing the extracted text to automatically identify one or more customer issues, and performing processing by contact-center agent buddies (CABs) to generate at least one response to the customer issues.

Claims

1. A method for creating responses in real-time during a interaction between a contact center customer and a contact center agent at a contact center comprising the steps of:

a) obtaining a speech record of a conversation between said customer and said agent;

b) transforming said speech record to a text record with a speech transcription system;

c) identifying one or more customer issues from said text record;

d) generating one or more responses per identified customer issue; and

e) outputting said one or more responses to said contact center agent.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising of a step of receiving feedback about said responses from at least one of said contact center agent, said customer, and other contact-center personnel.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising of a step of storing said feedback in a feedback database.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising repeating steps b) through e) for a subsequent speech record in said customer interaction.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein said obtaining a speech record comprises at least one of real-time capture of on-going speech and retrieving prerecorded speech.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising a step of preparing said text record for analysis comprising at least one normalization step of:

removing disfluencies from the said text record;

normalizing vocabulary in said text record;

normalizing alphanumeric characters in said text record;

detecting sentence boundaries in said text record;

adding punctuation marks at said sentence boundaries;

capitalizing letters in said sentences; and

detecting call segment boundaries.

7. The method of claim 3 further comprising filtering said text record based on said feedback stored in said feedback database.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein said contact center agent is one of a human working in a contact center or a computer-based agent in a contact-center self-service system.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein said responses are generated by invoking at least one of a plurality of decision-proposing components for processing the text record.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising analysis of said text record to identify at least one of a plurality of decision-proposing components to invoke for generating said one or more responses.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein said outputting comprises at least one of:

signaling to the agent that at least one new response is available;

displaying at least one of said one or more responses in a window on a computer desktop of the agent;

displaying at least one link for selection by the agent;

transferring at least one of said one or more responses to at least one external system;

storing said at least one of said one or more responses;

alerting another contact center about at least one of said one or more responses;

requesting additional information from said agent or said customer as indicated by at least one of said one or more responses;

generating display of a task-specific form for agent input; and

suggesting transfer of the interaction to an identified source for handling.

12. A system for automatically creating responses in real-time during an interaction between a contact center customer and a contact center agent when executed in a computing environment having at least one processing unit comprising:

a speech record component for obtaining a speech record of a conversation between said contact center agent and said contact center customer;

a speech transcription component for transforming said speech record to a text record;

an issue identification component for analyzing said text record and for identifying one or more customer issues; and

a response generating component for generating one or more responses per identified customer issue and for outputting said one or more responses to the contact center agent.

14. The system of claim 12 further comprising a plurality of contact-center agent buddies (CABs) invoked by said response generating component to generate said one or more responses.

15. The system of claim 12 further comprising a feedback engine for receiving and processing agent feedback to said one or more responses.

16. The system of claim 15 further comprising at least one storage location for storing said feedback.

17. The system of claim 12 wherein said response generation component includes one or more components for performing at least one of:

signaling to said agent that at least one new response is available;

displaying at least one of said one or more responses in a window on a computer desktop of said agent;

displaying at least one link for selection by the agent;

transferring at least one of said one or more responses to at least one external system;

storing said at least one of said one or more responses;

alerting another contact center personnel about at least one of said one or more responses;

requesting additional information from said agent or said customer as indicated by at least one of said one or more responses;

generating display of a task-specific form for agent input based on said one or more responses; and

suggesting transfer of the interaction to an identified source for handling.

18. The system of claim 12 further comprising at least one normalization component for performing at least one of:

removing disfluencies from the said text record;

normalizing vocabulary in said text record;

normalizing alphanumeric characters in said text record;

detecting sentence boundaries in said text record;

adding punctuation marks at said sentence boundaries;

capitalizing letters in said sentences; and

detecting call segment boundaries.

19. The system of claim 12 wherein said contact center agent is one of a human working in a contact center or a computer-based agent in a contact-center self-service system.

13. The system of claim 13 wherein said interaction comprises at least one of telephony, e-mail, web forms, instant messaging, and computer text input and wherein the system further comprises at least one text extraction component for extracting a text stream from said text input for inclusion in the text record.

20. A computer program readable medium for storing a program of instructions executable by one or more processing units for performing a method for automatically creating responses in real time during a interaction between a contact center customer and a contact center agent, said method comprising one or more processing units executing the steps of:

a) obtaining a speech record of a conversation between the customer and the agent;

b) transforming said speech record to a text record with a speech transcription system;

c) identifying one or more customer issues from said text record;

d) generating one or more responses per identified customer issue; and

e) outputting said one or more responses to said contact center agent.