Assistive call center interface
First Claim
1. A call center information processing system capable of processing unstructured voice input, comprising:
- an input port adapted for coupling to a call center telephone switch through which unstructured voice input from an incoming caller is received;
an automatic speech recognition system receptive of said unstructured voice input and operative to convert said unstructured voice input into unstructured text data;
a semantic categorization system receptive of said unstructured text data and operative to convert said unstructured text data into structured data based on features;
a data management system receptive of said structured data and operative to access at least one database of supplemental data and to form associations between said structured data and said supplemental data;
a presentation system communicating with said data management system for providing information to a call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data;
wherein said semantic categorization system employs a parsing system; and
wherein said parsing system employs global parser to classify a call according to semantic categories consisting of sets of keywords.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
Unstructured voice information from an incoming caller is processed by automatic speech recognition and semantic categorization system to convert the information into structured data that may then be used to access one or more databases to retrieve associated supplemental data. The structured data and associated supplemental data are then made available through a presentation system that provides information to the call center agent and, optionally, to the incoming caller. The system thus allows a call center information processing system to handle unstructured voice input for use by the live agent in handling the incoming call and for storage and retrieval at a later time. The semantic analysis system may be implemented by a global parser or by an information retrieval technique, such as latent semantic analysis. Co-occurrence of keywords may be used to associate prior calls with an incoming call to assist in understanding the purpose of the incoming call.
70 Citations
35 Claims
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1. A call center information processing system capable of processing unstructured voice input, comprising:
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an input port adapted for coupling to a call center telephone switch through which unstructured voice input from an incoming caller is received; an automatic speech recognition system receptive of said unstructured voice input and operative to convert said unstructured voice input into unstructured text data; a semantic categorization system receptive of said unstructured text data and operative to convert said unstructured text data into structured data based on features; a data management system receptive of said structured data and operative to access at least one database of supplemental data and to form associations between said structured data and said supplemental data; a presentation system communicating with said data management system for providing information to a call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; wherein said semantic categorization system employs a parsing system; and wherein said parsing system employs global parser to classify a call according to semantic categories consisting of sets of keywords.
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2. A call center information processing system capable of processing unstructured voice input comprising:
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an input port adapted for coupling to a call center telephone switch through which unstructured voice input from an incoming caller is received; an automatic speech recognition system receptive of said unstructured voice input and operative to convert said unstructured voice input into unstructured text data; a semantic categorization system receptive of said unstructured text data and operative to convert said unstructured text data into structured data based on features; a data management system receptive of said structured data and operative to access at least one database of supplemental data and to form associations between said structured data and said supplemental data; a presentation system communicating with said data management system for providing information to a call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; and wherein said semantic categorization system employs an information retrieval model selected from the group consisting of Boolean retrieval models, vector retrieval models and probabilistic retrieval models. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. A call center information processing system capable of processing unstructured voice input comprising:
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an input port adapted for coupling to a call center telephone switch through which unstructured voice input from an incoming caller is received; an automatic speech recognition system receptive of said unstructured voice input and operative to convert said unstructured voice input into unstructured text data; a semantic categorization system receptive of said unstructured text data and operative to convert said unstructured text data into structured data based on features; a data management system receptive of said structured data and operative to access at least one database of supplemental data and to form associations between said structured data and said supplemental data; a presentation system communicating with said data management system for providing information to a call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; and wherein said data management system further includes a similar call finder system employing a semantic distance measure. - View Dependent Claims (17)
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18. A call center information processing system capable of processing unstructured voice input comprising:
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an input port adapted for coupling to a call center telephone switch through which unstructured voice input from an incoming caller is received; an automatic speech recognition system receptive of said unstructured voice input and operative to convert said unstructured voice input into unstructured text data; a semantic categorization system receptive of said unstructured text data and operative to convert said unstructured text data into structured data based on features; a data management system receptive of said structured data and operative to access at least one database of supplemental data and to form associations between said structured data and said supplemental data; a presentation system communicating with said data management system for providing information to a call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; and wherein said data management system is further operative to communicate with said telephone switch to effect transfer of said incoming caller to another party through said switch. - View Dependent Claims (19)
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20. A call center information processing system capable of processing unstructured voice input comprising:
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an input port adapted for coupling to a call center telephone switch through which unstructured voice input from an incoming caller is received; an automatic speech recognition system receptive of said unstructured voice input and operative to convert said unstructured voice input into unstructured text data; a semantic categorization system receptive of said unstructured text data and operative to convert said unstructured text data into structured data based on features; a data management system receptive of said structured data and operative to access at least one database of supplemental data and to form associations between said structured data and said supplemental data; a presentation system communicating with said data management system for providing information to a call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; and wherein said data management system includes an input port receptive of instructions from said call center agent to alter said structured data based on knowledge of said call center agent. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22)
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23. A call center information Processing system capable of processing unstructured voice input comprising:
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an input port adapted for coupling to a call center telephone switch through which unstructured voice input from an incoming caller is received; an automatic speech recognition system receptive of said unstructured voice input and operative to convert said unstructured voice input into unstructured text data; a semantic categorization system receptive of said unstructured text data and operative to convert said unstructured text data into structured data based on features; a data management system receptive of said structured data and operative to access at least one database of supplemental data and to form associations between said structured data and said supplemental data; a presentation system communicating with said data management system for providing information to a call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; wherein said presentation system supplies other data in addition to said structured data and said supplemental data; and wherein said other data are selected from the group consisting of relational data, tabular data, audio/video data, and graphical data.
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24. A method of assisting call center agents based on unstructured voice input from the caller comprising:
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performing automatic speech recognition upon said unstructured voice input extracted from an incoming call to generate unstructured text data; processing said unstructured text data by semantic categorization of said unstructured text data to generate structured data that characterizes the incoming call; forming associations between said structured data and supplemental data obtained from a data store; presenting information to the call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; and wherein said processing is further performed using a global parser to identify relationships among said local features. - View Dependent Claims (25)
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26. A method of assisting call center agents based on unstructured voice input from the caller comprising:
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performing automatic speech recognition upon said unstructured voice input extracted from an incoming call to generate unstructured text data; processing said unstructured text data by semantic categorization of said unstructured text data to generate structured data that characterizes the incoming call; forming associations between said structured data and supplemental data obtained from a data store; presenting information to the call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; and wherein said processing is performed using a predetermined set of features that are manually selected by a user.
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27. A method of assisting call center agents based on unstructured voice input from the caller comprising:
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performing automatic speech recognition upon said unstructured voice input extracted from an incoming call to generate unstructured text data; processing said unstructured text data by semantic categorization of said unstructured text data to generate structured data that characterizes the incoming call; forming associations between said structured data and supplemental data obtained from a data store; presenting information to the call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; wherein said processing is performed using a predetermined set of features that are determined by an automatic semantic analysis process; and wherein said automatic semantic analysis process employs an information retrieval model selected from the group consisting of Boolean retrieval models, vector retrieval models and probabilistic retrieval models.
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28. A method of assisting call center agents based on unstructured voice input from the caller comprising:
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performing automatic speech recognition upon said unstructured voice input extracted from an incoming call to generate unstructured text data; processing said unstructured text data by semantic categorization of said unstructured text data to generate structured data that characterizes the incoming call; forming associations between said structured data and supplemental data obtained from a data store; presenting information to the call center agent based on at least one of said structured data and said supplemental data; and said processing step is performed using an information retrieval model selected from the group consisting of Boolean retrieval models, vector retrieval models and probabilistic retrieval models. - View Dependent Claims (29, 30, 31, 32, 33)
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34. A method of transferring knowledge between call center agents in handling an incoming call, comprising:
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performing automatic speech recognition upon said unstructured voice input extracted from an incoming call to generate unstructured text data; processing said unstructured text data by semantic categorization of said unstructured text data to generate structured data that characterizes the incoming call; forming associations between said structured data and supplemental data obtained from a data store to define associated data; storing said associated data where it may be accessed by plural call agents in the handling of said incoming call; and wherein said processing step is performed using an information retrieval model selected from the group consisting of Boolean retrieval models, vector retrieval models and probabilistic retrieval models. - View Dependent Claims (35)
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Specification