System for providing personalized content over a telephone interface to a user according to the corresponding personalization profile including the record of user actions or the record of user behavior

• US 7,330,890 B1
• Filed: 05/21/2004
• Issued: 02/12/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Porter, Brandon William, Accardi, Anthony, Li, Zhe, Walther, Eckart, Giannandrea, John, McCue, Michael S., Davis, Angus Macdonald, Partovi, Hadi, Brathwaite, Roderick Steven
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen; Quang N.
• Application Number:
  US10/851,353
• Time in Patent Office: 1,362 Days
• Field of Search: 709/217, 709/229, 705/26, 707/10
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1069 Session establishment or de-establishment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1096 Supplementary features, e.g. call forwarding or call holding systems providing special services or facilities to telephony subscribers H04M3/42
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1101 Session protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/53 using third party service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/564 Enhancement of application control based on intercepted application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/2061 Language aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2242/22 Automatic class or number identification arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42059 Making use of the calling party identifier
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42068 where the identifier is used to access a profile
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4938 comprising a voice browser which renders and interprets, e.g. VoiceXML

Abstract

A method and apparatus for providing personalized information content over telephones is described. The creation of a voice portal is supported by the invention. Embodiments of the invention use telephone identifying information such as the calling party'"'"'s number to identify, or create, user profiles for customization. The personalized content is specific to that user based on her/his telephone identifying information and may be further customized based on the current time, current date, the calling party'"'"'s locales, and/or the calling party'"'"'s dialect and speech patterns. Also, the telephone identifying information may support targeted advertising, content, and purchasing recommendations specific to that user. The system may use a voice password and/or touch-tone login system when appropriate to distinguish the caller or verify the caller'"'"'s identity for specific activities. Typically, embodiments of the invention will immediately present a caller personalized content based on her/his profile using the appropriate dialect as well as the caller'"'"'s preferred content. Profiles can be constructed as the caller uses embodiments of the invention as well as through explicit designation of preferences. For example, the user might specify an existing personalized site to use in building her/his profile. Additionally, new callers may have an initial profile generated based on one or more database lookups for demographic information based on their telephone identifying information.

Claims

1. A computer system supporting user personalized profiles using a telephone identifying information, a telephone interface, and an Internet interface, the computer system comprising:

a database including personalization profiles for a plurality of users, each profile defining preferences for a corresponding user, each personalization profile for personalizing a corresponding user'"'"'s interactions with the computer system;

a server supporting the Internet interface, the server allowing access to, and modification of, the personalization profiles by the corresponding users, wherein the server includes a web server for presenting customized interfaces to users to access and modify the personalization profiles, wherein ones of the customized interfaces are personal to a specific user, said customized interfaces being based on said personalization profiles, said server being operable to modify a user'"'"'s customized interface based on at least one of a corresponding record of user action or a corresponding record of user behavior, wherein the server is operable to generate subsequent truncated prompts when the corresponding record is indicative of a pattern of receiving commands before respective prompts are complete; and

a telephone interface subsystem supporting the telephone interface to receive the telephone identifying information, the telephone interface including a first program code to match the telephone identifying information with a corresponding personalization profile, the telephone interface including a second program code for including a record of actions in a personalization profile, the telephone interface including a third program code to provide personalized content over the telephone interface to a user according to the corresponding personalization profile including the record of actions, the telephone interface including a fourth program code to notify the user of the modification to the user'"'"'s customized interface based on the at least one corresponding record of user action or user behavior.

2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the telephone identifying information includes caller number identifications (CIDs), wherein the CIDs are used by the first program code to perform matching calls to personalization profiles.

3. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the telephone interface subsystem includes a call manager, the call manager supporting multiple simultaneous telephone calls over the telephone interface.

4. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the third program code presents a suggestion comprising at least one topic, a sub-topic, a content, or an item for sale over the telephone interface based on the record of actions in the corresponding personalization profile.

5. The computer system of claim 1, wherein said fourth program code requests a confirmation before the modification of the user'"'"'s customized interface based on the corresponding record of user action or user behavior.

6. The computer system of claim 5, wherein said server is operable to modify a user'"'"'s customized interface based on the confirmation.

7. The computer system of claim 1, wherein said server is operable to maintain a record of modifications to the user'"'"'s customized interface.

8. The computer system of claim 7, wherein said fourth program code is configured to allow a first user to review the recorded modifications associated with a first customized interface.

9. The computer system of claim 8, wherein said server is operable to revise the recorded modifications to the first users customized interface based on the review.