Identifying contact center agents based upon biometric characteristics of an agent's speech
First Claim
1. A contact center comprising:
- the contact center configured to provide automated interactive communications with callers, providing queue management for callers waiting to communicate with live human agents, and providing skills based routing for assigning live human agents to callers; and
a speech identification and verification (SIV) component configured to analyze speech utterances and configured to determine a speaker identity based upon biometric characteristics of the analyzed speech utterances, wherein said SIV component processes speech from contact center sessions that are each between a caller and a human agent to automatically identify the human agent of the contact center involved in each of the contact center sessions based on the biometric characteristics of the speech utterances of that human agent, wherein said SIV component determines whether the human agent that logged into the contact center with a user identifier uniquely assigned to the human agent is indeed the human agent involved in the contact center sessions.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The present invention discloses a contact center with speaker identification and verification (SIV) capabilities. In the invention, a set of contact center components can provide automated interactive communications with callers, can provide queue management for callers waiting to communicate with live agents, and can provide skills based routing for assigning live agents to callers. The SIV component can analyze speech utterances to determine a speaker identify based upon biometric characteristics of the analyzed speech utterances. Additionally, the SIV component can process speech from contact center sessions. In one embodiment, the SIV component can prevent agent substitutions from occurring of which the call center is unaware. The SIV component can also be used to distinguish whether communication session content was spoken by a contact center agent or a caller.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A contact center comprising:
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the contact center configured to provide automated interactive communications with callers, providing queue management for callers waiting to communicate with live human agents, and providing skills based routing for assigning live human agents to callers; and a speech identification and verification (SIV) component configured to analyze speech utterances and configured to determine a speaker identity based upon biometric characteristics of the analyzed speech utterances, wherein said SIV component processes speech from contact center sessions that are each between a caller and a human agent to automatically identify the human agent of the contact center involved in each of the contact center sessions based on the biometric characteristics of the speech utterances of that human agent, wherein said SIV component determines whether the human agent that logged into the contact center with a user identifier uniquely assigned to the human agent is indeed the human agent involved in the contact center sessions. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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9. A method for contact centers to identify contact center agents based upon voice characteristics of the human agents comprising:
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a human agent logging onto a contact center and providing authentication information that includes a user name unique to that human agent and a corresponding password for the user name; the contact center authenticating the agent using the authentication information; the call center transferring a caller to the human agent to initiate a contact center communication session between the human agent and the caller; receiving speech content associated with the contact center communication session; extracting biometric characteristics contained within the speech content of the contact center communication session; comparing the extracted biometric characteristics against previously stored biometric characteristics associated with the human agent; determining an identity of a speaker of the content based upon results of the comparing step; comparing the identity of the speaker with an identity of a human associated with the user name, wherein the comparison is performed to verify that a human logged in as the human agent via the user name is in fact the speaker; a contact center performing at least one programmatic action based upon results of the determined identity, wherein the programmatic action is determining whether inappropriate phrases spoken during the communication session were attributable to the human agent or to the caller and taking corrective or punishment actions against the human agent when the human agent is determined to have spoken the inappropriate phrases. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A contact center comprising:
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an agent desktop comprising a standard HTTP browser and a standard phone, wherein the agent desktop is configured to permit a human agent to handle call center communications; a portal server configured to provide an agent portal, through which the human agent utilizing the agent desktop communicates, said agent portal including a plurality of agent portlets within which contact center information is presented, wherein a speech identification and verification (SIV) component determines whether the human agent that logged into the contact center with a user identifier uniquely assigned to the human agent is indeed the human agent involved in the contact center sessions; an application server executing contact center applications configured to receive input for the contact center applications from the agent portlets and to present contact center output through the agent portlets; and the SIV component configured to analyze speech utterances and configured to determine a speaker identity based upon biometric characteristics of the analyzed speech utterances, wherein said SIV component processes speech from contact center sessions to automatically identify whether a segment of speech content spoken during a contact center session between a caller and a human using the agent desktop, was spoken by the human agent of the contact center or not based upon comparing biometric characteristics of the segment of speech content with previously stored biometric characteristics of the human agent, wherein said SIV component determines whether the human agent that logged into the contact center is the human agent involved in the contact center sessions. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20)
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Specification