METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR ACQUIRING USER RELATED INFORMATION USING NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES

• US 20140067369A1
• Filed: 08/30/2012
• Published: 03/06/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/30/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Stavrianou, Anna, Brun, Caroline
• Granted Patent: US 9,396,179 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/016 After-sales
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/493 Interactive information services, e.g. directory enquiries ; Arrangements therefor, e.g. interactive voice response [IVR] systems or voice portals
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/51 Centralised call answering arrangements requiring operator intervention , e.g. call or contact centers for telemarketing
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5158 in combination with automated outdialling systems devices for signalling identity of wanted subscriber H04M1/26
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5191 interacting with the Internet

Abstract

Systems and methods for acquiring information associated with a user by using NLP techniques are disclosed. One or more phrases are classified in one or more categories at least partly on the basis of a period for which a product has been used by the user, the user'"'"'s experience with the product, preferences of the user, or needs of the user by applying one or more natural language processing (NLP) techniques. The one or more phrases are extractable from an electronic publication at least partly on the basis of on a predefined set of verbs, a predefined set of domain-specific terms, and terms indicative of temporal information. One or more terms from the classified phrases are extracted, in which the one or more terms are indicative of the information about the user.

Claims

1. A method of acquiring information about a user, the method comprising:

classifying one or more phrases in one or more categories at least partly on the basis of a period for which a product has been used by the user, the user'"'"'s experience with the product, preferences of the user, or needs of the user by applying one or more natural language processing (NLP) techniques, wherein the one or more phrases are extractable from an electronic publication at least partly on the basis of on a predefined set of verbs, a predefined set of domain-specific terms, and terms indicative of temporal information; and

extracting one or more terms from the classified phrases, wherein the one or more terms are indicative of the information about the user.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising creating a user profile based on the one or more terms.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising transmitting the user profile to a customer support center.

4. The method of claim 2 further comprising providing one or more services based on the user profile, wherein the one or more services corresponds to a product support, product recommendation, and troubleshooting.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising searching for the electronic publication on one or more online sources.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the one or more online sources correspond to at least one of a product review website, a blog, a forum or an e-mail.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more NLP techniques comprise word tokenization, word lemmatization, part-of-speech tagging, Named Entity detection, syntactic parsing.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic publication is creatable from a voice call by applying one or more speech to text (STT) techniques, wherein the user initiates the voice call to obtain information about a product.

9. A method of providing one or more services to a user, the method comprising:

classifying one or more phrases in one or more categories at least partly on the basis of a period for which a product has been used by the user, the user'"'"'s experience with the product, preferences of the user, or needs of the user by applying one or more natural language processing (NLP) techniques, wherein the one or more phrases are extractable from an electronic publication based, at least in part, on a predefined set of verbs, a predefined set of Domain-specific terms, and terms indicative of temporal information;

extracting one or more terms form the classified phrases, wherein the one or more terms are indicative of the information about the user;

creating a user profile based on the classified phrases; and

providing the one or more services to the user based on the user profile, wherein the one or more services correspond to product support, product recommendation, and troubleshooting.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising searching for the electronic publication on one or more online sources.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the one or more online sources correspond to at least one of a product review website, a blog, a forum or an e-mail.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the one or more categories comprises user'"'"'s expertise, user'"'"'s needs, and user'"'"'s preferences.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein the one or more NLP techniques comprise word tokenization, word lemmatization, part-of-speech tagging, Named Entity detection, syntactic parsing.

14. A system for creating a user profile, the system comprising:

a search module configured to search for an electronic publication on one or more online sources;

a natural language processing (NLP) module configured to;

extract one or more phrases from the electronic publication based, at least in part, on a predefined set of verbs, a predefined set of Domain-specific terms, and terms indicative of temporal information; and

classify the one or more phrases in one or more categories at least partly on the basis of a period for which a product has been used by the user, the user'"'"'s experience with the product, preferences of the user, or needs of the user; and

a user profile manager configured to create the user profile based on the classified phrases.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the user profile manager further configured to extract one or more terms form the classified phrases, wherein the user profile is created based on the one or more terms.

16. The system of claim 14 further comprising a customer care manager configured to transmit the user profile to a customer support center, wherein the customer support center provides one or more services based on the user profile.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the NLP module comprises a natural language parser, wherein the parser extracts the one or more phrases.

18. The system of claim 14, wherein the one or more online sources correspond to at least one of a product review website, a blog, a forum or an e-mail.

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the one or more NLP techniques comprise word tokenization, word lemmatization, part-of-speech tagging, Named Entity detection, syntactic parsing.