Method and apparatus for quality assurance in a multimedia communications environment

• US 8,259,711 B2
• Filed: 10/15/2007
• Issued: 09/04/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nice Ltd
• Original Assignee: Nice Systems Limited (Nice Ltd)
• Inventors: Elazar, Avishai, Freedman, Ilan
• Primary Examiner(s): Nawaz, Asad
• Assistant Examiner(s): Chang, Kai
• Application Number:
  US11/872,698
• Publication Number:
  US 20080063179A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,786 Days
• Field of Search: 370/260, 370352-356, 379/68, 379/85, 379/88.26, 379/100.03, 379/112.01, 379/121.04, 379/121.05, 379/266.1
• US Class Current: 370/356
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/2281 Call monitoring, e.g. for law enforcement purposes; Call tracing; Detection or prevention of malicious calls
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42221 Conversation recording systems at the subscriber's set H04M1/656
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5191 interacting with the Internet
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method and system for monitoring and evaluating multimedia telephonic and computer-communication interactions. The multimedia quality monitoring system may include an event manager, which may receive a notification associated with a VoIP communication between an agent and a customer and recording servers, which record data associated with the VoIP communication.

Claims

1. A multimedia quality monitoring system comprising:

an event manager to receive a notification from a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephony switch that a VoIP communication has been routed to an agent and to determine whether to selectively record VoIP audio associated with the communication based on scheduling information;

a VoIP recording server to receive instructions from the event manager to record said VoIP audio and to record said VoIP audio if so determined by the event manager; and

at least one computer-data recording server to receive instructions from the event manager to record non-audio digital data associated with non-audio digital communication and to record said non-audio digital data based on determining whether to selectively record.

2. The monitoring system of claim 1, wherein said non-audio digital communication is selected from the group including an e-mail session, a chat session and a web collaboration session.

3. The monitoring system of claim 1 further comprising:

a screen recording server to record at least a portion of an interaction of said agent with a computer at least during a portion of said VoIP communication.

4. The monitoring system of claim 1, wherein the event manager is to receive the notification via a computer telephony integration (CTI) link.

5. The monitoring system of claim 1, wherein the event manager is to receive the notification from an application program interface (API).

6. The monitoring system of claim 1 further comprising:

a scheduler to provide scheduling information to the event manager.

7. The monitoring system of claim 1 further comprising an evaluator to provide an evaluation report relating to the performance of the agent.

8. The monitoring system of claim 1, wherein the monitoring system is coupled to a customer relationship management system and is to provide the customer relationship management system with an ability to retrieve in real-time playback of the digital data associated with the communication.

9. The monitoring system of claim 1 comprising:

a sniffing unit coupled to the event manager and to the at least one computer-data recording server, and wherein the event manager is to receive the notification from the sniffing unit.

10. The monitoring system of claim 1, wherein the at least one computer-data recording server includes an e-mail logger to record text data of an e-mail communication and a screen logger to record screen data associated with the e-mail communication.

11. A method for use in a multimedia quality monitoring system, the method comprising:

receiving by an event manager from a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephony switch, a first notification that a VoIP communication has been routed to an agent;

determining whether to instruct a VoIP recording server to record VoIP audio associated with the VoIP communication based on scheduling information;

receiving by the event manager a second notification that a non-audio communication has been routed to the agent or to another agent;

determining whether to instruct a computer-data recording server to record digital data associated with the non-audio communication; and

recording said VoIP audio or said non-audio communication based on determining whether to record.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein receiving the second notification comprises receiving the notification by a chat automatic call distribution server, a web collaboration automatic call distribution server and an e-mail management system server.

13. The method of claim 11 comprising:

recording at least a portion of an interaction of the agent with a computer during the non-audio communication while recording generally synchronously the digital data associated with the non-audio communication.

14. The method of claim 11 comprising:

recording at least a portion of an interaction of the agent with a computer during the VoIP communication while recording generally synchronously VoIP audio associated with the VoIP communication.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein receiving the first notification comprises receiving the first notification via a computer telephony integration (CTI) link.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein receiving the first notification comprises receiving the first notification from an application program interface (API).

17. The method of claim 11, wherein receiving the first notification comprises receiving the first notification from a sniffing unit.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein selectively determining whether to instruct the VoIP recording server to record the VoIP audio is based on scheduling information.

19. The method of claim 11 comprising:

generating an evaluating report associated with the VoIP communication.

20. The method of claim 11 comprising:

recording at least a portion of an interaction of the agent with a computer after ending the VoIP communication.