Quality review of contacts between customers and customer service agents

• US 8,983,055 B1
• Filed: 08/06/2013
• Issued: 03/17/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/20/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kaufman, Donald L.
• Primary Examiner(s): SMITH, CREIGHTON H
• Application Number:
  US13/960,219
• Time in Patent Office: 588 Days
• Field of Search: 379/265.06, 379/265.05, 379/265.07, 379/266.1
• US Class Current: 379/265.06
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06398 Performance of employee with respect to a job function
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0281 Customer communication at a business location, e.g. providing product or service information, consulting
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/401 Performance feedback
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/00 Automatic or semi-automatic exchanges
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/2218 Call detail recording
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42221 Conversation recording systems at the subscriber's set H04M1/656
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5175 Call or contact centers supervision arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5191 interacting with the Internet

Abstract

A user of a personal computing device may identify an item of interest provided by a network-based service for which additional information is desired. Customer service agents (CSAs) of the network-based service may be contacted by the user to respond to queries. To assess the quality of a contact, a contact review service may record the contact between the CSA and the user and edit the contact to reduce its length for ease of review. The edited contact may be submitted to one or more reviewers to obtain reviews characterizing the contact quality. Reviewers may include CSAs not participating in the contact or other human reviewers. The reviewers may return their reviews to the contact review service, which generates a composite review from the returned reviews. The composite review may be employed for CSA evaluation and/or training purposes, amongst others.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions encoded thereon, wherein the instructions, when executed by a computing apparatus, cause the computing apparatus to:

obtain a record of a contact between a customer and a customer service agent; and

provide to a reviewer;

at least a portion of the record of the contact between the customer and the customer service agent, and

a user interface configured to enable the reviewer to provide a review of the contact between the customer and the customer service agent,

wherein the reviewer is neither the customer nor the customer service agent.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the computing apparatus to isolate at least a portion of a contribution of the customer to the record of the contact.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 2, wherein the instructions further cause the computing apparatus to isolate at least the portion of the contribution of the customer to the record of the contact by selecting a portion of the record of the contact near an end region of the record of the contact.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the user interface is further configured to request the reviewer to characterize a satisfaction of the customer with the customer service agent using a predetermined scale.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the reviewer comprises a human worker of a human interaction task component.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the record of the contact between the customer and the customer service agent comprises one or more of telephone calls, electronic mail messages, short message service (SMS) messages, instant messages, and video messages.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the user interface is further configured to enable the reviewer to request additional information regarding the contact.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the instructions further cause the computing apparatus to provide to the reviewer an additional portion of the record of the contact in response to the request for additional information.

9. A contact review service comprising:

a data store that stores one or more records of contacts between a first person and a second person; and

a computing device in communication with the data store, wherein the computing device is operative to;

obtain a record of contact between the first person and the second person from the data store; and

provide to a reviewer;

at least a portion of the record of contact between the first person and the second person, and

a user interface configured to enable the reviewer to provide a review of the contact between the first person and the second person,

wherein the reviewer is neither the first person nor the second person.

10. The contact review service of claim 9, wherein the computing device is further operative to generate the portion of the record of contact by isolating at least a portion of a first person contribution to the record of contact.

11. The contact review service of claim 10, wherein isolating the record of contact comprises selecting a portion of the record of contact near an end region of the record of contact.

12. The contact review service of claim 9, wherein the user interface is further configured to request the reviewer to characterize a satisfaction of the first person with the second person.

13. The contact review service of claim 9, wherein the reviewer is a human worker of a human interaction task component.

14. The contact review service of claim 9, wherein the user interface is further configured to enable the reviewer to request additional information regarding the contact.

15. The contact review service of claim 14, wherein the computing device is further operative to provide to the reviewer an additional portion of the record of contact in response to the request for additional information.

16. The contact review service of claim 9, wherein the record of contact between the first person and the second person comprises one or more of telephone calls, electronic mail messages, short message service (SMS) messages, instant messages, and video messages.

17. The contact review service of claim 9, wherein the computing device is further operative to provide the portion of the record of contact and the user interface to the reviewer when the review is not busy.

18. The contact review service of claim 9, wherein the reviewer is a customer service agent.

19. A computer-implemented method of determining a quality of contact between a first person and a second person, the method comprising:

under control of one or more configured computer systems,

obtaining a record of a contact between a first person and a second person; and

providing to a reviewer;

at least a portion of the record of the contact between the first person and the second person, and

a user interface configured to enable the reviewer to provide a review of the contact between the first person and the second person,

wherein the reviewer is neither the first person nor the second person.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 19, further comprising generating the portion of the record of the contact by isolating an end region of the record of the contact.

21. The computer-implemented method of claim 19, further comprising providing to the reviewer a scale for the reviewer to use to assess a quality of the contact between the first person and the second person.

22. The computer-implemented method of claim 19, wherein the reviewer comprises a human worker of a human interaction task component.

23. The computer-implemented method of claim 19, wherein the contact between the first person and second person comprises one or more of telephone calls, electronic mail messages, short message service (SMS) messages, instant messages, and video messages.

24. The computer-implemented method of claim 19, further comprising receiving a request from the reviewer for additional information regarding the contact.

25. The computer-implemented method of claim 24, further comprising providing to the reviewer an additional portion of the record of the contact in response to the request for additional information.