Real-time conversational analytics facility

• US 9,413,891 B2
• Filed: 01/08/2015
• Issued: 08/09/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 01/08/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CallMiner, Inc.
• Original Assignee: CallMiner, Inc.
• Inventors: Dwyer, Michael C., Strand, Erik A., Wolf, Scott R., Salinas, Frank, Gallino, Jeffrey A., Kendrick, Scott A., Xue, Shaoyu
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Joseph J
• Application Number:
  US14/592,510
• Publication Number:
  US 20150195406A1
• Time in Patent Office: 579 Days
• Field of Search: 379/265.06
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6254 by anonymising data, e.g. decorrelating personal data from the owner's identification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/279 Recognition of textual entities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/02 Feature extraction for speech recognition; Selection of recognition unit
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1815 Semantic context, e.g. disambiguation of the recognition hypotheses based on word meaning
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/30 Distributed recognition, e.g. in client-server systems, for mobile phones or network applications
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/088 Word spotting
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/72 for transmitting results of analysis
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/301 Management of recordings
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/303 Marking
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/401 Performance feedback
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/551 Call history recording a computer conference H04L12/1831
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/6009 Personal information, e.g. profiles or personal directories being only provided to authorised persons
• 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

Methods and systems are provided for receiving a communication, analyzing the communication in real-time or near real-time using a computer-based communications analytics facility for at least one of a language characteristic and an acoustic characteristic, wherein for analyzing the language characteristic of voice communications, the communication is converted to text using computer-based speech recognition, determining at least one of the category, the score, the sentiment, or the alert associated with the communication using the at least one language and/or acoustic characteristic, and providing a dynamic graphical representation of the at least one category, score, sentiment, or alert through a graphical user interface.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer readable medium with an executable program for providing a dynamic graphical representation of a category, wherein the program instructs a computer processor to perform at least the following steps:

receiving a voice communication;

analyzing the voice communication in at least near real-time relative to the receipt of the communication using a computer-based communications analytics facility for a language characteristic and an acoustic characteristic of the voice communication;

determining the category associated with at least one participant in the voice communication using the language characteristic and the acoustic characteristic, wherein the step of determining uses a contextual analysis that evaluates the category based on a plurality of words of the voice communication spoken before each word of the plurality, wherein the category is one category selected from the group consisting of a behavior, a reason, a procedure, a competitor, a dissatisfaction, an empathy, a repeat contact, a transferred call and a politeness; and

providing a dynamic graphical representation of the category through a graphical user interface.

2. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the dynamic graphical representation is provided to a user other than the participant in the voice communication as the received voice communication is on-going.

3. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 2, wherein the user is a non-participant in the voice communication and the dynamic graphical representation is provided to assist the non-participant in at least one of supervising and evaluating a participant in the voice communication.

4. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the dynamic graphical representation is provided as feedback to a participant in the voice communication as the received voice communication is on-going.

5. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the acoustic characteristic is at least one of a stress of words, an aggregated stress of a plurality of words, an agitation, a tempo, a change in tempo, an amount of silence, a silence between words, a gain in volume or energy of the words, a tone, an overtalk, a time lag between words, a time dependency between key words and phrases, an inter-word timing, an inflexion of words, and a temporal pattern.

6. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the language characteristic is at least one of a sentiment, a regulation compliance, a score, a text, an alternative text and a confidence in word match.

7. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, further comprising,

repeating the steps for a plurality of in-progress voice communications;

and

displaying a dynamic graphical representation of each in-progress voice communication on the graphical user interface.

8. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, further comprising,

assigning metadata representative of the voice communication based on the analysis;

and

displaying the metadata for the voice communication on the graphical user interface.

9. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein metadata representative of the voice communication comprises at least one of a speaker, an agent data, an agent grouping, a call handling location, a time and date of call, a department, a skill or queue, a pertinent IVR path data, and a call length.

10. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, further comprising, before analyzing the voice communication for the language characteristic, converting the voice communication to text using computer-based speech recognition.

11. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the contextual analysis is used to determine a category of a privileged communication.

12. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the voice communication is selected from the group consisting of VoIP, TDM and SIP.

13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1, further comprising preparing a transcript of the voice communication.

14. A system that provides a visual indication of a language analysis and an acoustic analysis of a communication, comprising:

a receiver for receiving a copy of the communication in near real-time or real-time relative to the origination of the communication;

a computer-based communications analytics facility for evaluating the received communication in near real-time or real-time relative to the receipt of the copy, comprising;

a language module for analyzing the communication for a language characteristic and a non-word symbol within the communication text that mimics a verbal element;

an acoustic analysis module for analyzing the communication for an acoustic characteristic;

a contextual module for analyzing a context of words within the communication; and

a determination module for determining a category, a score and an alert associated with the communication using the language characteristic, non-word symbol and the acoustic characteristic, wherein the alert concerns a presence or an absence of specific language and wherein the category is one category selected from the group consisting of a behavior, a reason, a procedure, a competitor, a dissatisfaction, an empathy, a repeat contact, a transferred call and a politeness; and

an interface for displaying at least one visual indication representative of each of the category, the score and the alert.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the communication is at least one of a voice communication, a voice mail, a chat, an email, a blog post, a survey, a social media post, an IVR session, and an SMS.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the acoustic characteristic is at least one of a stress of words, an aggregated stress of a plurality of words, an agitation, a tempo, a change in tempo, an amount of silence, a silence between words, a gain in volume or energy of the words, a tone, an overtalk, a time lag between words, a time dependency between key words and phrases, an inter-word timing, an inflexion of words, and a temporal pattern.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the language characteristic is at least one of a sentiment, a regulation compliance, a score, a text, an alternative text and a confidence in word match.

18. The system of claim 14, wherein the visual indication is at least one of a blinking, a vibrating, a shaking, a pulsing, a movement, a color, a color change, a category label, a score, and a sentiment.

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the analysis for the presence or absence of specific language comprises identifying whether a required statement has been spoken within a specific time period.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the required statement is constructed to satisfy a legal requirement.

21. The system of claim 14, wherein the analysis for the presence or absence of specific language comprises identifying a use of profanity or identifying an absence of compliance scripts.

22. The system of claim 14, wherein when the communication is a voice communication, the system is adapted to convert the communication to text using a computer-based speech recognition module, before analyzing the communication for the language characteristic.

23. The system of claim 14, wherein the computer-based communications analytics facility further comprises a metadata module for determining metadata of the communication.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the metadata is at least one of a speaker, an agent data, an agent grouping, a call handling location, a time and date of call, a department, a skill or queue, a pertinent IVR path data, and a call length.

25. The system of claim 14, wherein the non-word symbol is at least one of an emoticon, a capitalization, a punctuation, an ellipsis and a spacing.

26. The system of claim 14, wherein at least one of the category, the score and the alert enables automatically monitoring at least one of a customer satisfaction, a compliance, an agent performance, and a performance indicator.

27. The system of claim 22 wherein the voice communication is selected from the group consisting of VoIP, TDM and SIP.

28. The system of claim 27, wherein analyzing the text comprises matching portions of converted text to text strings, wherein the text strings include key words and phrases.

29. A non-transitory computer readable medium with an executable program for providing a dynamic graphical representation of a category, a score, a sentiment, and an alert wherein the program instructs a processor to perform at least the following steps:

receiving a communication;

analyzing the communication in at least near real-time relative to receipt of the communication using a computer-based communications analytics facility for a language characteristic, a non-word symbol that mimics a verbal element, and an acoustic characteristic, wherein analyzing the language characteristic of voice communications includes converting the voice communication to text using computer-based speech recognition;

analyzing the communication using a contextual analysis that evaluates the voice communication based on a plurality of words of the voice communication spoken before each word of the plurality of words;

determining the category, the score, the sentiment, and the alert associated with the communication using the language characteristic, non-word symbol, the acoustic characteristic and the contextual analysis, wherein the category is one category selected from the group consisting of a behavior, a reason, a procedure, a dissatisfaction, an empathy, a repeat contact, a transferred call and a politeness; and

providing a dynamic graphical representation of the category, score, sentiment and the alert through a graphical user interface.