Patent Issued for Computer Communication Network For Routing Communications Based On Identified Information Clusters (USPTO 10,515,341)

2020 JAN 08 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Crutcher, Sherri Lynn (Fairbury, IL); Karnatapu, Surendra Kumar (Bloomington, IL), filed on January 18, 2017, was published online on January 6, 2020.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 10,515,341 is State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (Bloomington, Illinois, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “One aspect of a business may be client communications, wherein each customer has a particular case file, matter, project, etc. Where the business provides products and/or services related voluminous client files, communications between the business and the voluminous clients can be extremely burdensome. When an individual communication is received from a client, the business must quickly determine: (1) to which project the communication should be associated; and (2) to which business department the communication should directed.

“Prior art communication systems typically comprise many customer service representatives and a significant communication infrastructure. Upon receipt of the customer communications, the customer service representatives must associate all client communications with the correct client file, whether the communications are email, telephone, facsimile, etc. Each communication must be documented. For example, a telephone conversation must be transcribed or converted into a written document, an email must be saved as a document, a text message must be saved as a document, a photographs or videos must be saved in a usable format. However saved or documented, the customer service representatives must then associate the communication the appropriate client file. Next, the customer service representative must create a message directed to the business department tasked with responding to the client’s communication, wherein the client communication is attached to or otherwise referenced in the message.

“In one prior art communication system, verbal client communications are received via a telephone call center, email client communications are received via a website portal, and paper communications are received via regular mail. The system requires human intervention to forward phone, email and mail communications from clients to the departments charged with handling the client files. The system requires customer representatives to create electronic documents that are saved in the client files and then attached to emails to be sent to the handling departments. For example, mailed communications must be scanned in a word searchable format. The clients are unable to directly call, email or mail the handling departments because contact information for the handling departments is unknown to the clients and/or the clients do not know which departments are charged with handling the particular issues being presented by the clients.

“In some systems, as many as 700,000 client communications are processed per day. Communications may be miscategorized. The time to route client communications may be too long. Associating the client communication with the correct client file is particularly troubling. Misdirected client communications may become temporarily misplaced or even lost, which results in delayed responses or nonresponses. When a client calls, emails or mails a general question, judgments must be made by the intake customer service representative to determine to which department to forward the question. When the intake customer service representative looks at a client communication, the representative needs a full understanding of the customer’s file to place the client’s question in context. If the customer service representative does not fully understand the client’s file and the client’s question, misrouting becomes more likely.

“In some systems, failures to property categorize and forward client communications can raise compliance issues where government regulations set specific standards regarding confidentiality, timeliness, etc.

“There is a need for communication systems that intake hundreds of thousands of client communications, via telephone, email, and mail, associate the client communications with client files, and route the client communications to departments charged with responding/handling the customer communications.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In accordance with the teachings of the present disclosure, disadvantages and problems associated with existing marketing information systems and methods have been reduced.

“An aspect of the invention provides a computer communication network for processing and routing client communications based on information contained in the communications, the computer network comprising: (i) an intake system comprising: a non-transitory computer readable media having stored thereon at least one intake software application; a processor, wherein said processor upon execution of the intake software application, is configured to: receive client communications in one or more formats selected from verbal, electronic, and physical; convert the received client communications into formatted electronic records; and transmit the formatted electronic records; (ii) a record distribution system comprising: a non-transitory computer readable media having stored thereon at least one distribution software application; a processor, wherein said processor upon execution of the distribution software application, is configured to: receive the formatted electronic records from the intake system; create system records for the formatted electronic records; identify clusters from the information in the formatted electronic records; categorize the identified clusters; identify clients from the information in the formatted electronic records; save the system records and the formatted electronic records in data files for the identified clients; identify business departments charged with handling identified clusters; and route the system records and formatted electronic records to the identified business departments, wherein the system records and formatted electronic records are added to workflow of the business departments; and (iii) a record handling system that allows users to process system records and formatted electronic records.

“According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for processing and routing client communications based on information contained in the communications, the method comprising: receiving client communications in one or more formats selected from verbal, electronic, and physical; converting the received client communications into formatted electronic records; creating system records for the formatted electronic records; identifying clusters from the information in the formatted electronic records; categorizing the identified clusters; identifying clients from the information in the formatted electronic records; saving the system records and the formatted electronic records in data files for the identified clients; identifying business departments charged with handling identified clusters; and routing the system records and formatted electronic records to the identified business departments, wherein the system records and formatted electronic records are added to workflow of the business departments.

“According to a further aspect of the invention, a business entity may provide its customers with the capability of emailing customer representatives directly if he/she have any questions related to a product/service. Since customers do not know which customer representatives are responsible for handling particular questions, the invention provides a way to intelligently deliver the question/query to a right customer representative. For correct delivery, the invention leverages informational science to categorize the email based on predefined categories. This content based analyzer may help to categorize the email depending on the weightage/ranking of the words and linguistic semantics structures to accurately identify the subject category. For example: if a customer has a question in reference to a medical bill then invention may determine the customer representative to be a medical customer service representative. The invention may provide an intelligent, automated path to email the correct claim customer service handler/team by utilizing a content based analyzer, coupled with predefined categories, to categorize the email based on factors such as weight, rank, and linguistic semantics structure. This method may resolve the manual process of reading the email and routing it to appropriate customer service representative.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A computer communication network for processing and routing client communications based on information contained in the communications, the computer network comprising: (i) an intake system comprising: a non-transitory computer readable media having stored thereon at least one intake software application; a processor, wherein said processor upon execution of the intake software application, is configured to: receive client communications in one or more formats selected from verbal, electronic, and physical; convert the received client communications into formatted electronic records; and transmit the formatted electronic records; (ii) a record distribution system comprising: a non-transitory computer readable media having stored thereon at least one distribution software application; a processor, wherein said processor upon execution of the distribution software application, is configured to: receive the formatted electronic records from the intake system; create system records for the formatted electronic records; identify clusters from the information in the formatted electronic records; categorize the identified clusters; identify clients from the information in the formatted electronic records; save the system records and the formatted electronic records in data files for the identified clients; identify business departments charged with handling identified clusters; and route the system records and formatted electronic records to the identified business departments, wherein the system records and formatted electronic records are added to workflow of the business departments; and (iii) a record handling system that allows users to process system records and formatted electronic records.

“2. A computer communication network as claimed in claim 1, wherein said identify clusters from the information in the formatted electronic records comprises identifying key words or phrases in the formatted electronic records.

“3. A computer communication network as claimed in claim 1, wherein said identify clusters from the information in the formatted electronic records comprises performing topic extraction on the formatted electronic records.

“4. A computer communication network as claimed in claim 1, wherein said identify clusters from the information in the formatted electronic records comprises performing Natural Language Processing on the formatted electronic records.

“5. A computer communication network as claimed in claim 1, wherein said route the system records and formatted electronic records to the identified business departments comprises making multiple copies of individual system records and formatted electronic records and simultaneously routing the multiple copies to the identified business departments.

“6. A computer communication network as claimed in claim 1, wherein the record handling system further allows users to: identify previously unidentified clusters from the information in the formatted electronic records.

“7. A computer communication network as claimed in claim 1, wherein the record handling system further allows users to: identify business departments charged with handling previously unidentified clusters from the information in the formatted electronic records.

“8. A computer communication network as claimed in claim 1, wherein the processor, wherein said processor upon execution of the distribution software application, is further configured to: process the formatted electronic records with a machine learning algorithm.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Crutcher, Sherri Lynn; Karnatapu, Surendra Kumar. Computer Communication Network For Routing Communications Based On Identified Information Clusters. U.S. Patent Number 10,515,341, filed January 18, 2017, and published online on January 6, 2020. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,515,341.PN.&OS=PN/10,515,341RS=PN/10,515,341

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