Patent Issued for Inbound Communication Processing System With Intelligent Interactive Graphical User Interface (USPTO 10,447,852)

2019 OCT 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (Minnetonka, Minnesota, United States) has been issued patent number 10,447,852, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Baker, Michael Lee (Chanhassen, MN); Shapiro, David (Minneapolis, MN); Butterworth, Lee A. (Excelsior, MN); Bothra, Siddhartha (Zionsville, IN); Horton, Matthew N. (De Forest, WI); White, Wayne (Peoria, AZ); Allenburg, Thomas John (Edina, MN); Matthews, Leslee (Vinton, VA); Heath, Lisa Marie (Racine, WI).

This patent was filed on November 20, 2017 and was published online on October 28, 2019.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “When an individual contacts an organization, the individual may interact with an inbound/outbound communication system, such as an interactive voice response (IVR) system. The IVR system may determine an identity of the individual, as well as a representative capable of handling the individual’s call.

“Upon the IVR system determining the individual’s identity, the inbound call system may generate a graphical user interface (GUI) with information about the individual. The GUI is then presented on a computing device of a representative, to aid the representative in handling the individual’s call.

“More specifically, the GUIs may provide physician contact information, thereby allowing the representative and the caller to engage in a three-way call with a provider’s office, for example to schedule an appointment. These calls last minutes, provide and yield limited information, thereby being unsatisfactory to the caller.

“However, the GUIs may also provide the representative with data specific to the caller, but in a layered structure such that vast amounts of caller-specific data is only displayed via the GUI after numerous windows, drop downs, etc. are opened and data is selected. Such GUIs are often limited to providing data that allows a representative to interact with the caller regarding only past events. Largely, the representative is left to process the data in some fashion and draw conclusions from same as the representative engages with the customer. Resources are wasted including the representatives time necessary to process this information and route the caller to other representatives should the current representative be unable to determine information and/or address the caller’s needs. Little, if anything, is done to anticipate the needs of the customer or tailor the interaction to those needs. Bandwidth of such known systems is limited by the limited automation and intelligence integrated in such systems, with little intelligence and automation integrated at the user interface level for the benefit of the representative. Known systems instead rely on representatives to gather information, process information mentally, draw conclusions and make decisions that may be wrong or inaccurate.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “The present disclosure generally provides systems and methods that solve the technical problems associated with limited intelligence at the representative user interface and data association applied in routing of calls, such as processed through IVR, within an organization. Improved customer resource management (CRM) and communication processing systems according to the disclosure are configured to access and provide structured data mapped to an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) about a customer or network member to a representative or advocate. Customer/member data is configured and presented through an optimized network interface connected to one or more databases. The improved communication processing systems use the improved, interactive GUI to provide access to specific user-focused internal and external data resources presented to the representative to allow a representative to structure and drive communications and interfacing to address the network member’s needs quickly and efficiently improving interactions, system bandwidth and customer/representative experience.

“A further aspect of the present disclosure provides a tailored, interactive graphical user interface (GUI) presented to the representative and accessible to a CRM. Information displayed by the system in the GUI, including a prospective action to be performed determined from a plurality of prospective actions using at least one prioritization model, allows the representative or advocate to efficiently and in a structured manner, address the member’s needs and offer suggestions to the member.

“According to a further aspect of the present disclosure, improved call processing systems include a secure computing environment. The components of the secure computing environment may be connected via one or more data gateways. When a member contacts the secure computing environment within an organization, the member’s communication is first directed to an input/output interface. The member’s communication is then processed through the input/output interface to an authentication component to identify and authenticate the member initiating the communication. Once identified/authenticated, the member’s information/data is gathered using a consumer engagement engine (CEE). A conversation management data storage houses data processed and/or generated by the CEE. In addition, the information determined by the CEE may be further structured and displayed on a tailored, interactive graphical user interface (GUI).

“The interactive, tailored GUI provides interconnection to customer resources in order to provide services in real-time. For example, it directly integrates with third party scheduling/interaction systems to allow a representative to work with the customer to schedule needed appointment(s). This allows the representative to schedule the appointment for the caller without needing to engage in a multi-minute three-way call and avoid unnecessary utilization of network resources. The GUI of the present disclosure also provides prospective actions, next best actions, based on specific prioritization logic.

“While multiple embodiments are disclosed, including variations thereof, still other embodiments of the present application will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description, which shows and describes illustrative embodiments of the application. The application is capable of modifications in various aspects, all without departing from its scope or spirit. The drawings and detailed description are illustrative in nature and not restrictive.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A system for intelligent processing of a communication from a member, comprising: an authentication component authenticating an identity of the member; a consumer engagement engine: accessing member data related to engagements with the member; processing the member data related to engagements with the member; determining at least one prospective action to be performed by the member from a plurality of prospective actions based on the member data and a prioritization model; a conversation management data storage database storing specially configured information for communicating with the member including at least member information and engagement information; and an interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI) accessing and displaying, on a first portion of the GUI, the determined prospective action and at least one of member information and engagement information and, on a second portion, real-time appointment scheduling information for a third-party provider, wherein the prioritization model comprises a plurality of priority levels indicating different levels of required attention for prospective actions, each of the plurality of prospective actions associated with one of the plurality of priority levels.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the consumer engagement engine further schedules an appointment with the third-party provider for the member.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein the consumer engagement engine further determines historical member information about the member.

“4. The system of claim 3, wherein the GUI further displays, on a third portion of the GUI, the historical member information about the member.

“5. The system of claim 4, wherein the GUI further receives input historical information about the member from an advocate.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the consumer engagement engine further determines relationship building information about the member for use by an advocate.

“7. The system of claim 6, wherein the GUI further displays, on a fourth portion of the GUI, the relationship building information about the member.

“8. The system of claim 6, wherein the GUI further receives additional input relationship building information about the member from an advocate.

“9. The system of claim 8, wherein the GUI displays at least 80 percent of member information and engagement information within one interaction with the GUI.

“10. The system of claim 1, wherein the consumer engagement engine further structures the member data for communication with the member.

“11. A method implemented on a system for intelligent processing of a communication from a member, the method comprising: authenticating, by the system, an identity of the member; accessing, by the system, member information file based on the identity of the member; processing, by the system, the member information file; determining, by the system, at least one prospective action to be performed by the member from a plurality of prospective actions based on the processed member information file and a prioritization model; routing, by the system, the member to an organization advocate; displaying, by the system, the determined prospective action and at least one of member information and engagement information on an interactive graphical user interface (GUI); and storing, by the system, specially configured information for communicating with the member including the member information and engagement information, wherein the member information and engagement information comprise real-time appointment scheduling information for a third-party provider, wherein the prioritization model comprises a plurality of priority levels indicating different levels of required attention for prospective actions, each of the plurality of prospective actions associated with one of the plurality of priority levels.

“12. The method of claim 11, further comprising requesting additional member information input from the member, when the identity of the member is not authenticated.

“13. The method of claim 11, further comprising prioritizing each of the determined prospective actions when more than one prospective action is determined.

“14. The method of claim 11, wherein the member information and engagement information further comprise: historical member information about the member; relationship building information about the member; and fundamental member account information.

“15. The method of claim 11, further comprising scheduling, by the system, an appointment with a service provider for the member.

“16. The method of claim 11, further comprising receiving, by the system, input historical information about the member from an advocate.

“17. The method of claim 11, further comprising receiving, by the system additional input relationship building information about the member from an advocate.”

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Baker, Michael Lee; Shapiro, David; Butterworth, Lee A.; Bothra, Siddhartha; Horton, Matthew N.; White, Wayne; Allenburg, Thomas John; Matthews, Leslee; Heath, Lisa Marie. Inbound Communication Processing System With Intelligent Interactive Graphical User Interface. U.S. Patent Number 10,447,852, filed November 20, 2017, and published online on October 28, 2019. 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=10,447,852.PN.&OS=PN/10,447,852RS=PN/10,447,852

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