Patent Issued for Knowledge Management Tool Interface (USPTO 10,643,286)

2020 MAY 20 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Wagner, Mark Richard (West Hartford, CT); Stevens, Sandra J. (Mansfield Center, CT); Lellock, Belinda A. (Clearbrook, VA); Ma’luf, Anthony Jason (Winston-Salem, NC); Grashaw, Kurt E. (Tariffville, CT), filed on February 22, 2019, was published online on May 18, 2020.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 10,643,286 is Hartford Fire Insurance Company (Hartford, Connecticut, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “An insurer may provide payments when claims are made in connection with an insurance policy. For example, an insurance customer who is injured while visiting a business may contact an insurance company requesting payment in connection with a liability or group benefit insurance policy that was purchased by the business. Similarly, an insurance customer who was involved in an automobile accident may contact an insurance company requesting payment in connection with his or her automobile insurance policy. In addition to submitting new insurance claims, insurance customers might contact an insurance company for any of a number of other reasons, such as to inquire about the current status of a previously filed claim, to ask about a hypothetical situation, to determine office hours, etc. The insurer may assign a service representative to communicate with an insurance customer to receive relevant information about a new or existing insurance claim (e.g., party names and addresses, accident details, injury information, etc.) and/or to help the customer in other ways.

“In one approach, a service representative receives training and/or customer care documents to help him or her respond to customer requests appropriately. This, however, may be a time consuming process and can lead to errors or delays while interacting with the customer, especially when there are a substantial number of customer requests, of many different types, that need responses. For example, an insurer might receive tens of thousands of insurance customer telephone calls (which might represent a substantial number of different types of team member interactions with customers). It would therefore be desirable to provide systems and methods to facilitate interactions between insurance customers and service representatives in an automated, efficient, and accurate manner.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “According to some embodiments, systems, methods, apparatus, computer program code and means may facilitate interactions between insurance customers and service representatives. In some embodiments, a communication may be received from a customer in connection with an insurance policy. A system may then transmit, to a service representative device, data associated with an insurance knowledge management enterprise portal displaying information to facilitate interaction with the customer. A type of insurance event associated with the communication from the customer may be determined, and customized data associated with the insurance knowledge management enterprise portal may be transmitted to the service representative device, the customized data being based at least in part on the type of insurance event associated with the communication from the customer.

“A technical effect of some embodiments of the invention is an improved and computerized method to facilitate interactions between insurance customers and service representatives. With these and other advantages and features that will become hereinafter apparent, a more complete understanding of the nature of the invention can be obtained by referring to the following detailed description and to the drawings appended hereto.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A knowledge management platform including a knowledge management enterprise portal comprising: a communication device to receive a communication from a customer in connection with a risk mitigation coverage policy; a computer storage unit for receiving, storing, and providing data indicative of the communication from the customer; a knowledge management database storing risk mitigation coverage knowledge management enterprise portal information; and a knowledge management platform processor in communication with the communication device, the storage unit, and the knowledge management database, wherein the processor is configured for: receiving, via the communication device, the communication from the customer in connection with the risk mitigation coverage policy; automatically determining a role identifier associated with a service representative device accessing the knowledge management platform in relation to the communication from the customer; receiving, from the service representative device, data indicative of a line of business corresponding to the communication from the customer; determining a type of coverage event associated with the communication from the customer, the coverage event being associated with claim processing for one of two different potential lines of risk mitigation coverage, and rendering, for display on the service representative device, customized data associated with the knowledge management enterprise portal, the customized data being based at least in part on the determined type of coverage event and the role identifier associated with the service representative device, the customized data including: a dynamically updated tools dashboard displaying a list of most accessed information links, wherein selection of one link of the list of most accessed information links causes navigation to a corresponding accessed link page display, wherein links on the list of most accessed information links are selected based upon the role identifier associated with the service representative device and the type of coverage event, and wherein the list of most accessed information links provided on the tools dashboard is dynamically updated based upon access data collected by an analytics engine indicating a number of times each link available through the knowledge management enterprise portal was accessed by service representative devices during a pre-defined period of time.

“2. The system of claim 1, where the knowledge management platform processor is further configured for, responsive to receiving the communication for the customer, rendering a line of business dashboard including a listing of line of business links, each line of business link corresponding to a different line of business, wherein selection of one link of the listing of line of business links causes navigation to a corresponding line of business page display including information about the line of business; wherein receiving data indicative of the line of business corresponding to the communication from the customer comprises receiving a selection of the one link corresponding to the line of business.

“3. The system of claim 1, where the knowledge management platform processor is further configured for: responsive to receiving the communication for the customer, rendering, for display to the service representative device, a home page of the knowledge management enterprise portal which includes a plurality of hoverable icons including an open call icon, an identify caller icon, and a determine call reason icon, wherein each of the plurality of hoverable icons is configured for dynamically rendering, responsive to movement of a cursor over a respective hoverable icon, a hover-over window including information to facilitate interaction with the customer to obtain caller identity data and call reason data, and wherein each of the plurality of hoverable icons is configured to close the hover-over window responsive to movement of the cursor away from the respective hoverable icon.

“4. The system of claim 1, where the knowledge management platform processor is further configured for: rendering, for display on the service representative device, customized data associated with the knowledge management enterprise portal, the customized data being based at least in part on the determined type of coverage event and the role identifier associated with the service representative device, the customized data including: a scripting procedures dashboard including a list of selectable scripts, wherein selection of one of the list of selectable scripts causes a pop-up display of a corresponding script to be displayed over at least a portion of a currently displayed page.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the customized data further comprises at least one of: (i) data selected from the knowledge management database, and (ii) data dynamically modified by the knowledge management platform processor in substantially real time.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the analytics engine is further configured to collect data associated with a plurality of communications from a plurality of customers.

“7. The system of claim 6, wherein the analytics engine is further configured to collect data associated with a plurality of service representative devices.

“8. The system of claim 1, wherein the risk mitigation coverage knowledge management enterprise portal is configured to automatically receive feedback information from at least one of: (i) the service representative device, and (ii) the customer.

“9. A computer-implemented method for risk mitigation knowledge management, comprising: receiving, by a knowledge management platform processor of a knowledge management platform providing a knowledge management enterprise portal, a communication from a customer in connection with a risk mitigation coverage policy; automatically determining, by the knowledge management platform processor, a role identifier associated with a service representative device accessing the knowledge management enterprise portal in relation to the communication from the customer; receiving, by the knowledge management platform processor from the service representative device, data indicative of a line of business corresponding to the communication from the customer; automatically determining, by the knowledge management platform processor, a type of coverage event associated with the communication from the customer, the coverage event being associated with risk mitigation coverage claims processing; and automatically rendering, by the knowledge management platform processor for display on the service representative device, customized data associated with the knowledge management enterprise portal, the customized data being based at least in part on the type of coverage event associated with the communication from the customer and the role identifier associated with the service representative device, the customized data including: a dynamically updated tools dashboard displaying a list of most accessed information links, wherein selection of one link of the list of most accessed information links causes navigation to a corresponding accessed link page display, wherein links on the list of most accessed information links are selected based upon the role identifier associated with the service representative device and the type of coverage event, and wherein the list of most accessed information links provided on the tools dashboard is dynamically updated based upon data collected by an analytics engine indicating a number of times each link available through the knowledge management enterprise portal was accessed by service representative devices during a pre-defined period of time.

“10. The method of claim 9, further comprising, responsive to receiving the communication for the customer, rendering, by the knowledge management platform processor, a line of business dashboard including a listing of line of business links, each link corresponding to a different line of business, wherein selection of one link of the listing of line of business links causes navigation to a corresponding line of business page display including information about the line of business; wherein receiving data indicative of the line of business corresponding to the communication from the customer comprises receiving a selection of the one link corresponding to the line of business.

“11. The method of claim 10, further comprising, responsive to receiving the communication for the customer, rendering, by the knowledge management platform processor for display on the service representative device, a home page of the knowledge management enterprise portal which includes a plurality of hoverable icons including an open call icon, an identify caller icon, and a determine call reason icon, wherein each of the plurality of hoverable icons is configured for dynamically rendering, responsive to movement of a cursor over a respective hoverable icon, a hover-over window including information to facilitate interaction with the customer to obtain caller identity data and call reason data, and wherein each of the plurality of hoverable icons is configured to close the hover-over window responsive to movement of the cursor away from the respective hoverable icon.

“12. The method of claim 11, further comprising rendering, by the knowledge management platform processor for display on the service representative device, customized data associated with the knowledge management enterprise portal, the customized data being based at least in part on the determined type of coverage event and the role identifier associated with the service representative device, the customized data including: a scripting procedures dashboard including a list of selectable scripts, wherein selection of one of the list of selectable scripts causes a pop-up display of a corresponding script to be displayed over at least a portion of a currently displayed page.

“13. The method of claim 9, further comprising: automatically determining, by the knowledge management platform processor, a risk mitigation coverage policy identifier associated with the risk mitigation coverage policy; wherein the customized data is further based at least in part on information accessed using the automatically determined risk mitigation coverage policy identifier.

“14. The method of claim 9, wherein the communication from the customer comprises an incoming telephone call, and the risk mitigation coverage policy is associated with at least one of: (i) commercial automobile risk mitigation coverage, (ii) personal automobile risk mitigation coverage, (iii) general liability risk mitigation coverage, (iv) homeowners liability risk mitigation coverage, (v) commercial property risk mitigation coverage, (vi) group benefits risk mitigation coverage, and (vii) personal property risk mitigation coverage.

“15. The method of claim 9, further comprising collecting, by the analytics engine, data associated with a plurality of communications from a plurality of customers.

“16. The system of claim 15, further comprising collecting, by the analytics engine, data associated with a plurality of service representative devices.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Wagner, Mark Richard; Stevens, Sandra J.; Lellock, Belinda A.; Ma’luf, Anthony Jason; Grashaw, Kurt E. Knowledge Management Tool Interface. U.S. Patent Number 10,643,286, filed February 22, 2019, and published online on May 18, 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=10,643,286.PN.&OS=PN/10,643,286RS=PN/10,643,286

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