Patent Issued for Methods, systems, and apparatus for connecting insurance customers with independent insurance agents (USPTO 11412088): The Travelers Indemnity Company

2022 AUG 31 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Collins, Dean M. (Manchester, CT, US), Polayes, Jason F. (Simsbury, CT, US), filed on June 3, 2016, was published online on August 9, 2022.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11412088 is The Travelers Indemnity Company (Hartford, Connecticut, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Many insurance companies utilize independent insurance agents (“agents”) to sell their products to consumers. The independent insurance agents are not employees of the insurance companies, but instead act as independent contractors. Unlike many industries that employ call centers to provide direct sales support or customer service, insurance companies have little or no control over the technology infrastructure of their agents. Insurance companies also lack access to the technology infrastructure the independent agents utilize, thereby preventing accurate tracking of agent performance. For example, insurance companies cannot track the number of calls an agent receives and compare that number to the agent’s sales volume. In contrast, a company using a call center can monitor, record, and evaluate calls handled by call center employees to evaluate their performance and to provide training. Call centers can also correlate the results of each call to a specific outcome, such as a sale of a product.

“An additional difficulty with utilizing independent agents is that insurance agents typically sell insurance products for several competing insurance companies. One method for an insurance company to improve sales is to provide incentives to agents to offer that company’s policies more frequently than the policies of other insurance companies. Incentives can take the form of offering better products leading to more sales, higher commissions on sales, and reducing the effort necessary for the independent agent to make a sale, thus allowing the agent to make more sales with less effort. The lack of access to agents’ infrastructure makes this last incentive harder to provide.

“The independent agent relationship, however, provides significant benefits to insurance companies. For example, the insurance companies do not have to pay salaries or provide benefits to their sales force. In addition, the insurance companies can forgo the overhead of maintaining separate branch offices in each community in which they wish to offer insurance. Instead, these costs can be distributed among the various insurance companies that utilize the agents in the form of commissions on sales.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “A need exists in the art to provide insurance companies greater ability to involve themselves in the communications taking place between customers and independent insurance agents. Doing so can increase the insurance company’s access to agent performance information. It can also make an agent’s job easier. In one aspect, the invention relates to a method of selling insurance. The method includes an insurance company controlled communication device receiving a communication from an insurance customer. The method further includes determining whether an independent insurance agent is available for communicating with the customer, for example by receiving a human-initiated availability response. If the independent insurance agent is available, the method includes initiating a communication link between the customer and the independent insurance agent.

“In one embodiment, the customer communication includes a voice communication received over the public switched telephone network (“PSTN”). In such embodiments, the insurance company initiates a voice communication between an insurance company-controlled communications device and the independent agent via the PSTN or a voice-over-IP (“VoIP”) communication with the independent agent via a public or private packet switched network. The insurance company then links the voice communications together.

“In another embodiment, the customer communication includes a VoIP communication received over a packet-switched network. In such embodiments, the insurance company initiates a voice communication between an insurance company-controlled communications device and the independent agent via the PSTN or a VoIP communication with the independent agent via a public or private packet switched network. The insurance company then links the voice communications together. If the communication link with the independent agent is over the PSTN, the method includes decoding the VoIP communication and forwarding the voice communication encoded therein over the PSTN.

“In alternative embodiments, the customer communication includes a chat request, a web conference, an instant message, or other form of electronic communication.

“The independent insurance agent to whom the customer is connected, in one embodiment, is selected from a plurality of independent insurance agents. The plurality of insurance agents may be contacted simultaneously or serially. The independent agent may be selected based on the order in which the contacted independent agents affirmatively indicate their availability to communicate with the customer. Alternatively, the independent agent may be selected based on other factors, including the past performance of the independent agent or a plan to provide fair distribution of customer communications among the plurality of independent agents. In still a further embodiment, the insurance agent is selected based on geographic proximity to the customer. Independent agents may inform the insurance company of their general availability by transmitting a request to be included in the plurality of independent agents from which the independent agent is selected. Independent agents may update their general availability by sending availability update messages to the insurance company.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A centralized call processing system for routing, to independent customer service agents, incoming calls made to a telephone number and for tracking advertising performance, comprising: at least one electronic processing device; at least one telephony communications board in communication with the at least one electronic processing device, the at least one telephony communications board providing caller interface functionalities for prompting callers for information; and a non-transitory data storage device storing instructions that when executed by the at least one electronic processing device result in: receiving, by the at least one telephony communications board, an incoming call from a caller; obtaining, by the at least one telephony communications board and from the caller, independent agent selection criteria data, wherein the independent agent selection criteria data comprises a type of technology required to answer the call and an advertisement code descriptive of a particular advertisement; querying, utilizing the independent agent selection criteria data, a database storing agent information; identifying, by the at least one electronic processing device and based on the querying of the database storing agent information utilizing the independent agent selection criteria data, one agent from a plurality of independent agents to which the call from the caller is to be routed, wherein the identifying of the one agent from the plurality of independent agents to which the call from the caller is to be routed, comprises: determining, based on a result of the querying utilizing the independent agent selection criteria data of the database storing agent information, that the type of technology required to answer the call matches the type of technology utilized by the one agent from the plurality of independent agents and that the advertisement code matches a code stored with respect to the one agent from the plurality of independent agents; determining, by the at least one telephony communications board, that the one agent from the plurality of independent agents is currently available to receive the call from the caller; initiating, in response to the determining that the one agent from the plurality of independent agents is currently available to receive the call from the caller, a communication link between the one agent from the plurality of independent agents and the caller; and storing, in a database and by the at least one electronic processing device, data descriptive of a communication session between the caller and the one agent from the plurality of independent agents.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a signal from a PSTN, and wherein the communication link comprises a link between a caller device connected to the PSTN and an agent device connected to a packet-switched network.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a signal from a PSTN, and wherein the communication link comprises a link between a caller device connected to the PSTN and an agent device connected to the PSTN.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a signal from a packet-switched network, and wherein the communication link comprises a link between a caller device connected to the packet-switched network and an agent device connected to the packet-switched network.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a signal from a packet-switched network, and wherein the communication link comprises a link between a caller device connected to the packet-switched network and an agent device connected to a PSTN.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the obtaining of the independent agent selection criteria data comprises prompting the caller, via the caller interface functionalities of the at least one telephony communications board, for the advertisement code.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the determining that the one agent from the plurality of independent agents is currently available to receive the call from the caller, comprises: querying a database storing general availability information for the plurality of independent agents; and determining that a current time of the call falls within time data defined by the general availability information stored with respect to the one agent from the plurality of independent agents.

“8. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one electronic processing device, further result in: determining, by the at least one electronic processing device, whether the communication session between the caller and the one agent from the plurality of independent agents results in a sale; storing, in an advertisement tracking database and by the at least one electronic processing device and in relation to the advertising code, an indication descriptive of whether the communication session between the caller and the one agent from the plurality of independent agents results in a sale; and computing, by the at least one electronic processing device and based on stored indication and other stored data descriptive of whether other calls associated with the advertising code have resulted in sales, a statistical effectiveness measure of the particular advertisement.

“9. The system of claim 1, wherein the determining that the one agent from the plurality of independent agents is currently available to receive the call from the caller, comprises: querying, by the at least one telephony communications board, a packet-switched network state associated with the one agent from the plurality of independent agents.

“10. The system of claim 1, wherein the determining that the one agent from the plurality of independent agents is currently available to receive the call from the caller, comprises: causing, by the at least one electronic processing device, a current availability prompt pop-up window to appear on a display screen of a computer utilized by the one agent from the plurality of independent agents, the current availability prompt pop-up window prompting the one agent from the plurality of independent agents to verify current availability by providing input via the current availability prompt pop-up window; and receiving, by the at least one electronic processing device, the input provided by the one agent from the plurality of independent agents.

“11. A method for centralized call processing for routing, to independent customer service agents, incoming calls made to a telephone number and for tracking advertising performance, comprising: receiving, by at least one telephony communications board in communication with at least one electronic processing device, wherein the at least one telephony communications board provides caller interface functionalities for prompting callers for information, an incoming call from a caller; obtaining, by the at least one telephony communications board and from the caller, independent agent selection criteria data, wherein the independent agent selection criteria data comprises a type of technology required to answer the call and an advertisement code descriptive of a particular advertisement; querying, by the at least one electronic processing device and utilizing the independent agent selection criteria data, a database storing agent information; identifying, by the at least one electronic processing device and based on the querying of the database storing agent information utilizing the independent agent selection criteria data, one agent from a plurality of independent agents to which the call from the caller is to be routed, wherein the identifying of the one agent from the plurality of independent agents to which the call from the caller is to be routed, comprises: determining, based on a result of the querying utilizing the independent agent selection criteria data of the database storing agent information, that the type of technology required to answer the call matches the type of technology utilized by the one agent from the plurality of independent agents and that the advertisement code matches a code stored with respect to the one agent from the plurality of independent agents; determining, by the at least one telephony communications board, that the one agent from the plurality of independent agents is currently available to receive the call from the caller; initiating, in response to the determining that the one agent from the plurality of independent agents is currently available to receive the call from the caller, a communication link between the one agent from the plurality of independent agents and the caller; and storing, in a non-transitory data storage device and by the at least one electronic processing device, data descriptive of a communication session between the caller and the one agent from the plurality of independent agents.

“12. The method of claim 11, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a signal from a PSTN, and wherein the communication link comprises a link between a caller device connected to the PSTN and an agent device connected to a packet-switched network.

“13. The method of claim 11, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a signal from a PSTN, and wherein the communication link comprises a link between a caller device connected to the PSTN and an agent device connected to the PSTN.

“14. The method of claim 11, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a signal from a packet-switched network, and wherein the communication link comprises a link between a caller device connected to the packet-switched network and an agent device connected to the packet-switched network.

“15. The method of claim 11, wherein the receiving comprises receiving a signal from a packet-switched network, and wherein the communication link comprises a link between a caller device connected to the packet-switched network and an agent device connected to a PSTN.”

There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.

For additional information on this patent, see: Collins, Dean M. Methods, systems, and apparatus for connecting insurance customers with independent insurance agents. U.S. Patent Number 11412088, filed June 3, 2016, and published online on August 9, 2022. 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=11412088.PN.&OS=PN/11412088RS=PN/11412088

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