Patent Issued for Predictive mapping for routing telephone calls (USPTO 11463587): United Services Automobile Association

2022 OCT 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventors Daali, Amy (San Antonio, TX, US), Lopez, Mark Anthony (Helotes, TX, US), Medina, III, Reynaldo (San Antonio, TX, US), Williams, Kristopher (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on March 4, 2020, was published online on October 4, 2022.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11463587, is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “When a person calls an organization’s customer service phone number, he or she is routed to a customer service representative. To talk to the customer service process, the call routing system may request the person identify the reason for his or her call. In some cases, the call routing system may provide some options such as dialing a number for an option related to complaints. The call routing system may also request the person to enter some identifying information about him or her, such as a member number or a birthdate. After the person enters the requested information, the call routing system typically routes the person to the next available customer service representative.

“The techniques introduced here may be better understood by referring to the following Detailed Description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numerals indicate identical or functionally similar elements. Moreover, while the technology is amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the technology to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the technology is intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the technology as defined by the appended claims.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “A conventional call routing system can randomly route a person’s call to a next available customer service representative based on a reason for the person’s call. For instance, the conventional call routing system can request a person to identify a reason for his or her call and can determine that the person is calling about credit card fraud. Based on this reason, the conventional call routing system can randomly select a next available customer service representative within the credit card fraud department to answer the person’s call. In some cases, such a random routing may provide a positive outcome for the person, but in some cases, the person may have a negative experience with the randomly selected customer service representative. By randomly routing the call to an available customer service representative, a conventional call routing system cannot predict whether its routing will result a good experience for the person.

“To overcome at least some of the issues described above for a conventional call routing system, this patent document describes systems, apparatus, and methods for routing telephone calls based on predictive mapping of a person calling to a customer service representative. The predictive mapping techniques used to map the person to the customer service representative can maximize the likelihood that the person will have a positive experience when talking to the mapped customer service representative. Alternatively, or additionally, the predictive mapping techniques used to map the person to the customer service representative can minimize the likelihood that the person will have a negative experience when talking to the mapped customer service representative. Thus, the technology identifies persons having the optimal personal compatibility for the given scenario to answer the telephone call.

“The predictive mapping techniques disclosed herein to identify the persons having optimal personal compatibility to answer the call can be based on any one or more of the following factors: (1) a sentiment score based on a topic of conversation (also known as topic modeling); (2) an experience score of the customer service representative with a topic of conversation; and (3) a performance score of the customer service representative in managing a topic of conversation. These factors and the predictive mapping using each of these factors are described in the sections below. The example headings for the various sections below are used to facilitate the understanding of the disclosed subject matter and do not limit the scope of the claimed subject matter in any way. Accordingly, one or more features of one section can be combined with one or more features of another section.

“I. Sentiment Scores for Topics or Topic Modeling”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system, comprising: a server configured to: generate a plurality of sentiment scores associated with a plurality of topics, by: analyzing each sentence in conversations between users and call representatives, determining a sentiment sub-score for each sentence associated with at least one topic, and combining the sentiment sub-score of each sentence to create a sentiment score associated with the at least one topic; receive, from a user device, an indication of a topic selected via a telephone call, wherein the selected topic is one of the plurality of topics; obtain a sentiment score associated with the selected topic from the generated plurality of sentiment scores; identify one or more persons having personal compatibility to answer the telephone call in the selected topic, wherein the one or more persons are identified based on a mapping between the one or more persons and the plurality of topics, wherein the mapping between each person and at least one topic is based on an experience score that indicates a level of predicted performance or qualification of each person in the at least one topic and based on a performance score that characterizes each person’s level of success in handling a telephone call in the at least one topic, and send, to one or more computers associated with the one or more persons, one or more messages that indicates that the telephone call is mapped to the one or more persons, wherein the one or more messages indicate a recommendation for the one or more persons to answer the telephone call based on the sentiment score, and the experience score and the performance score for the mapping between the one or more persons and the selected topic; each of the one or more computers configured to: receive the message; and display on a screen a list of telephone calls to be answered by a person, wherein the list of telephone calls includes the telephone call from the user device.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the list of telephone calls is organized in an order of one or more telephone calls recommended for the person to one or more telephone calls not recommended for the person, and wherein the order is determined based on experience scores or performance scores related to mapping between the person and topics associated with the list of telephone calls.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein the performance score is determined based on an analysis of each person’s speech attributes on a prior telephone call involving the selected topic.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one telephone call in the displayed list of telephone calls is selectable.

“5. The system of claim 1, further comprising: the server configured to: receive, from additional user devices, indications of the topic selected via a plurality of additional telephone calls; determine that a number of telephone calls having the sentiment score associated with the selected topic exceeds a limit; identify a plurality of persons available to answer the number of telephone calls, wherein the number of telephone calls are randomly distributed among the plurality of persons regardless of the experience score or the performance score; and send, to a plurality of computers associated with a plurality of persons, messages that indicates that the telephone call or at least one of the plurality of additional telephone calls is mapped to the plurality of persons.

“6. The system of claim 1, further comprising: at least one computer from the one or more computers configured to: record a conversation between the person and a user of the user device; send the conversation to the server; the server further configured to: receive and analyze the recorded conversation to determine a conversation score based on words used in the conversation, a tone of the conversation, a cadence of the conversation, or an amount of time of the conversation; and update the performance score for the person based on the conversation score.

“7. The system of claim 6, wherein the conversation score is determined by analyzing a set of words from a beginning portion of the recorded conversation.

“8. A method, comprising: generating a plurality of sentiment scores associated with a plurality of topics, by: analyzing each sentence in conversations between users and call representatives, determining a sentiment sub-score of each sentence associated with at least one topic, and combining the sentiment sub-score of each sentence to create a sentiment score associated with the at least one topic; receiving, from a user device, an indication of a topic selected via a telephone call, wherein the selected topic is one of the plurality of topics; obtaining a sentiment score associated with the selected topic from the generated plurality of sentiment scores; identifying one or more persons having personal compatibility to answer the telephone call in the selected topic, wherein the one or more persons are identified based on a mapping between the one or more persons and the plurality of topics, wherein the mapping between each person and at least one topic is based on an experience score that indicates a level of predicted performance or qualification of each person in the at least one topic and based on a performance score that characterizes each person’s level of success in handling a telephone call in the at least one topic; and sending, to one or more computers associated with the one or more persons, one or more messages that indicates that the telephone call is mapped to the one or more persons, wherein the one or more messages indicate a recommendation for the one or more persons to answer the telephone call based on the sentiment score, and the experience score and the performance score for the mapping between the one or more persons and the selected topic, wherein a list of telephone calls to be answered by a person is configured to be displayed on each of the one or more computers, and wherein the list of telephone calls includes the telephone call from the user device.

“9. The method of claim 8, wherein the list of telephone calls is organized in an order of one or more telephone calls recommended for the person to one or more telephone calls not recommended for the person, and wherein the order is determined based on experience scores or performance scores related to mapping between the person and topics associated with the list of telephone calls.

“10. The method of claim 8, wherein the performance score is determined based on an analysis of each person’s speech attributes on a prior telephone call involving the selected topic.

“11. The method of claim 8, wherein at least one telephone call in the displayed list of telephone calls is selectable.

“12. The method of claim 8, further comprising: receiving, from additional user devices, indications of the topic selected via a plurality of additional telephone calls; determining that a number of telephone calls having the sentiment score associated with the selected topic exceeds a limit; identifying a plurality of persons available to answer the number of telephone calls, wherein the number of telephone calls are randomly distributed among the plurality of persons regardless of the experience score or the performance score; and sending, to a plurality of computers associated with a plurality of persons, messages that indicates that the telephone call or at least one of the plurality of additional telephone calls is mapped to the plurality of persons.

“13. The method of claim 8, further comprising: receiving and analyzing a recorded conversation between the person and a user of the user device to determine a conversation score based on words used in the conversation, a tone of the conversation, a cadence of the conversation, or an amount of time of the conversation; and updating the performance score for the person based on the conversation score.

“14. The method of claim 13, wherein the conversation score is determined by analyzing a set of words from a beginning portion of the recorded conversation.”

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

For more information, see this patent: Daali, Amy. Predictive mapping for routing telephone calls. U.S. Patent Number 11463587, filed March 4, 2020, and published online on October 4, 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=11463587.PN.&OS=PN/11463587RS=PN/11463587

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)