Patent Issued for Pull-based routing for service sessions (USPTO 11157843): United Services Automobile Association

2021 NOV 12 (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 Cairns, Michael Justin (Helotes, TX, US), Fiedler, Kevin K. (Boerne, TX, US), Gaeta, Michael Joseph (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on May 31, 2016, was published online on October 26, 2021.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11157843, is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “An organization may use any number of computing systems, communications networks, data storage devices, or other types of systems to provide services to individuals. An organization may also employ service representatives that use the various systems to assist individuals in service sessions that are conducted over the telephone, in a video conference, through text chat sessions, or over other communication channels. An organization may seek to optimize the manner in which incoming service requests are routed to service representatives to ensure optimal usage of computing resources and also to provide an appropriate level of responsiveness to the individuals.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Implementations of the present disclosure are generally directed to routing requests in a service environment. More specifically, implementations are directed to pull-based routing of requests in a service environment, in which the routing employs rule sets to determine point values for various requests and hierarchical filters to present pending requests in a user interface.

“In general, innovative aspects of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include actions of: determining at least one characteristic of each of a plurality of service requests received in a service environment; presenting a list of the plurality of service requests in a user interface (UI), the list including an indication of the at least one characteristic of each of the plurality of service requests; detecting a selection of the service request from the list, the selection made through the UI by a service representative (SR); and in response to the selection of the service request, initiating a service session between the SR and an individual associated with the service request.

“Implementations can optionally include one or more of the following features: the at least one characteristic of the service request includes one or more of a communication channel of the service request, a category of the service request, a keyword associated with the service request, a difficulty of the service request, a wait time of the service request, an identifier of the individual associated with the service request, or a presence of the individual in a favorites list of the SR; the at least one characteristic is determined based at least partly on a natural language analysis of each of the plurality of service requests; the at least one characteristic is determined based at least partly on an indication made through a request interface by an individual associated with each of the plurality of service requests; the actions further include determining a point value for each of the plurality of service requests; the actions further include presenting the point value for each of the plurality of service requests in the UI; the actions further include in response to the selection of the service request, updating at least one score for the SR based on the point value of the service request; the point value for each of the plurality of service requests is based at least partly on a difficulty and a wait time of each of the plurality of service requests; the point value for each of the plurality of service requests is determined by applying a set of rules; the actions further include presenting the set of rules in the UI; the actions further include providing at least one control in the UI, the at least one control being employable by an authorized user to modify the set of rules; the service session is initiated as one or more of a voice chat session, a video chat session, a text chat session, or a document sharing session; the list of the plurality of service requests that is presented in the UI is filtered based on one or more of a communication channel or a category associated with the SR; and/or the list of the plurality of service requests that is presented in the UI is filtered based on a hierarchical set of filters.

“Other implementations of any of the above aspects include corresponding systems, apparatus, and computer programs that are configured to perform the actions of the methods, encoded on computer storage devices. The present disclosure also provides a computer-readable storage medium coupled to one or more processors and having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations in accordance with implementations of the methods provided herein. The present disclosure further provides a system for implementing the methods provided herein. The system includes one or more processors, and a computer-readable storage medium coupled to the one or more processors having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations in accordance with implementations of the methods provided herein.

“Implementations of the present disclosure provide one or more of the following advantages. In traditional service environments, such as call centers, call routing may involve a number of administrators who determine which service representative is to receive and handle a particular call from a customer. Although traditional service environments may include some automation to route service requests, such automatic routing typically requires programmers to consider all possible scenarios and create routing logic and/or write code to handle the various scenarios, leading to the expenditure of a large amount of programming time and computing resources. Moreover, traditional call routing systems (either automatic or manual) may be prone to errors and may not adequately account for all possible scenarios in which individuals are requesting service to address a problem, issue, or question. Implementations address these problems by decentralizing the routing process and providing a user interface that enables service representatives to indicate which service requests they will handle. Accordingly, implementations avoid the coding that is needed in traditional systems to implement routing logic, and implementations also do not consume as much processing power, memory, and/or other computing resources that traditional systems consume to execute routing logic to make routing decisions. Implementations replace the traditional push-based systems, in which requests are pushed to service representatives without service representative input, with a pull-based system in which each service representative decides which requests to handle based on their preference, expertise, fatigue level, and/or other considerations. Accordingly, implementations substantially reduce or eliminate erroneous routing decisions that may be made in traditional systems.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer-implemented method for routing a service request, the method being performed by at least one processor, the method comprising: determining, by the at least one processor, for each of a plurality of service requests received in a service environment, a respective level of difficulty of the service request and a respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request; determining, by the at least one processor, a numerical point value for each service request based on the respective level of difficulty of the service request and the respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request, wherein the numerical point value increases faster than linearly as the respective estimated time needed to resolve the service request increases; reducing an amount of computational resources used in routing the plurality of service requests to one or more devices of one or more service representatives, relative to an amount of computational resources that would be used by one or more systems in routing the plurality of service requests without input of the one or more service representatives, wherein reducing the amount of computational resources comprises: transmitting, by the at least one processor, user interface data that, when received by a user device of a service representative (SR), causes the user device to render a user interface (ET) including one or more graphical representations representing: a list of the plurality of service requests, the list including, for each service request of the plurality of service requests, (i) the respective level of difficulty of the service request, (ii) the respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request, and (iii) the respective numerical point value that was determined based on the respective level of difficulty of the service request and the respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request; and one or more user-selectable icons that, when selected, indicate a selection of a particular service request from the list for initiation of a service session; detecting, by the at least one processor, a selection of the one or m ore user-selectable icons indicating selection of a particular service request from the list, the selection made through the UI by the SR; and in response to detecting the selection of the particular service request, initiating, by the at least one processor, a service session between the SR and an individual that initiated the particular service request, and adding the point value of the selected service request to a score for the SR, wherein initiating the service session includes establishing a real-time communications channel between a user device of the individual that initiated the particular service request and the user device of the SR.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the list of the plurality of service requests further includes, for each service request of the plurality of service requests, one or more of: a communication channel of the service request; a category of the service request; a keyword associated with the service request; an identifier of the individual associated with the service request; or a presence of the individual in a favorites list of the SR.

“3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the difficulty of the service request or the respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request is determined based at least partly on a natural language analysis of the service request.

“4. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the difficulty of the service request or the respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request is determined based at least partly on an indication made through a request interface by an individual associated with the service request.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein the numerical point value for each of the plurality of service requests is determined by applying a set of rules.

“6. The method of claim 5, further comprising: presenting, by the at least one processor, the set of rules in the UI; and providing, by the at least one processor, at least one control in the UI, the at least one control being employable by an authorized user to modify the set of rules.

“7. The method of claim 1, wherein the service session is initiated as one or more of a voice chat session, a video chat session, a text chat session, or a document sharing session.

“8. The method of claim 1, wherein the list of the plurality of service requests that is presented in the UI is filtered based on one or more of a communication channel or a category associated with the SR.

“9. The method of claim 1, wherein the list of the plurality of service requests is filtered based on a hierarchical set of filters.

“10. A system, comprising: at least one processor; and a memory communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, the memory storing instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform operations comprising: determining for each of a plurality of service requests received in a service environment, a respective level of difficulty of the service request and a respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request; determining a numerical point value for each service request based on the respective level of difficulty of the service request and the respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request, wherein the numerical point value increases faster than linearly as the respective estimated time needed to resolve the service request increases; reducing an amount of computational resources used in routing the plurality of service requests to one or more devices of one or more service representatives, relative to an amount of computational resources that would be used by one or more systems in routing the plurality of service requests without input of the one or more service representatives, wherein reducing the amount of computational resources comprises: transmitting user interface data that, when received by a user device of a service representative (SR), causes the user device to render a user interface (UI) including one or more graphical representations representing: a list of the plurality of service requests, the list including, for each service request of the plurality of service requests, (i) the respective level of difficulty of the service request, (ii) the respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request, and (iii) the respective numerical point value that was determined based on the respective level of difficulty of the service request and the respective estimate of time needed to resolve the service request; and one or more user-selectable icons that, when selected, indicate a selection of a particular service request from the list for initiation of a service session; detecting a selection of the one or more user-selectable icons indicating selection of a particular service request from the list, the selection made through the UI by the SR; and in response to detecting the selection of the particular service request, initiating a service session between the SR and an individual that initiated the particular service request, and adding the point value of the selected service request to a score for the SR, wherein initiating the service session includes establishing a real-time communications channel between a user device of the individual that initiated the particular service request and the user device of the SR.

“11. The system of claim 10, wherein the numerical point value for each of the plurality of service requests is determined by applying a set of rules.

“12. The system of claim 11, the operations further comprising: presenting the set of rules in the UI; and providing at least one control in the UI, the at least one control being employable by an authorized user to modify the set of rules.”

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

For more information, see this patent: Cairns, Michael Justin. Pull-based routing for service sessions. U.S. Patent Number 11157843, filed May 31, 2016, and published online on October 26, 2021. 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=11157843.PN.&OS=PN/11157843RS=PN/11157843

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