Patent Issued for Real time avatar (USPTO 11741518): United Service Automobile Association (USAA)

2023 SEP 14 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- United Service Automobile Association (USAA) (San Antonio, Texas, United States) has been issued patent number 11741518, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Chadha, Bipin (San Antonio, TX, US), Gaeta, Michael Joseph (San Antonio, TX, US), Loukas, Jeremy Kolt (San Antonio, TX, US), Tijerina, Oscar Roberto (San Antonio, TX, US).

This patent was filed on March 29, 2021 and was published online on August 29, 2023.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “The present disclosure relates generally to a system and method for customer and customer service interaction. In particular, the present disclosure relates to generating and/or utilizing tools indicative of customer-related information to facilitate improved customer service.

“Many product and service oriented businesses provide real-time customer service. For example, a banking institution may provide telephone or text-to-chat customer service for various products and/or services associated with the banking institution, such as checking services, savings services, credit services, credit protection services, loan services, and others.

“When a customer contacts a business (e.g., such as the banking institution described above, or a customer service department thereof) seeking assistance, it may be difficult to quickly and efficiently identify a reason for the contact from the customer. For example, traditional techniques may require, among other steps, excessively querying the customer (e.g., via a human or digital customer service representative) to determine the reason for the contact from the customer. Results from the customer service representative querying the customer may be inaccurate and/or time consuming, which may waste resources and frustrate the customer. Further, traditional techniques may not effectively inform the customer service representative of important information associated with the customer. Accordingly, improved identification and understanding of the customer, and improved customer service, may be desired.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “One or more specific embodiments of the present disclosure are described above. In an effort to provide a concise description of these embodiments, all features of an actual implementation may not be described in the specification. It should be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, as in any engineering or design project, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve the developers’ specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business-related constraints, which may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those of ordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure.

“Present embodiments are generally directed toward a system and method of generating and/or utilizing a digital avatar. In particular, the present disclosure relates to generating and/or utilizing a digital avatar representative of a customer or traits of a customer to facilitate improved customer service.

“For example, a product or service oriented business, such as a banking or insurance institution, may maintain a customer service department that assists customers or potential customers of the business. In some embodiments, some or all of the customer service department may be outsourced to a third party business. In accordance with present embodiments, an avatar generating system may be interfaced (or incorporated) with the customer service system or department. It should be noted, however, that the avatar generating system, in accordance with present embodiments, may be interfaced with other systems configured to facilitate a better understanding of an individual or entity represented by the avatar.

“The avatar generating system may include a coordinating device that generates the avatar. The coordinating device may receive information associated with a customer for which generation of an avatar is sought. For example, an operator of the avatar generating system (e.g., a customer service representative of the customer service department, or an automated operator triggered in response to a customer contact) may communicate to the coordinating device a request for generation of an avatar representative of a particular customer (e.g., a customer from which the customer service representative received a communication or inquiry). The coordinating device may receive the information associated with the customer from a customer account stored to a server database maintained by the business (e.g., banking institution) or the third party business (e.g., which maintains the customer service department for the business). The customer account may be pre-populated with the information from one or more sources, and the customer account may be updated with information from the one or more sources at any time. For example, as described in detail below with reference to the figures, the one or more sources may include the customer, social media accounts of the customer, other accounts of the customer (e.g., government maintained accounts, other accounts with the business or other businesses), a representative of the business, a family member of the customer, wearable devices, or other sources. The information may be manually entered to the customer account (e.g., by the customer, the family member of the customer, or the representative of the business), or the information may be automatically transmitted/saved to (e.g., gathered or received by) the customer account on the database (e.g., by way of a software program scanning the customer’s social media accounts, such as text analysis software).

“The coordinating device may also receive, from the operator of the avatar generating system (e.g., the customer service representative), data indicative of preferences regarding an aesthetic and/or a style of the avatar. For example, the operator may instruct or request that the coordinating device generate the avatar to include certain features. Accordingly, each operator of the avatar generating system may customize the avatar to his or her preference(s). By enabling the operator to customize the avatar, the operator’s understanding of the customer and the operator’s communication with the customer may be improved. For example, a particular operator may align his or her unique communication skills with the types of avatar features most beneficial for his or her unique communication skills. Accordingly, interaction between the operator and the customer may be improved, and resources required to assist the customer are reduced. The types, styles, and aesthetics of example avatars will be described in detail below with reference to the figures. However, in general, the avatar may include representations of information stored to the account such as: identification information of an individual (e.g., the customer) associated with the account (e.g., name, social security number, birthdate), qualifications of the individual (e.g., occupation, job, military rank, education level, professional level), familial information of the individual, demographic information of the individual, business interactions between the customer and the individual (e.g., products/services paid for by the customer and provided by the business), a health of the individual, and/or other information.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. One or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: receive account data corresponding to a customer account of a plurality of customer accounts saved to a database; receive visual preference data corresponding to one or more preferences of a customer service representative; and generate, based on the account data and the visual preference data, an avatar representative of the customer account or a customer associated with the customer account and stylized in accordance with the one or more preferences of the customer service representative; and display an illustration of the avatar on a display of an operator device corresponding to the customer service representative.

“2. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to generate the avatar such that the avatar includes a visual human representation of the customer corresponding to the customer account.

“3. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media of claim 2, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, cause one or more processors to generate the avatar such that the avatar includes the visual human representation of the customer corresponding to the customer account, and such that the visual human representation of the customer corresponding to the customer account includes: a representation of an occupation corresponding the customer; a representation of a military rank corresponding to the customer; a representation of a military division corresponding to the customer; a representation of a level of education of the customer; a representation of a professional level of the customer; or a representation of a health status of the customer.

“4. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to generate the avatar such that the avatar includes a circular arrangement having a plurality of arcuate segments concentric about a common middle point, wherein the plurality of arcuate segments represents a corresponding plurality of characteristics of the account data, and wherein a length of each arcuate segment of the plurality of arcuate segments represents a magnitude or extent of a corresponding characteristic of the corresponding plurality of characteristics of the account data.

“5. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media of claim 4, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to receive the visual preference data corresponding to the one or more preferences of the customer service representative, including data indicative of a total number of arcuate segments to include in the plurality of arcuate segments of the circular arrangement of the avatar.

“6. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media of claim 4, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to receive the visual preference data corresponding to the one or more preferences of the customer service representative, including data indicative of a selection of characteristics included in the corresponding plurality of characteristics of the account data.

“7. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: receive the account data from a server on which the database is stored; and receive the visual preference data from the operator device corresponding to the customer service representative.

“8. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media of claim 7, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to output data indicative of the avatar to the operator device corresponding to the customer service representative.

“9. A method, comprising: receiving, from a server, account data corresponding to a customer account of a plurality of customer accounts saved to a database; receiving, from an operator device corresponding to a customer service representative, visual preference data corresponding to one or more preferences of the customer service representative; generating, based on the account data and the visual preference data, an avatar representative of the customer account or a customer associated with the customer account and stylized in accordance with the one or more preferences of the customer service representative; and displaying an illustration of the avatar on a display of the operator device.

“10. The method of claim 9, comprising generating the avatar such that the avatar includes a visual human representation of the customer corresponding to the customer account.

“11. The method of claim 10, comprising generating the avatar such that the avatar includes the visual human representation of the customer corresponding to the customer account, and such that the visual human representation of the customer corresponding to the customer account includes: a representation of an occupation corresponding the customer; a representation of a military rank corresponding to the customer; a representation of a military division corresponding to the customer; a representation of a level of education of the customer; a representation of a professional level of the customer; or a representation of a health status of the customer.

“12. The method of claim 9, comprising: communicating, to the operator device corresponding to the customer service representative, a plurality of preference options; and receiving, from the operator device corresponding to the customer service representative, the visual preference data corresponding to the preferences of the customer service representative, wherein the visual preference data corresponding to the preferences of the customer service representative is based on an input to the operator device corresponding to a selection from the plurality of preference options.

“13. The method of claim 9, comprising receiving a customer communication at the operator device prior to: receiving, from the server, the account data corresponding to the customer account of the plurality of customer accounts saved to the database; and generating, based on the account data and the visual preference data, the avatar representative of the customer account or the customer associated with the customer account and stylized in accordance with the one or more preferences of the customer service representative.

“14. A system, comprising: an operator device corresponding to a customer service representative; and one or more processors configured to: receive account data corresponding to a customer account; receive, from the operator device corresponding to the customer service representative, preference data indicative of one or more preferences of the customer service representative regarding a visualization of the customer account or a customer corresponding to the customer account; generate, based on the account data and the preference data, an avatar representative of the customer account or the customer corresponding to the customer account and stylized in accordance with the one or more preferences of the customer service representative; and cause the operator device to display an illustration of the avatar on a display of the operator device.

“15. The system of claim 14, wherein the one or more processors is configured to receive the account data from a wearable device or a social media account.

“16. The system of claim 14, comprising a server having a database hosted thereon, the database storing a plurality of customer accounts including the customer account, wherein the one or more processors is configured to receive the account data from the server.

“17. The system of claim 14, wherein the one or more processors is configured to generate the avatar such that the avatar includes a visual human representation of the customer corresponding to the customer account, and such that the visual human representation of the customer corresponding to the customer account includes: a representation of an occupation corresponding the customer; a representation of a military rank corresponding to the customer; a representation of a military division corresponding to the customer; a representation of a level of education of the customer; a representation of a professional level of the customer; or a representation of a health status of the customer.

“18. The system of claim 14, comprising a multi-functional device having the operator device and the one or more processors.

“19. The system of claim 14, comprising a switch configured to: receive a customer communication corresponding to the customer; and route the customer communication to the operator device corresponding to the customer service representative.”

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Chadha, Bipin. Real time avatar. U.S. Patent Number 11741518, filed March 29, 2021, and published online on August 29, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11741518)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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