Patent Issued for Speech recognition for providing assistance during customer interaction (USPTO 11055336)

2021 JUL 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Hernandez, Sylvia (Normal, IL, US), filed on March 6, 2019, was published online on July 6, 2021, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11055336 is assigned to State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (Bloomington, Illinois, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Businesses often receive phone calls from potential customers wishing to get information regarding products or services offered by the business. For example, the potential customer may want to know about features and pricing of a particular product. In addition, current customers may call wishing to change a service or get technical support about a particular product. Given that a business may offer numerous services or have numerous products in numerous product lines, a customer representative fielding the phone call may have difficulty in being able to provide accurate and detailed information about any one service or product. While the customer representative may have access to a computing device or computer terminal on which he or she can search for relevant information during the phone call, the process of searching may require time during which the customer has to wait for the representative to type in appropriate keywords or search strings in response to the customer’s queries. This may lead to inefficient usage of both the customer’s time and the representative’s time, and negatively impact the customer experience.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Embodiments of the present technology relate to computing devices, software applications, computer-implemented methods, and computer-readable media for presenting relevant information to a customer service representative of a business. The embodiments provide for receiving a data stream corresponding to a spoken conversation between a customer and a representative, converting the data stream to a text stream, determining keywords from the text stream, and searching a database for information related to the keywords.

“In a first aspect, a computer-implemented method for presenting relevant information to a customer service representative of a business may be provided. The method may include: (1) receiving a digitized data stream corresponding to a spoken conversation between a customer and a representative; (2) converting the data stream to a text stream; (3) determining one or more keywords from the text stream; (4) comparing the one or more keywords with a history of keywords that have previously been searched; and/or (5) searching a database for information related to the one or more keywords that have not been previously searched. The information yielded by the keyword search may be presented on a display for the customer service representative’s review. After which, the customer service representative may relay the information to the customer in a timely manner and the customer experience may be enhanced. The method may include additional, fewer, or alternative actions, including those discussed elsewhere herein and/or may be implemented via one or more local or remote processors or servers, and/or computer-executable instructions stored on non-transitory computer-readable media or medium.

“In another aspect, a computing device for presenting relevant information to a customer service representative of a business may be provided. The computing device may include a processing element electronically coupled to a memory element and configured to receive a digitized data stream corresponding to a spoken conversation between a customer and a representative, convert the data stream to a text stream, determine one or more keywords from the text stream, compare the one or more keywords with a history of keywords that have previously been searched, and search a database for information related to the one or more keywords that have not been previously searched to facilitate the representative relaying relevant information to the customer and/or enhancing the customer experience. The computing device may include additional, fewer, or alternate components and/or functionality, including that discussed elsewhere herein.

“In yet another aspect, a software application presenting relevant information to a customer service representative of a business, such as during a telephone with a customer, may be provided. The software application may comprise a speech recognition component, a keyword generator, and/or a search engine. The speech recognition component may receive a data stream corresponding to a conversation between a representative and a customer, and may be configured to convert the data stream to a text stream of words from the conversation. The keyword generator may receive the text stream, and may be configured to generate one or more keywords from the text stream. The search engine may receive the one or more keywords, and may be configured to compare the one or more keywords with a history of keywords that have previously been searched and search a database for (relevant) information related to the one or more keywords that have not been previously searched to facilitate the representative relaying relevant information to the customer and/or enhancing the customer experience. The software application may include additional, less, or alternate functionality, including that discussed elsewhere herein.

“In yet another aspect, a computer-readable medium for presenting relevant information to a customer service representative of a business may be provided. The computer-readable medium may include an executable program stored thereon, wherein the program instructs a processing element of a computing device to perform the following steps: (1) receiving a digitized data stream corresponding to a spoken conversation between a customer and a representative; (2) converting the data stream to a text stream; (3) determining one or more keywords from the text stream; (4) comparing the one or more keywords with a history of keywords that have previously been searched; (5) and/or searching a database for information related to the one or more keywords that have not been previously searched to facilitate the representative relaying relevant information to the customer in a timely manner and/or enhancing the customer experience. The program stored on the computer-readable medium may instruct the processing element to perform additional, fewer, or alternative actions, including those discussed elsewhere herein.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer-implemented method for presenting relevant information to a customer service representative of a business, the computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a digitized data stream corresponding to a spoken conversation between a customer and a representative; converting the data stream to a text stream; determining one or more keywords from the text stream to be searched in a database; if the one or more keywords have not been previously searched in the database, searching the database for an insurance policy of the customer if the one or more keywords include one or more identifiers associated with the insurance policy; and presenting information on a display to facilitate relaying relevant information to the customer and enhancing customer experience.

“2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising storing the one or more keywords that were just searched.

“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising comparing the one or more keywords with a history of keywords.

“4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising comparing words from the text stream with words included in a list of keywords related to products or services of the business and generate the words from the text stream that match words from the list of keywords.

“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising generating a percentage value corresponding to a relevance of the one or more keywords.

“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, further comprising presenting the percentage value on the display.

“7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising presenting data regarding the insurance policy of the customer on the display.

“8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “auto,” “home,” “apartment,” “condo,” “life,” “health,” “renters,” “pet,” “burial,” “personal belongings,” “auto insurance,” “home insurance,” “homeowners insurance,” “renters insurance,” “pet insurance,” “burial insurance,” “health insurance,” and/or “personal articles insurance”.

“9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “auto,” “home,” or “life”.

“10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “renewal,” “cancellation,” “premium,” “discount,” “rate,” “bundle,” “bundling,” “deductible(s),” “coverage(s),” “limit(s),” “quote,” and/or “offers”.

“11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more keywords comprise financial services-related keywords including “auto loan,” “vehicle loan,” “home loan,” “personal loan,” “loan,” “financing,” “terms,” “conditions,” and/or “quote”.

“12. A computer-implemented method for presenting information during customer service interactions, the computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a data stream corresponding to a spoken conversation between a customer and a customer service representative; converting the data stream into a text stream; analyzing the text stream to determine one or more keywords to be searched in a database; if the one or more keywords have not been previously searched in the database, searching the database for an insurance policy of the customer if the one or more keywords include one or more identifiers associated with the insurance policy; generating data regarding the insurance policy of the customer; and presenting the data regarding the insurance policy of the customer on a display to facilitate enhancement of customer experience between the customer and the customer service representative.

“13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “auto,” “home,” or “life”.

“14. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “renewal,” “cancellation,” “premium,” “discount,” “rate,” “bundle,” “bundling,” “deductible(s),” “coverage(s),” “limit(s),” “quote,” and/or “offers”.

“15. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein the one or more keywords comprise financial services-related keywords including “auto loan,” “vehicle loan,” “home loan,” “personal loan,” “loan,” “financing,” “terms,” “conditions,” and/or “quote”.

“16. A computing device for presenting relevant information to a customer service representative of a business, the computing device comprising: a processing element electronically coupled to a memory element, the processing element configured to: receive a digitized data stream corresponding to a spoken conversation between a customer and a representative; convert the data stream to a text stream; determine one or more keywords from the text stream to be searched in a database; if the one or more keywords have not been previously searched in the database, search the database for an insurance policy of the customer if the one or more keywords include one or more identifiers associated with the insurance policy; and present information related to the insurance policy on a display to facilitate relaying relevant information to the customer and enhancing customer experience.

“17. The computing device of claim 16, wherein the processing element is further configured to store the one or more keywords.

“18. The computing device of claim 16, wherein the processing element is further configured to compare words from the text stream with words included in a list of keywords related to products or services of the business.

“19. The computing device of claim 16, wherein the processing element is further configured to generate a percentage value corresponding to a relevance of the one or more keywords.

“20. The computing device of claim 19, wherein the processing element is further configured to present the percentage value on the display.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Hernandez, Sylvia. Speech recognition for providing assistance during customer interaction. U.S. Patent Number 11055336, filed March 6, 2019, and published online on July 6, 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=11055336.PN.&OS=PN/11055336RS=PN/11055336

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