Patent Issued for Speech recognition for providing assistance during customer interaction (USPTO 11403334): State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company

2022 AUG 24 (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 Hernandez, Sylvia (Normal, IL, US), filed on May 21, 2020, was published online on August 2, 2022.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11403334, is State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (Bloomington, Illinois, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote 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 obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors 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 of enhancing a customer experience, the computer-implemented method comprising: recording, via one or more processors, a conversation between a customer and a service representative with the customer’s permission or consent; analyzing, via the one or more processors, the conversation to identify one or more keywords generated during the conversation; locating, via the one or more processors, virtual content associated with the one or more keywords by searching a database, the virtual content representing information other than the conversation and related to products or services that are of interest to the customer; and presenting, via the one or more processors, the virtual content associated with the one or more keywords on a display screen associated with the service representative to facilitate the service representative relaying relevant information to the customer during the conversation and enhancing the customer experience; wherein the conversation is a telephone conversation or a text/virtual conversation.

“2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: identifying, via the one or more processors, the virtual content associated with each of the one or more keywords by scanning or searching virtual pages of information for each of the one or more keywords; and storing, via the one or more processors, the virtual content associated with each of the one or more keywords in the database along with a data field identifying each of the one or more keywords for subsequent electronic searching and retrieval of the virtual content.

“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: ranking, via the one or more processors, a relevance of the virtual content associated with the one or more keywords, the relevance indicating how pertinent the virtual content is to the one or more keywords; and displaying, via the one or more processors, the virtual content associated with the one or more keywords that is ranked highest according to the relevance in a prominent or specific area of the display screen so as to not distract the service representative with virtual contents that are not, the most relevant and to present only the most relevant information to the service representative.

“4. 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.”

“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “auto insurance,” and “homeowners insurance.”

“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “discount,” and/or “bundling.”

“7. 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.”

“8. 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.”

“9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are spoken by the customer.

“10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are typed by the customer.

“11. A computer system configured to enhance a customer experience, the system comprising: a processor electronically coupled to a memory, the processor configured to: record a conversation between a customer and a service representative with the customer’s permission or consent; analyze the conversation to identify one or more keywords generated during the conversation; locate virtual content associated with the one or more keywords by searching a database, the virtual content representing information other than the conversation and related to products or services that are of interest to the customer; and present the virtual content associated with the one or more keywords on a display screen associated with the service representative to facilitate the service representative relaying relevant information to the customer during the conversation and enhancing the customer experience; wherein the conversation is a telephone conversation or a text/virtual conversation.

“12. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the processor is further configured to: identify the virtual content associated with each of the one or more keywords by scanning or searching virtual pages of information for each of the one or more keywords; and store the virtual content associated with each of the one or more keywords in the database along with a data field identifying each of the one or more keywords for subsequent electronic searching and retrieval of the virtual content.

“13. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the processor is further configured to: rank a relevance of the virtual content associated with the one or more keywords, the relevance indicating how pertinent the virtual content is to the one or more keywords; and display the virtual content associated with the one or more keywords that is ranked highest according to the relevance in a prominent or specific area of the display screen so as to not distract the service representative with virtual contents that are not the most relevant and to present only the most relevant information to the service representative.

“14. The computer system of claim 11, 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.”

“15. The computer system of claim 11, 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.”

“16. The computer system of claim 11, 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.”

“17. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “discount.”

“18. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “auto insurance.”

“19. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are spoken by the customer.

“20. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are typed by the customer.”

For more information, see this patent: Hernandez, Sylvia. Speech recognition for providing assistance during customer interaction. U.S. Patent Number 11403334, filed May 21, 2020, and published online on August 2, 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=11403334.PN.&OS=PN/11403334RS=PN/11403334

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