“Speech Recognition For Providing Assistance During Customer Interaction” in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20220327152): State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company

2022 NOV 01 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent application by the inventor Hernandez, Sylvia (Normal, IL, US), filed on June 28, 2022, was made available online on October 13, 2022, according to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx correspondents.

This patent application 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 application, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent application: “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.

“Advantages of these and other embodiments will become more apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description of the exemplary embodiments which have been shown and described by way of illustration. As will be realized, the present embodiments described herein may be capable of other and different embodiments, and their details are capable of modification in various respects. Accordingly, the drawings and description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.

“The Figures depict exemplary embodiments for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following discussion that alternative embodiments of the devices, applications, and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the invention described herein.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1-20. (canceled)

“21. A computer-implemented method for enhancing customer interactions, the computer-implemented method comprising: analyzing, by one or more processors, a conversation between a service representative and a customer to identify one or more keywords generated during the conversation; providing, by the one or more processors, one or more prompts for the service representative to present to the customer during the conversation based upon the one or more keywords generated during the conversation; and displaying, by the one or more processors, the one or more prompts on a screen associated with the service representative to facilitate the service representative in presenting the one or more prompts to the customer to enhance customer interaction during the conversation.

“22. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the conversation is a telephone conversation and the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are spoken by the customer.

“23. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the conversation is a text conversation and the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are typed by the customer.

“24. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the one or more prompts are provided in real-time during the conversation.

“25. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, further comprising: indicating, by the one or more processors, which prompt of the one or more prompts that the service representative should present to the customer.

“26. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, 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.”

“27. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “renewal,” “cancelation,” “premium,” “discount,” “rate,” “bundle,” “bundling,” “deductible(s),” “coverage(s),” “limit(s),” “quote,” and/or “offers.”

“28. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, 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.”

“29. A system for enhancing customer interactions, the system comprising: one or more processors; and a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to: analyze a conversation between a service representative and a customer to identify one or more keywords generated during the conversation; provide one or more prompts for the service representative to present to the customer during the conversation based upon the one or more keywords generated during the conversation; and display the one or more prompts on a screen associated with the service representative to facilitate the service representative in presenting the one or more prompts to the customer to enhance customer interaction during the conversation.

“30. The system of claim 29, wherein the conversation is a telephone conversation and the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are spoken by the customer.

“31. The system of claim 29, wherein the conversation is a text conversation and the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are typed by the customer.

“32. The system of claim 29, wherein, the instructions that cause the system to provide the one or more prompts further comprise instructions that cause the system to provide the one or more prompts in real-time during the conversation.

“33. The system of claim 29, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the system to: indicate which prompt of the one or more prompts that the service representative should present to the customer.

“34. The system of claim 29, 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.”

“35. The system of claim 29, wherein the one or more keywords comprise insurance-related keywords including “renewal,” “cancelation,” “premium,” “discount,” “rate,” “bundle,” “bundling,” “deductible(s),” “coverage(s),” “limit(s),” “quote,” and/or “offers.”

“36. The system of claim 29, 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.”

“37. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions for enhancing customer interactions, the instructions when executed by one or more processors of a computing device, cause the computing device to: analyze a conversation between a service representative and a customer to identify one or more keywords generated during the conversation; provide one or more prompts for the service representative to present to the customer during the conversation based upon the one or more keywords generated during the conversation; and display the one or more prompts on a screen associated with the service representative to facilitate the service representative in presenting the one or more prompts to the customer to enhance customer interaction during the conversation.

“38. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 37, wherein the conversation is a telephone conversation and the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are spoken by the customer.

“39. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 37, wherein the conversation is a text conversation and the one or more keywords generated during the conversation are typed by the customer.

“40. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 37, wherein, the instructions when executed by the one or more processors further cause the computing device to: indicate which prompt of the one or more prompts that the service representative should present to the customer.”

URL and more information on this patent application, see: Hernandez, Sylvia. Speech Recognition For Providing Assistance During Customer Interaction. Filed June 28, 2022 and posted October 13, 2022. Patent URL: https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220220327152%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20220327152&RS=DN/20220327152

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