US 12,289,426 B2
Automated conversational menu overlay with IVR in contact centers
Nagendra Channasagara Lakshman, San Francisco, CA (US)
Assigned to CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC., San Jose, CA (US)
Filed by Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US)
Filed on Oct. 28, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/975,833.
Prior Publication US 2024/0146842 A1, May 2, 2024
Int. Cl. H04M 3/493 (2006.01); G10L 15/18 (2013.01); H04M 3/51 (2006.01)
CPC H04M 3/4936 (2013.01) [G10L 15/1822 (2013.01); H04M 3/5166 (2013.01); H04M 3/5175 (2013.01)] 22 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
at a contact center that operates to provide customer service to callers by receiving calls from the callers and directing the callers to desired endpoints that deliver information to the callers based upon an expressed intent of each caller associated with each call, selecting whether to process a current call by a current caller received by the contact center utilizing an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) model or a Conversational Menu (CM) model;
in response to a selection of the IVR model to process the current call:
directing the current caller to a selected endpoint by requiring the current caller to navigate through a hierarchical IVR tree of nodes, each node including a set of options selectable by the caller in which a selected option from the set of options determines a next node in which to advance along the hierarchical IVR tree of nodes; and
reaching the selected endpoint for the current caller based upon a specific navigational path along a plurality of nodes within the hierarchical IVR tree of nodes; and
in response to a selection of the CM model to process the current call:
analyzing a verbal utterance of the current caller at an initiation of the current call, the analyzing comprising parsing the verbal utterance to select one or more keywords that are used to determine the selected endpoint to which the current call is directed; and
based upon the analyzing of the verbal utterance, directing the caller during the current call to the selected endpoint so as to bypass nodes within the specific navigational path of nodes along the IVR hierarchical tree that leads to the selected endpoint.