US 12,088,760 B2
Intelligent speech-enabled scripting
Thomas V. Curtin, Madison, WI (US); Alena L. Aiken, Monona, WI (US); Kevin Mark Beale, Stoughton, WI (US); Wayne Paul Waldner, Richland Center, WI (US); Daniel R. Cropp, McFarland, WI (US); and Alan D. Tucker, Madison, WI (US)
Assigned to AMERICAN TEL-A-SYSTEMS, INC., McFarland, WI (US)
Filed by American TEL-A-Systems, Inc., McFarland, WI (US)
Filed on Jul. 18, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/354,188.
Application 18/354,188 is a continuation of application No. 17/234,869, filed on Apr. 20, 2021, granted, now 11,750,740.
Application 17/234,869 is a continuation of application No. 16/258,341, filed on Jan. 25, 2019, granted, now 11,032,416, issued on Jun. 8, 2021.
Prior Publication US 2023/0362301 A1, Nov. 9, 2023
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. H04M 3/42 (2006.01); G10L 13/08 (2013.01); G10L 15/22 (2006.01); H04M 3/436 (2006.01); H04M 3/523 (2006.01); H04M 3/54 (2006.01)
CPC H04M 3/436 (2013.01) [G10L 13/08 (2013.01); G10L 15/22 (2013.01); H04M 3/523 (2013.01); H04M 3/541 (2013.01)] 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system, comprising:
an applications server configured to communicatively couple to a softswitch, a resource server comprising a speech-recognition engine, a database, and a script monitoring panel, the applications server configured to:
receive, from the softswitch, an indication that a call from a calling party directed to a called number was received;
determine, in response to the indication that the call was received, whether an agent is available to answer the call;
prior to routing the call, determine, based at least in part on the determination of whether an agent is available to answer the call, whether to route the call to an available agent determined from a plurality of agents associated with a call centre or to a speech-enabled intelligent script associated with one of the called number or the calling party;
instruct the softswitch to route the call to the speech-enabled intelligent script in response to a determination that no agent is available to answer the call, the speech-enabled intelligent script configured to guide a user on the call through the speech-enabled intelligent script using one or more of pre-recorded prompts, voice menus, and text-to-speech prompts;
instruct the softswitch to route the call to the available agent in response to a determination that an agent is available to answer the call;
obtain, using the speech recognition engine of the resource server, one or more of selections and data inputs from the user in response to the one or more of pre-recorded prompts, voice menus, and text-to-speech prompts of the speech-enabled intelligent script;
monitor an availability of one or more agents while the user is interacting with the speech-enabled intelligent script;
determine that an agent is now available to answer the call;
instruct the softswitch to transfer the call to the agent that is now available to answer the call;
send the one or more of selections and data inputs obtained from the user and an indication of the progress of the user through the speech-enabled intelligent script to the agent that is now available to answer the call;
wherein the applications server is further configured to:
instruct the script monitoring panel to show current calls in progress and the current step in an intelligent script; and
instruct the script monitoring panel to display a visual representation of the speech-enabled intelligent script and an indication of the progress of the user through the speech enabled script.