US6070142A — Virtual customer sales and service center and met…

Claim 1

Independent Claim 128 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and comprising a quality center for integrating and aiding in management of a plurality of physical resource locations as a single virtual resource center; wherein the quality center manages virtual customer sales and service center operations to define an escalation process for handling the customer contact during the customer contact.

Claim 2

Dependent Claim 128 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and comprising a quality center for integrating and aiding in management of a plurality of physical resource locations as a single virtual resource center; wherein the quality center manages virtual customer sales and service center operations to define an escalation process for handling the customer contact during the customer contact.

Claim 3

Dependent Claim 30 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 wherein the resource is one of a plurality of resources and wherein the plurality of resources have different physical locations.

Claim 4

Dependent Claim 44 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 further comprising a customer information database and a resource profile database, wherein a best suited resource is identified as having a skill corresponding to the type of customer ascertained from the customer information database.

Claim 5

Dependent Claim 32 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 3 wherein the best suited resource is one of a plurality of resources and wherein the plurality of resources have different physical locations.

Claim 6

Dependent Claim 26 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 3 wherein the type of customer comprises a business segment correlation and a business or consumer indication.

Claim 7

Dependent Claim 49 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 further comprising context managers and service providers, the context managers manage overall customer contact, coordinate access to an appropriate service provider, provides the service providers the context to complete the transaction and interface to the rule based routing system.

Claim 8

Dependent Claim 37 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 6 wherein the context manager receives customer initiated responses from a plurality of resources and provides interfaces between the rule based routing system and the plurality of resources.

Claim 9

Dependent Claim 25 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 7 wherein the customer access resources comprise kiosks, Internet sources, on-line sources, and home personal computers.

Claim 10

Dependent Claim 62 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 6 wherein the context managers query the service provider to identify cross-sell opportunities, and direct the execution of cross-sell activities through an appropriate customer access resource, including facilitating the routing of cross-sell activities to the appropriate customer access resource identified as a cross-sell resource based on skill requirements determined by the first resource.

Claim 11

Dependent Claim 23 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 6 wherein customer contacts are transferred form a first resource to a second resource.

Claim 12

Dependent Claim 25 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 10 wherein the transfers between the first resource and the second resource is unlimited in number.

Claim 13

Dependent Claim 41 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 wherein the quality center manages virtual customer sales and service center operations to provide proactive support and feedback on sales and service performance issues after the end of the customer contact.

Claim 14

Dependent Claim 50 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 12 wherein the functions managed by the quality center further comprise scheduling and forecasting, performance measurement and feedback, contact monitoring and routing, analysis of the virtual customer sales and service center, help desk, quality and continuous improvement, maintenance and broadcast messaging.

Claim 15

Dependent Claim 47 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 wherein the rule based routing system makes routing decisions based upon customer information profiles, employee skills profiles, customer input, availability of employees, customer access resources, computer telephony system resources, service provider resources, switch resources, and overflow management.

Claim 16

Dependent Claim 25 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 wherein the computer telephony processing server manipulates call treatment based on the retrieved customer information.

Claim 17

Dependent Claim 37 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 wherein the rule based routing system further comprises a resource profile database comprising a statistics server for directly determining which resource is currently available for the contact.

Claim 18

Dependent Claim 45 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 16 wherein the rule based routing engine checks the routing rules for overflow processing when the statistics server indicates that a resource having an optimal profile is not expected to be available within a desired timeframe.

Claim 19

Dependent Claim 31 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 wherein the rule based routing system provides data associated with the identified customer profile of the contact to the identified resource.

Claim 20

Dependent Claim 20 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 wherein the computer telephony processing system comprises intelligent answering functions.

Claim 21

Dependent Claim 53 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 1 wherein the intelligent answering functions comprise Automatic Number Identification (ANI) information from the telephone system for providing a billing directory number associated with a call and Dialed Number Identification Services (DNIS) for multiple 800 numbers for identifying what the caller wishes to discuss.

Claim 22

Dependent Claim 135 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and context managers and service providers, wherein the context managers manage overall customer contact, coordinate access to an appropriate service provider, provides the service providers the context to complete the transaction and interface to the rule based routing system; and the context manager solely provides an interface between the business process service provider and customer access resource.

Claim 23

Dependent Claim 135 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and context managers and service providers, wherein the context managers manage overall customer contact, coordinate access to an appropriate service provider, provides the service providers the context to complete the transaction and interface to the rule based routing system; and the context manager solely provides an interface between the business process service provider and customer access resource.

Claim 24

Dependent Claim 144 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and context managers and service providers, wherein the context managers manage overall customer contact, coordinate access to an appropriate service provider, provides the service providers the context to complete the transaction and interface to the rule based routing system; and the context manager tracks session information of the user experience across customer access resources by creating and terminating context manager objects as sessions start and end.

Claim 25

Dependent Claim 144 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and context managers and service providers, wherein the context managers manage overall customer contact, coordinate access to an appropriate service provider, provides the service providers the context to complete the transaction and interface to the rule based routing system; and the context manager tracks session information of the user experience across customer access resources by creating and terminating context manager objects as sessions start and end.

Claim 26

Dependent Claim 147 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and context managers and service providers, wherein the context managers manage overall customer contact, coordinate access to an appropriate service provider, provides the service providers the context to complete the transaction and interface to the rule based routing system; and a plurality of context managers are grouped into modules and multiple modules are employed to deliver infinite scalability while still delivering seamless connection of any customer to any resource.

Claim 27

Dependent Claim 147 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and context managers and service providers, wherein the context managers manage overall customer contact, coordinate access to an appropriate service provider, provides the service providers the context to complete the transaction and interface to the rule based routing system; and a plurality of context managers are grouped into modules and multiple modules are employed to deliver infinite scalability while still delivering seamless connection of any customer to any resource.

Claim 28

Dependent Claim 93 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and a service provider for maintaining business logic for determining and fulfilling a customer's needs.

Claim 29

Dependent Claim 93 words

A virtual customer sales and service center, comprising: customer access resources with which customers can directly interact; a computer telephony system for gathering interaction data associated with the customer contact; a rule based routing system, operatively coupled to the customer access resources and the computer telephony system, for identifying a customer access resource best suited to handle the contact; a switch, operatively coupled to the rule based routing system, for routing a voice call to the identified resource; and a service provider for maintaining business logic for determining and fulfilling a customer's needs.

Claim 30

Dependent Claim 20 words

The virtual customer sales and service center of claim 24 wherein the business logic comprises customer access resource independent applets.

Claim 31

Independent Claim 159 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the gathered interaction data; and routing the call to the identified resource; and integrating and aiding in management of a plurality of physical resource locations as a single virtual resource center to define an escalation process for handling the customer contact during the customer contact; wherein the steps of integrating and aiding in management of a plurality of physical resource locations comprises the step of managing scheduling and forecasting of employees, performance measurement and feedback, contact monitoring and routing, analysis of the virtual customer sales and service center, help desk, quality and continuous improvement, maintenance and broadcast messaging.

Claim 32

Independent Claim 159 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the gathered interaction data; and routing the call to the identified resource; and integrating and aiding in management of a plurality of physical resource locations as a single virtual resource center to define an escalation process for handling the customer contact during the customer contact; wherein the steps of integrating and aiding in management of a plurality of physical resource locations comprises the step of managing scheduling and forecasting of employees, performance measurement and feedback, contact monitoring and routing, analysis of the virtual customer sales and service center, help desk, quality and continuous improvement, maintenance and broadcast messaging.

Claim 33

Dependent Claim 27 words

The method of claim 26 wherein the method of identifying a resource comprises the step of identifying one of a plurality of resources having different physical locations.

Claim 34

Dependent Claim 37 words

The method of claim 26 wherein the step of identifying the best suited resource further comprises the step of determining a resource having a skill corresponding to the type of customer ascertained from the retrieved customer information.

Claim 35

Dependent Claim 21 words

The method of claim 27 wherein the type of customer comprises a business segment correlation and a business or consumer indication.

Claim 36

Dependent Claim 40 words

The method of claim 26 further comprising the steps of managing overall customer contact, coordinating access to an appropriate service provider, providing the appropriate service provider a context to complete the transaction and interfacing to the rule based routing system.

Claim 37

Dependent Claim 35 words

The method of claim 30 further comprising the steps of receiving customer initiated responses from a plurality of customer access resources and providing interfaces between the rule based routing system and the plurality of resources.

Claim 38

Dependent Claim 20 words

The method of claim 31 wherein the customer access resources comprise kiosks, Internet sources, on-line sources, and home personal computers.

Claim 39

Dependent Claim 65 words

The method of claim 26 wherein the step of providing customers with access to customer access resource further comprises the step of interacting with the customer and with the context manager and service provider, wherein the context manager and service provider determine the existence of cross-sell opportunities and the manner for executing cross-sell activities, and facilitate the routing of cross-sell activities to an identified resource.

Claim 40

Independent Claim 121 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the gathered interaction data; and routing the call to the identified resource; and identifying a resource further comprises the step of directly determining which resources are currently available for the contact; wherein the step of identifying an resource further comprises the step of processing customer information profiles, resource skills profiles, customer contact information, availability of resources, and overflow management parameters.

Claim 41

Independent Claim 121 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the gathered interaction data; and routing the call to the identified resource; and identifying a resource further comprises the step of directly determining which resources are currently available for the contact; wherein the step of identifying an resource further comprises the step of processing customer information profiles, resource skills profiles, customer contact information, availability of resources, and overflow management parameters.

Claim 42

Independent Claim 124 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information including customer interaction data during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the customer interaction data; and routing the call to the identified resource; wherein the step of identifying a resource further comprises the steps of directly determining which resources are currently available for the contact and checking routing rules for overflow processing when a resource having an optimal profile is not expected to be available within a desirable time frame.

Claim 43

Independent Claim 124 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information including customer interaction data during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the customer interaction data; and routing the call to the identified resource; wherein the step of identifying a resource further comprises the steps of directly determining which resources are currently available for the contact and checking routing rules for overflow processing when a resource having an optimal profile is not expected to be available within a desirable time frame.

Claim 44

Independent Claim 92 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information including customer interaction data during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the customer interaction data; routing the call to the identified resource; and providing data associated with the retrieved customer information during the contact to the identified resource.

Claim 45

Independent Claim 92 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information including customer interaction data during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the customer interaction data; routing the call to the identified resource; and providing data associated with the retrieved customer information during the contact to the identified resource.

Claim 46

Independent Claim 96 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information including customer interaction data during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the customer interaction data; routing the call to the identified resource; and tracking session information across customer access resources by creating and terminating context manager objects as sessions start and end.

Claim 47

Independent Claim 96 words

A method of forming a virtual customer sales and service center, comprising the steps of: providing customers with access to customer access resources which can both meet customer needs and also acquire and retrieve customer information including customer interaction data during a contact; identifying a resource best suited to handle the contact using a rule based routing system for processing the retrieved customer information and the customer interaction data; routing the call to the identified resource; and tracking session information across customer access resources by creating and terminating context manager objects as sessions start and end.

Annuity Stage	Window Opens	Payment Deadline	Surcharge Period Until	Estimated Fee	Status
3.5 Years (Year 4)	2003-05-30	2003-11-29	2004-05-30	$2000.00	Window Closed / Lapsed
7.5 Years (Year 8)	2007-05-30	2007-11-29	2008-05-30	$3760.00	Window Closed / Lapsed
11.5 Years (Year 12)	2011-05-30	2011-11-29	2012-05-30	$7700.00	Window Closed / Lapsed

Virtual customer sales and service center and method

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