Apparatus and Method for Processing Service Interactions

Abstract

An interactive voice and data response system that directs input to a voice, text, and web-capable software-based router, which is able to intelligently respond to the input by drawing on a combination of human agents, advanced speech recognition and expert systems, connected to the router via a TCP/IP network. The digitized input is broken down into components so that the customer interaction is managed as a series of small tasks performed by a pool of human agents, rather than one ongoing conversation between the customer and a single agent. The router manages the interactions and keeps pace with a real-time conversation. The system utilizes both speech recognition and human intelligence for purposes of interpreting customer utterances or customer text, where the role of the human agent(s) is to input the intent of caller utterances, and where the computer system—not the human agent—determines which response to provide given the customer's stated intent (as interpreted/captured by the human agents). The system may use more than one human agent, or both human agents and speech recognition software, to interpret simultaneously the same component for error-checking and interpretation accuracy.

1 . A computer-implemented method for operating an interactive response system comprising:
 receiving audio from a person;   processing the audio via an automated subsystem;   providing the audio to a human analyst, said processing and providing causing a response delay; and   selectively accelerating a rate of presentation of the audio to the human analyst to compensate for the response delay.   
     
     
         2 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein selectively accelerating comprises receiving a request from the human analyst to accelerate the rate of presentation of the audio. 
     
     
         3 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein a level of the acceleration corresponds to the response delay. 
     
     
         4 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein a level of the acceleration is based on characteristics of the human analyst. 
     
     
         5 . A system for processing an interaction with a person, comprising a processor, a user interface device in communication with the processor, and a memory in communication with the processor, the memory storing programming instructions executable by the processor to:
 receive audio from a person;   process the audio via an automated subsystem;   provide the audio to the user interface device; and   selectively accelerate a rate of presentation of the audio to the user interface device to compensate for a response delay.   
     
     
         6 . The system of  claim 5 , wherein the programming instructions executable by the processor include instructions to selectively accelerate the rate of presentation of the audio based on a request from a human analyst to accelerate the rate of presentation of the audio. 
     
     
         7 . The system of  claim 5 , wherein a level of the acceleration corresponds to the response delay. 
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 5 , wherein a level of the acceleration is based on characteristics of a human analyst operating the user interface device.