Patent Application
20080084974
The subject matter which is regarded as the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the claims at the conclusion of the specification. The foregoing and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention are apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
The detailed description explains the preferred embodiments of the invention together with advantages and features, by way of example with reference to the drawings.
Turning now to the drawings in greater detail, it will be seen that in
As shown in
The PSTN 110 sends the input of the call into an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform 120. The IVR platform 120 includes a database 121 and is capable of accepting a combination of voice telephone input and touchtone keypad selection but is not limited to this combination. In one embodiment, the database 121 will include both area and world telephone codes of telephone numbers and the corresponding language associated with the area and world telephone codes. Information, including the caller's audio message, from the IVR platform 120 is sent to a media splitter 130. The media splitter 130 is also capable of sending information back to the IVR platform 120 and then in turn to the caller 100 through the PSTN 110. The media splitter 130 receives inbound calls from the PSTN 110 and sets up a connection with the inbound audio channel that has a telephone adapter 220 connected to a speaker 230 or headset so that the call handler can listen to the caller 100. The media splitter 130 also routes the information to the call handler and simultaneously opens a Voice Extensible Markup Language (XML) browser 140 session. The Voice XML 140 receives its information from a workstation and graphical user interface (GUI) 240. When the call handler receives a call, the call handler listens to the caller's 100 audio signal and replies to the caller 100 by typing the response to the caller 100 into a workstation with a graphical user interface (GUI) 240. The output from the GUI 240 is used as input into the Voice XML browser 140.
The Voice XML browser 140 receives information from the workstation with the GUI 240, whereby the call handler, after listening to the incoming audio on a speaker 230, responds to the caller 100 by entering a response message through the GUI at the workstation 240. The Voice XML browser 140 sends and receives signals and information to a voice server 150. The voice server 150 upon receiving the response message sends the response message to a text to speech (MLTTS) synthesizer 160. The text to speech synthesizer 160 processes the response message in accordance with information received from the IVR platform 120 and database 121 and sends audio signals back to the caller 100 by routing the information through the media splitter 130 to the IVR platform 120 through the telephone network 110 to the caller 100. In other words, the MLTTS synthesizer 160 synthesizes the outgoing audio so that the output is in the native language and accent of the caller 100 so that the outgoing voice sounds familiar to the caller 100. The preferred method uses a very high quality synthesizer 160, such as IBM Web Sphere Voice™ server, to synthesize responses to the caller's queries.
In an alternate embodiment, the database 121 sends the desired language response information directly to the MLTTS synthesizer 160. With the above setup in place, a call handler 250 is able to interactively respond to a caller 100 via a speech synthesizer 160. The IVR platform 120 is capable of providing the speech synthesizer 160 the information to select the correct language based on the incoming phone number and a corresponding database 121. After initializing the appropriate MLTTS synthesizer 160 based on the incoming call (for example, a synthesizer for one of the United States, the United Kingdom, or other language) responses are provided to the caller 100 in the caller's language.
One example of the incoming phone number being mapped to a language could be as follows: 1 800 XXX XXX2—can be mapped to United States English whereas 1 800 XXX XXX3—can be mapped to United Kingdom English.
Referring to
Accordingly, the teachings herein provide for using a runtime text to speech (referred to as the MLTTS) synthesizer and providing responses to the caller with the outbound audio having a language accent similar to the caller's accent.
It will be appreciated that a method and system for interactively synthesizing a response by using a MLTTS synthesizer in a call center environment is time efficient and reduces both time and cost of training employees in several different languages while providing better quality, satisfaction and service to customers.
The capabilities of the present invention can be implemented in software, firmware, hardware or some combination thereof.
As one example, one or more aspects of the present invention can be included in an article of manufacture (e.g., one or more computer program products) having, for instance, computer usable media. The media has embodied therein, for instance, computer readable program code means for providing and facilitating the capabilities of the present invention. The article of manufacture can be included as a part of a computer system or sold separately.
The flow diagrams depicted herein are just examples. There may be many variations to these diagrams or the steps (or operations) described therein without departing from the spirit of the invention. For instance, the steps may be performed in a differing order, or steps may be added, deleted or modified. All of these variations are considered a part of the claimed invention.
While the preferred embodiment to the invention has been described, it will be understood that those skilled in the art, both now and in the future, may make various improvements and enhancements which fall within the scope of the claims which follow. These claims should be construed to maintain the proper protection for the invention first described.
