Patent Application
20110251971
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software and systems used in data centers, call centers and/or customer support applications.
2. Background Information
By way of background, in a customer call center or other support setting there are often tens, hundreds or even thousands of people working with customers simultaneously, each trying to solve their particular customer's issues. How well and how quick each customer's problem is solved depends greatly on the experience of the support person. A customer who gets a novice support person will spend longer amounts of time trying to solve the problem which translates into higher support costs, lower customer satisfaction and a higher probability for escalation which increases costs.
Existing solutions allow customer support people to utilize a knowledge base to look up common (generic) solutions based on the information provided by the customer. However, this solution is only beneficial when customer support people rely on their previous experience to select the appropriate keywords to search for possible solutions. If the support person is unable to resolve the customer's problem, the problem is escalated to a higher level of customer support, resulting in increasing costs.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art for an apparatus and methods that can provide the higher level of customer support without increasing costs.
The foregoing problems are solved and an advance in the art is obtained by a novel method, system and computer program product for a real-time collaborative technical support (RTCTS) system.
The system may include means for facilitating collaboration in a real-time support provider environment of at least two support people with the support provider environment, that may include the following: Means for combining at least two of the support people into a temporary group concerned supporting a related work area of the support people. Means for forming-maintaining at least one social network based upon the temporary group to support requests in the related work area. And means for providing a visualization of the social network.
The means for combining may include at least one monitor of the support people to determine a work area that at least two of the support people share to create the related work area.
The means for forming-maintaining the social network may include means for generating the social network based upon available data, means for evolving the social network based upon the available information and/or means for altering the social network based upon the available information.
The available information may include at least one instance of at least one member of the data type group consisting of structured information, unstructured information, raw data, derived data and historical data.
The system may further include at least one of means for updating by at least one of the support people of the available information and means for processing by at least one monitor of at least one instance of at least one member of the data type group to create/update the available information.
The means for processing by the monitor further comprises at least one of the following: At least one natural language processor responding to at least one instance of at least one member of the data type group to at least partly create the available information. And/or at least one speech to text processor responding to at least one instance of at least one member of the data type group to at least partly create the available information. And/or a data aggregator responding to at least part of the available information to send at least part of the available information to at least one of the natural language processor, the speech to text processor and a classification system.
The means for forming-maintaining the social network may further include the classification system classifying at least part of the available data to generate the social network and/or the classification system classifying at least part of the available data to stimulate the social network to evolve.
The visualization of the social network may use at least one grouping of the support people based upon at least one estimate of the support people, with the estimate relating to a support person's ability to discern a customer's meaning, efficiency in solving a problem, ability to use at least one available tool and/or ability to articulate a solution of the problem.
The social network for the support people provides at least one classification, such as of which of the support people are currently working in the related work area, which of the support people have previous experience with the related work area and which of the support people are experts in the related work area.
The social network visualization may be received by a means for inserting the expert into the social network for the related work area.
One method may include a step of facilitating collaboration in a real-time support provider environment of at least two support people with the support provider environment, that may include the following steps: Combining at least two of the support people into a temporary group concerned supporting a related work area of the support people. Forming-maintaining at least one social network based upon the temporary group to support requests in the related work area. And providing a visualization of the social network.
The step of combining may include monitoring the support people to determine a work area that the at least two of the support people share to create the related work area.
The step of forming-maintaining the social network may include evolving the social network based upon available information, generating the social network based upon the available information, and/or altering the social network based upon the available information.
The method may further include updating by at least one of the support people the available information and/or processing by the monitor of at least one instance of at least one member of the data type group to create/update the available information.
The step of processing by the monitor may include steps of processing by at least one natural language processor to at least partly create the available information, processing by at least one speech to text processor to at least partly create the available information, and/or determining by a data aggregator to send at least part of the available information to at least one member of the group consisting of the natural language processor, the speech to text processor and a classification system.
The step of forming-maintaining the social network may further include steps of classifying by a classification system at least part of the available data to generate the social network and/or classifying by the classification system the at least part of the available data to stimulate the social network to evolve.
The step of providing the visualization further comprises at least one of the steps providing the visualization to a manager to aid in managing the support provider environment and/or inserting the expert into the social network for the related work area.
A computer readable memory may implement the method as a program system. An installation package may be configured to include the program system to reside in the computer readable memory. A server may be configured to deliver the program system and/or the installation package. And a computer may be configured by the program system and/or the installation package to implement at least part of the method.
And
The foregoing problems are solved and an advance in the art is obtained by a novel method, system and computer program product for a real-time collaborative technical support (RTCTS) system.
An embodiment of the invention comprises a real-time collaborative technical support (RTCTS) system 10 that may automatically generate and/or maintain social networks 80 that may dynamically evolve in real-time.
Referring to the drawing figures wherein like reference numerals indicate like components in all of the several views,
The RTCTS system 10 transforms customer call centers into social networks 80 that may display otherwise hidden groupings 54 in the support provider environment 20, which may also be referred to as a customer support environment.
The RTCTS system 10 may leave it up to the users 12 to update the available information 74 and/or the RTCTS system may use multiple types of monitors 40 that may process structured information 100 and/or unstructured information 102 to create and/or maintain the available information 74 and/or the social networks 80. The monitors 114 may use and/or include natural language processors 120 and/or speech to text software 122. The RTCTS system 10 may direct the raw data 104, the derived data 106 and/or the historical data 108 to be presented to a classification system 126 that generates and/or evolves at least one of the social networks 80.
The means for forming-maintaining 70 may further include the classification system 126 classifying at least part of the available data 74 to generate the social network 80 and/or the classification system 126 classifying the at least part of the available data 74 to stimulate the social network 80 to evolve.
In certain embodiments of the invention any of the means 50, 52, 54, 56, 70, 72, 74, 78, 112, the monitors 40, the natural language processor 120, the speech to text processor 122, the data aggregator 124 and/or the classification system 126 disclosed herein may be implemented using at least one instance of a computer 22.
Referring to the drawing Figures, and particularly, to
In further detail, current problems and available experts 156 may be grouped together to facilitate communication between expert and novice Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) 22 while simultaneously resolving customer technical issues in an effective and efficient manner.
The RTCTS system 10 provides management 30 with visualizations 86 of the social networks 80 where they can efficiently observe groupings 54 of support people 22. Consider the following examples: The grouping may be based on estimates of the support person's ability to easily discern 132 a customers meaning, efficiency 134 in solving a problem, and/or ability 136 to use the tools available etc. This may aid the administrator in monitoring the Customer Call Center 20 and allocating resources as needed in the most efficient manner.
The application may include multiple monitors 40 concurrently determining what each support person 22 is working on, which may depend on the context being monitored. Some examples of monitors 40 may watch structured information 100 and/or unstructured information 102 that may include at least one written narrative and/or (possibly real-time) voice recordings. The structured information may include specified fields in the support entry system (i.e. Name, Severity) and/or a voice xml document. The monitors may be operated by or their results may be used by one of the technical support personnel 22.
The data aggregator 124 may group related information (such as by support person 22, organization etc) received as gathered data from at least one of the monitors 40. The gathered data may or may not include personally identifiable data. In certain embodiments, the monitors may send the depersonalized data to a privacy-monitoring server 26.
Based on the type of the gathered information, the data aggregator 124 may send it directly to a classification system 126 as it is received, or pass it though services that may extract and/or otherwise aid in the pre-classification process. Examples of these services include speech to text processors 122 for converting spoken words to text and natural language processors 122 that may aid in determining the meaning of free-form text narratives such as results from speech to text, or from written paragraphs.
The classification system 126 may classify the received information and/or historical data 108 into related clusters that in turn may be used to create at least one new social network 80.
Different types of social networks 80 may be created based upon this information and the related cluster. One example is a social network 80 for support people 22 grouped by problem type to help them solve their current problems. Another example social network 80 is for managers 30 where support people 22 may be grouped based on their problem solving efficiency 134 and/or based on their ability to articulate 138 a problem and so on.
The social networks 80 may be used and/or visualized 86 in a variety of ways, from a simple group chat to a dashboard-like application to a virtual world. These visualizations may be different for support people 22, managers 30 and support users 12.
For a social network 80 generated for the support people 22, the system 10 may classify support people based on the problem they are currently working on, with an additional layer showing which of the support people have previous experience 154 with similar problems. This helps a CSR to identify both others working similar issues currently and/or those with more expertise 156. By combining the multiple layers of information questions may be answered, such as which CSRs have expertise in this area and/or are currently working a problem in the same related work area 60.
For management 30, the same system 10 may generate at least one different social network 80, where support people 22 may be grouped by performance 134, ability to articulate 138 a customer's problem, usage of available tools 136 and so on. Managers are provided visualization tools with a variety of views to help with performance management. Managers may also use a similar view as used by the support people and may shift resources based on the types of problems being worked.
Managers 30 may further use these systems 10 to aid in a continual improvement process. The social networks 80 may show a type of problem that fails to be readily resolved, identify the support people 22 that have successfully solved them as the experts 156 and/or the way the type of problem was solved. The managers may use this information to enhance the existing customer support.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that various adaptations and modifications of the just-described preferred embodiments can be configured without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. Therefore, it is to be understood that, within the scope of the appended claims, the invention may be practiced other than as specifically described herein.
