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Description  |
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This invention pertains in general to the field of telephony and in
particular to methods and apparatus for automating telephone operator
services.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Various items of equipment and techniques, useful with and within a
telephone network or system, are now available to conduct call processing
automatically and interactively with a caller for a number of
applications. For example, it is commonplace to have a telephone call
automatically responded to by a voice recording which presents the caller
with prompts for inputs and with a menu from which call routings and
services may be selected. The caller responses may be made vocally (using
automatic voice recognition), by entries from the telephone keypad, or by
a combination of techniques. An advantage of this, from an economic and
efficiency point of view, is that there is no need for human intervention
in handling the call.
Despite the advances that have been made, however, there remains a need to
improve the automation of certain calls which have historically been made
with the assistance of a telephone operator. For example, long distance
calls sought to be alternatively billed, either to the called party (e.g.,
collect calls) or to a third party (e.g., third party billing) still
require, by and large, the personal assistance of a telephone operator. In
these cases, prior to completing the call, the operator has to establish
initial contact with either the called party or the third party and
ascertain whether or not the charges for the call will be accepted. Then,
depending on whether the charges are accepted or not, the operator informs
the calling party, one way or the other, and the ball is then placed by
the operator or is denied. For the same reasons of economy and efficiency,
it has become desirable to find some way to automate these alternative
billing procedures, eliminating the need for operator assistance. Some
advances have been made in that regard and automated systems are beginning
to appear.
Despite the advances in automation, however, certain capabilities have been
lacking, and it has been recognized, in connection with these kinds of
telephone services, that various customers, or subscribers, may need to be
responded to and their calls processed differently, depending on their
particular circumstances and requirements. For example, certain
subscribers seeking operator services may need to be responded to in a
particular language (i.e., other than English), or, if the subscriber is a
business, such as a hotel, it may desire to respond to a caller with
customized greetings or closings or to provide music or special messages
during call interludes or holding periods. Thus, not only have ways been
sought to automate these and other operator services, but it has been
desirable to find some way to allow a subscriber to customize automated
services to meet their particular requirements. In fact, ways have been
sought whereby a user can dynamically obtain a certain amount of
"customization" during a call session; i.e., while the user is setting up
the call. Preferably, the "dynamic" customization would complement or
override any preselected customization.
It is, therefore, among the objects of the present invention to provide a
system and method whereby certain telephone services, including those
requiring alternative billing, are processed automatically, without
operator intervention, and whereby certain features and aspects of the
services may be customized to meet a subscriber's particular requirements
and certain other features may be "dynamically" selected by a caller, or
user, during a particular call session.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In one form of the invention, a call for which operator or alternative
billing services are sought is routed through a switched telephone
network, for example, to an automated operator facility. The call is
accompanied by certain parameters which are indicative of the call's
characteristics (i.e., indicative of the type of call). A menu of
available automatic services is presented to the caller and the caller's
selection from the menu is then received by the automated facility. The
call parameters are used to retrieve a record containing customization
features, preselected by a subscriber, which are those which are to be
used in providing the operator service selected from the menu by the
caller. The call is then automatically processed in accordance with the
preselected customized features to provide the selected operator service.
During a call session the caller may dynamically select certain features
such as the language in which the interactive portions of the call
processing will be conducted.
In another form of the invention, once a call for which operator or
alternative billing services are sought has been routed to a point from
which automated services are available, certain parameters, defining the
type of call received, are examined to determine whether automated
telephone services are available for that type of call. If so, the call,
along with at least some of the call parameters, are directed to an
automatic response unit for processing. A menu of automated services is
presented to the calling party allowing certain services to be selected.
The call parameters are examined by the automatic response unit to
determine which particular features from a plurality of call features will
be used for processing the call in accordance with the selected service.
Selection may be by voice response or by activation of the telephone
keypad. The automated services available may include collect calling,
third party billing of calls, and billing calls to a credit account or
card. The particular features employed to process the call (for the
selected service) are preselected by a subscriber for the automated
services and include such things as preselection of the spoken language
used in the interexchange with a caller and the provision of selected
music or messages while a party is on hold during call processing.
A system according to the invention for automatically processing calls for
alternative billing, or for providing automated operator services, may
include an automatic response device (e.g., an ARU) for receiving calls
sought to be billed alternatively and for processing accordingly. The
automatic response unit may include a voice response subsystem that
receives call related inputs and makes appropriate responses and a call
processing subsystem that interacts with the voice response part to
control the progression of call processing. A call controller connected to
the automatic response device receives the call and related call
parameters from a telephone network and determines from the parameters if
the call options is of the type to be handled automatically, and, if so,
directs the call, along with call parameters, to the automatic response
unit. The automatic response unit has access to a database containing data
that specifies certain processing features, preselected by a subscriber,
and based on the call parameters, that are used for the call processing.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
While the specification concludes with claims particularly pointing out and
distinctly claiming the subject matter regarded as the invention, the
invention will be better understood from the following description taken
in connection with the accompanying drawings in which:
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an automated system in accordance with the
invention;
FIGS. 2A-2C, taken together, are a flow chart of certain principal
operations of the invention, and as those operations might be carried out
in a system according to FIG. 1;
FIGS. 3A-3C, taken together, are a flow chart for collect call operations;
FIG. 4 illustrates, in flow chart form, operations for new call/new billing
options available as part of the invention;
FIGS. 5A-5C, taken together, are a flow chart for billing calls
alternatively to a third party;
FIG. 6 is a flow chart of operations for a new billing option;
FIGS. 7A-7B, taken together, are a flow chart of operations for
alternatively billing a call to a credit card number (which may be a
commercial card, a card issued by a regional phone company, or any of
various others); and
FIG. 8 is a flow chart illustrating the implementation of a language menu
for presentation to a caller.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
An understanding of the invention can be obtained by first considering the
system of FIG. 1, along with a description of how certain calls which
would ordinarily be handled by a human operator, are thereby processed.
Included among such calls are those for which alternate billing
arrangements are sought, including collect calls, those for billing to a
third party, and those to be billed against a credit account. The flow
charts of the remaining Figures will be discussed in detail subsequently,
but may also be referred to in connection with FIG. 1 for a full
understanding of the invention.
In FIG. 1 it may be assumed that a caller using telephone 100 desires to
place a long distance telephone call to another party who is expected to
answer at, say, telephone 102. The telephone 100 may be the one for which
the caller is the subscriber (e.g., it may be the caller's home
telephone), or it may be some other phone such as a coin-operated pay
phone or a phone located in a hotel or at some other place of business. In
any case, it will be assumed, for present purposes, that the caller
desires to either bill the charges for the call to some account other than
to the account for the originating station 100, or to otherwise obtain,
for some purpose, what would ordinarily be referred to as operator
assistance.
The caller may, for example, desire to have the call billed collect, for
billing against the account of the called party telephone 102, or for
third party billing against the account of the subscriber, say, for
telephone 103.
Illustratively, the calling party phone 100 and the third party phone are
shown connected to an interexchange carrier network 107 through a first
local exchange 105 and the called party phone is shown connected through a
second local exchange 106. Generally, these kinds of alternate billing
calls have been placed by having the caller raise an operator on the line
and then having the operator establish contact with a party at either the
called station 102 or at the third party station 103 to obtain
authorization, or approval, for the alternative billing to one or the
other of these stations. If authorization for the charges is obtained, the
operator then completes the call. The present invention carries out these
and other operations without intervention by an operator and with
customized processing features preselected by a subscriber.
By the invention, a caller at telephone 100, for example, can access the
system for automated operator services in a number of ways. For example,
the caller may dial 0+ (the digit "zero" plus other digits), 01 +, 0-
(multiple "zeros"), a credit card number followed by a pause for a time
out, or by an 800 special access number. The exact entry for access by the
caller is relatively unimportant for present purposes. In any case, the
local telephone exchange operating company, here LEC 105, which initially
receives the call, recognizes the entry as a request for automated
operator services by an interexchange carrier and passes the call through
to the appropriate long distance network, such as to interexchange carrier
107. Within network 107 the call is ultimately routed, by means which are
well known and which need not be discussed in detail here, to a bridging
switch 108.
The bridging switch 108 is a standard item of telecommunications equipment
which may be located wherever it is convenient; its purpose is to accept
calls from the network 107, to bridge them to an automatic call
distributor (ACD) 110, and ultimately into an automated operator center
111. The bridging switch 108 and the ACD 110, in one view, can be
considered as part of the carrier network 107 and they will generally be
interconnected to each other through a release line trunk (RLT). Notably,
there may be a number of geographically dispersed automated operator
centers, essentially identical to center 111, to efficiently handle calls
from a wide geographic area, although for purposes of developing an
understanding of the invention, it will be sufficient to focus here upon
automated operator center 111. It may be helpful to also note, however,
that the intelligence and capability for routing to one automated center
or another, as appropriate, will be provided in network 107 by well known
techniques.
The automated operator center 111 is comprised of audio response unit (ARU)
113, a call processor 115, an application processor 118, and an associated
application processor server 119. For default operations it may also
include a manual operator station 120. The audio response unit 113, call
processor 115, the application processor 118, and the manual operator
station 120 are connected together by way of a local area network (LAN)
121 to provide for communications between these system components. The
local area network 121 may, for example, be an Ethernet LAN, which is a
well known local area network system.
As a further part of the architectural framework shown in FIG. 1, the
application processor server 119 is connected to a token ring network 123
which may offer connectivity beyond the automated operator center 111. In
this case, there is an order entry system 125 beyond the center 111, also
connected to the token ring 123, which accepts input data (as on line 124)
related to, among other things, particular presubscribed customers for
automated operator services and which allows data on customization
features for those and other services to be down-loaded into the automated
operator center 111. The down-loading is by way of the token ring 123, via
one path to the server 119 for ultimate use by the application processor
118, and via a second path directly to the call processor 115.
Order entry systems, such as order entry system 125 are well known in the
field of telephony and need not be discussed in detail here to develop an
understanding of the present invention; it is sufficient to note that this
system 125 generally is of the type which is available for serving a
number of purposes for a public telephone network system, and that, for
present purposes, it offers a window into the automated operator center
111 for entering and altering customization and other data to achieve
custom features for automated operator services on a
subscriber-by-subscriber basis and to set the functionality of the center
111 and its on-going operations. Its role in the invention's operation
will become clear as further explanation of the invention progresses. The
order entry system 125 may be located wherever convenient for serving one
or various coordinated automated operator centers, and, for reliability,
it may be redundantly available.
The technology for implementing the token ring 223 is also very well-known
and readily available and therefore need not be elaborated upon. A token
ring satisfactory for use in the invention, for example, may be obtained
from Digital Equipment Corporation.
To complete the architectural framework of FIG. 1 there is a validation
gateway 122 from the LAN 121 to access validation databases 126. As will
become clear, the validation databases 126 are accessed during certain
operations for confirming | | |
