Visual IVR Navigation via Smartphone Mediator
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Solution Overview
Problem
Complex IVR systems often lead to user frustration due to difficulties in navigating phone trees, with users encountering incorrect destinations or poor voice recognition, resulting in wasted time and inefficient service delivery for both callers and organizations.
Innovation Solution
A smartphone-based system that recognizes user inputs to identify the organization being called and provides a graphical representation of the IVR phone tree, allowing users to select their desired destination and synthesize the necessary dialing sequence for quick navigation through the IVR system.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If users navigate traditional IVR phone trees by voice recognition or keypad input, then the system can process calls automatically, but users experience frustration and wasted time due to incorrect destinations and poor voice recognition
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a smartphone application as an intermediary between the user and the IVR system. This mediator captures the user's intended destination, translates it into the appropriate dialing sequence with pause commands, and executes the call automatically, thereby eliminating the frustration of direct IVR navigation while maintaining automated call handling efficiency
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-configuring dialing sequences with embedded pause commands before the call is made. The application analyzes the phone tree structure in advance, determines the optimal sequence of digits and pauses to reach the desired destination, and prepares the complete dial string beforehand, allowing the actual call to execute smoothly without real-time user frustration
2Adaptability or versatility
If the IVR system uses multiple tiers of pre-programmed responses, then it can direct calls to specific destinations, but the complexity of the phone tree increases making navigation difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the complexity of navigating the multi-tiered phone tree from the user and relocates it to the smartphone application. The application contains the logic to parse and navigate complex IVR structures, while the user simply needs to indicate their desired destination through simple input, effectively removing the navigation burden from the user interface
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a simplified digital representation or copy of the IVR phone tree structure within the smartphone application. This internal model allows the application to simulate and analyze the call flow, determine the optimal path to the desired destination, and generate the appropriate dialing sequence without exposing the user to the actual complexity of the multi-tiered structure
3Reliability
If the system waits for user input at each IVR tier, then it can process selections accurately, but the total call setup time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of the entire phone tree structure and pre-calculates the optimal dialing sequence before the call is initiated. By determining the complete sequence of digits and pause durations in advance based on the user's intended destination, the system eliminates the need for sequential waiting at each IVR tier during the actual call setup, thereby reducing total call setup time while maintaining accurate destination selection
Data Source
AI summary
This Application discloses the display of stored information when creating a electronic command for use with mobile smartphones and other computer-enabled telephones. A software app recognizes input from the user (such as the initial digits of a phone number) that identifies the organization to be called, and accesses stored representations of information along with corresponding IVR phone tree information and user display preferences. The app then presents a representation of all or part of the retrieved information on a display using the user's language preferences. The user can then respond to the representation by providing selective inputs that cause the synthesis all or part of the commands needed to navigate to the desired destination. Once a command sequence has been synthesized, the user may provide additional input that the system interprets as an instruction to open a phone call and invoke the assembled commands.