To provide support to current or prospective customers, employees, and suppliers, many businesses offer telephone numbers that individuals can call for such support. For example, customer service numbers can be utilized to pay bills, receive technical support, purchase products or services, cancel or change services, update user information such as an address, and various other tasks. In the past, these numbers were routed to a plurality of lines, where human beings were employed to personally answer telephones, answer questions, and route phone calls. Access to these telephone lines, however, was typically limited to business hours, as it is expensive to employ individuals to monitor phones for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Also, it is expensive to have enough staff to handle peak demands. This is problematic for customers or prospective customers who have a small time window within which they can make telephone calls. For instance, if an individual has a technical question regarding a television, yet must be at a place of employment at a substantially similar time that the customer service line is available, it may be difficult to ask appropriate questions or take action while not proximate to the television.
As technology has advanced, automated telephone attendants have been used with customer service telephone lines. Automated attendants enable businesses to offer twenty-four hour support on several topics deemed important by the businesses. For example, customer support telephone lines associated with large banks typically allow a user, through use of an automated attendant, to check account balances, transfer money between accounts, make payments on loans with the bank, and perform other common tasks. Generally, users can provide feedback to the automated attendant and/or make selections by voice commands or pressing particular buttons on a touch-tone telephone. In other words, callers can traverse through a menu by providing feedback to questions or options provided by the automated attendant. If the automated attendant is not able to provide the particular support desired by the user, the user can then be transferred to a person at a call center for further assistance. In some scenarios, call agents may be busy with other callers and the automated attendant may provide the user with a time when a person at the call center will contact the user. If the user is busy at the time, the user may miss the call and have to start over with the entire process. For example, if the user is on an important call when the person at the call center calls the user, the user may not be able to talk with the person at the call center and may have to dial into the automated attendant to restart the call support process.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds