ABSTRACT

Communication device and database for IVR menus

Embodiments of the invention provide a communication device. The communication device comprises a database of visual IVR menus associated with a plurality of calling devices. Further, the communication device includes means for receiving a call from a phone number of a calling device and displaying a visual IVR menu associated with the phone number of the calling device.

Systems and methods for visual presentation and selection of IVR menu
Visual presentation and selection of IVR menu

Visual presentation and selection of IVR menu

An Inventor: Dr. Tal Lavian

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, and more specifically, the invention relates to the presentation of a visual IVR menu of a calling first party device.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The advent of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems has reduced operating costs for many tbusinesses to provideservices.

Generally, the IVR systems allow a user to interact with an audio or visual response system. The IVR systems can provide prompts to a user and receive touch tone and/or spoken responses on the prompts from the user. Through such IVR dialogue, the system collects sufficient information about the user to direct the call to the most appropriate resource, information processing system, or the like.

In particular, the IVR Systems have allowed telephone service providers to host call centers for various businesses such as banks, insurance companies, restaurants, and other service providers. Implementing the IVR systems is to provide the users or customers with a quick and good experience. Usually, the customer care executives/agents or audio IVR systems associated with the service providers call users of communication devices to offer or sell their services or products. When a user at a communication device receives a call from the agents or the audio IVR system, the user may not know the purpose of the call. Further, the user receiving the call may not know about the services provided by the calling service provider. Therefore, the user may have to listen to the calling service provider wholly and patiently to see the purpose of the call and about their various services. Further, the desire to inquire about various other services of the service provider. This whole process may be time-consuming and sometimes may be frustrating for the user.

Sometimes, it may be possible that the calling service provider does not include the information or resource desired by the user. Therefore, even after listening to the agent or audio IVR system, the user may not get the desired information. In such a case, the user may have to wait for a long time or contact some other service provider.

Some existing techniques try to address this problem by providing visual form of IVR. These techniques display the IVR menu graphically on a caller device. U.S. Pat. No. 7,215,743 assigned to International Business Machines Corporation and a published U.S. patent application with Ser. No. 11/957,605, filed Dec. 17, 2007 and assigned to Motorola Inc., provides the IVR menu of the first party device in a visual form to the caller. The caller can select the options from the IVR menu without listening to the complete audio IVR menu. However, the IVR menu displayed on the caller device is stored on an IVR server of a call receiving or service provider end. As a result, the visual IVR menu is specific to the call receiving end and only the IVR of the call receiving end is displayed. These techniques therefore, require each call receiving end to set-up hardware, software and other facilities to be deployed for providing visual IVR servers. Moreover, the visual form of audio IVR menu is displayed only when the caller dials and connects to the IVR at service provider’s end.

In the light of the above discussion, techniques are desired for providing enhanced telephony.

SUMMARY

The communication device comprises a database including Visual Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus 

Embodiments of the present invention provide a communication device. The communication device comprises a database comprising one or more visual Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus associated with a plurality of first-party devices’ phone numbers.

Further, the communication device comprises means for receiving a call from a phone number of a first party device; and means for displaying a visual IVR menu associated with the phone number of the first party device.

Embodiments of the present invention provide a communication device. The communication device comprises a processor. Further, the communication device includes a memory coupled to the processor. The memory includes a database containing one or more visual IVR menus associated with a plurality of first-party devices’ phone numbers. Further, the memory comprises instructions executable by the processor for receiving a call from a phone number of a first-party device and displaying a visual IVR menu associated with the phone number of the first-party device.

An aspect of the invention is to provide a communication device for displaying a visual IVR menu of a phone number of a first-party device. The communication device receives a call from the first party device., and the communication device is further configured to display one or more communication options.

Embodiments of the present invention provide a method for providing enhanced telephony. At a communication device, the method comprises receiving a call from a phone number of a first-party device. The communication device comprises one or more visual IVR menus associated with a plurality of first-party devices’ phone numbers. Further, the method comprises displaying, at the communication device, a visible IVR menu associated with the phone number of the first party device.

An aspect of the present invention is to provide a method for displaying, at a communication device, a visual IVR menu of a phone number of a calling first party device. Further, the method displays one or more communication options at the communication device.

Another aspect of the invention is to enable a user at the communication device to interact with the visual IVR menu of the calling first party device without listening to the audible IVR menu of the first party device.

Yet another aspect of the invention is to provide the visual IVR menu of a first-party device to a user of a communication device before establishing a communication session between the communication device and the first party device.