Granted Patent B2

US 11,082,456 · App. 15/679,294 · Granted Aug 3, 2021

Inventors: Jeffrey Singman (Manalapan, NJ); Dany Sylvain (Gatineau, CA)

Assignee: AVCTECHNOLOGIES USA INC.

H04L65/1069H04L65/608H04L67/02H04L67/141H04L67/306

Abstract

Claims (51)

1. A method for facilitating communication between a user web application and an entity, the method performed by a communication server of a web communication service, the method comprising:

receiving a request from the user web application to communicate with the entity;

establishing a communication session between the user web application and an automated agent;

obtaining contextual information associated with the communication session, the contextual information including information provided by the user web application and interactions the user has with a website;

determining, with logic of the web communication service, that a user of the user web application should be connected with a live agent associated with the entity;

in response to the determining, connecting the user web application with a terminal of the live agent, including receiving setup information from the terminal of the live agent and forwarding the setup information to the user web application, wherein the setup information is forwarded to establish a further communication session between the terminal of the live agent and the user web application; and

providing the live agent associated with the entity with the contextual information.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the communication session is one of: voice, video, file transfer, media streaming, web pages and text.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the contextual information further includes at least one of: web resources provided to the user web application and a record of a conversation associated with the communication session.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the contextual information includes information derived by the automated agent by processing information from a conversation associated with the communication session.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the information derived by the automated agent includes at least one of: a conversation state, a conversation topic, a user identity, user preferences, user goals, a user location, a user language, a user emotional state, and a user budget.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the live agent is selected from a plurality of agents based on the information obtained by the automated agent.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising, sending the information obtained by the automated agent to the live agent.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

with the communication server, capturing information from a conversation between the terminal and the user web application; and

providing information from the conversation between the terminal and the user web application to the automated agent.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

with an automated agent server associated with the automated agent, receiving a request from the web communication service to engage in the communication session with the user web application; and

with the automated agent server, receiving a first message from the user.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

with the automated agent server, applying a function to the first message to generate a response to the first message; and

with the automated agent server, sending the response to the first message to the user web application.

11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:

with the automated agent server, receiving a second message from the user; and

with the automated agent server, determining, after applying the function to the second message, that a response to the second message cannot be generated and a transfer to a live agent is required.

12. The method of claim 11 , further comprising, with the automated agent server, indicating to the web communication service that the response to the second message cannot be generated and a transfer to a live agent is required.

13. The method of claim 12 , further comprising, with the automated agent server, receiving recorded information from the communication session with the live agent and updating the automated agent function based on the recorded information.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the setup information is configured to allow the user web application to set up an Internet protocol (IP) based communication session directly with the terminal of the live agent.

15. A computing system of a web communication service, the system comprising:

a processor; and

a memory comprising machine readable instructions that when executed by the processor, cause the system to:

establish a communication session between a user web application and an automated agent server, the user web application interacting with content on a website, the content being associated with an entity;

forward a first message from the user web application to the automated agent server;

forward a response to the first message from the automated agent server to the user web application;

forward a second message from the user web application to the automated agent server;

determine that the user web application should be connected to a live agent associated with the entity;

in response to the indication, connect the user web application to a terminal of the live agent, including receiving setup information from the terminal of the live agent and forwarding the setup information to the user web application, wherein the setup information is forwarded to establish a further communication session between the terminal of the live agent and the user web application; and

forward contextual information to the terminal, the contextual information including interactions the user has had with the website and the response to the first message.

16. The system of claim 15 , wherein the content is provided by the entity and the website is provided by a different entity.

17. The system of claim 15 , further comprising:

recording the communication session between the user web application and the terminal; and

sending information recorded from the communication session between the user web application and the terminal to the automated agent server and updating the automated agent function based on the recorded information.

18. A computer program product comprising machine readable instructions, stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium, that are executable by a computing system of a web communication service, the computer program product comprising:

code to receive a request from a user web application to communicate with an entity;

code to establish a communication session between the user web application and an automated agent;

code to capture contextual information associated with the communication session, the contextual information including information provided by the user web application and interactions the user has had with a website;

code to determine that a user of the user web application should be connected with a live agent associated with the entity;

code to connect the user web application with a terminal of the live agent associated with the entity, including receiving setup information from the terminal of the live agent and forwarding the setup information to the user web application, wherein the setup information is forwarded to establish a further communication session between the terminal of the live agent and the user web application; and

code to provide the agent associated with the entity with the contextual information.

19. The computer program product of claim 18 , wherein the web communication service is a Web Real Time Communication (WebRTC) service.

20. The computer program product of claim 18 , wherein the communication session is one of: voice, video, file transfer, media streaming, web pages and text.

Assignments (13)