Abstract: Methods for a secret supplemental username are provided. In one example, a method includes the steps of detecting a threat to an account with a primary username and password and disabling the primary username associated with the account in response to the threat. The method includes the additional steps of generating a supplemental username associated with the account and securely communicating the supplemental username.

Abstract: A system and method are presented for communication routing. Communications may be routed into a queue based on criteria. A communication may be assigned to a distribution ring and a determination may be made as to whether there is an availability of resources to handle the communication. A communication may be re-routed if it cannot be handled to a new group. Re-routing may be based on criteria such as time delay, non-time based criteria such as skills, and environmental criteria, to name a few. Re-routing may continue until a communication is handled. The routing design may resemble concentric circles where the center represents the most desirable pool of handlers and each incremental ring represents the iterative expansion sets of agents.

Abstract: A system and method are presented for context based knowledge retrieval. In one embodiment, such retrieval pertains to pattern recognition for data related to interactions between users, configuration and organization of systems data in an enterprise, and the quality of calculations of communication interactions. In one embodiment, a communication may be analyzed and a user interface created of potential sources of information related to the communication. This information may be from an internal source, such as a knowledge base, or an external source, such as an internet connected information source, for example. The user interface may comprise entities with associated links and actions, which may be configured based on a user's preference.

Abstract: A system and method are presented for acoustic echo cancellation. The echo canceller performs reduction of acoustic and hybrid echoes which may arise in a situation such as a long-distance conference call with multiple speakers in varying environments, for example. Echo cancellation, in at least one embodiment, may be based on similarity measurement, statistical determination of echo cancellation parameters from historical values, frequency domain operation, double talk detection, packet loss detection, signal detection, and noise subtraction.

Abstract: Systems and methods for the matching of datasets, such as input audio segments, with known datasets in a database are disclosed. In an illustrative embodiment, the use of the presently disclosed systems and methods is described in conjunction with recognizing known network message recordings encountered during an outbound telephone call. The methodologies include creation of a ternary fingerprint bitmap to make the comparison process more efficient. Also disclosed are automated methodologies for creating the database of known datasets from a larger collection of datasets.

Abstract: A system and method are presented for learning call analysis. Audio fingerprinting may be employed to identify audio recordings that answer communications. In one embodiment, the system may generate a fingerprint of a candidate audio stream and compare it against known fingerprints within a database. The system may also search for a speech-like signal to determine if the end point contains a known audio recording. If a known audio recording is not encountered, a fingerprint may be computed for the contact and the communication routed to a human for handling. An indication may be made as to if the call is indeed an audio recording. The associated information may be saved and used for future identification purposes.

Abstract: A system and method are presented for acoustic data selection of a particular quality for training the parameters of an acoustic model, such as a Hidden Markov Model and Gaussian Mixture Model, for example, in automatic speech recognition systems in the speech analytics field. A raw acoustic model may be trained using a given speech corpus and maximum likelihood criteria. A series of operations are performed, such as a forced Viterbi-alignment, calculations of likelihood scores, and phoneme recognition, for example, to form a subset corpus of training data. During the process, audio files of a quality that does not meet a criterion, such as poor quality audio files, may be automatically rejected from the corpus. The subset may then be used to train a new acoustic model.

Abstract: A system and method are presented for negative example based performance improvements for speech recognition. The presently disclosed embodiments address identified false positives and the identification of negative examples of keywords in an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system. Various methods may be used to identify negative examples of keywords. Such methods may include, for example, human listening and learning possible negative examples from a large domain specific text source. In at least one embodiment, negative examples of keywords may be used to improve the performance of an ASR system by reducing false positives.

Abstract: Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for automating the activation of agents in particular workgroups. A call queue server receives incoming communications. A scheduling server is coupled to the call center server over a network and analyzes historical communication data to calculate a forecasted load for a particular time period. The system uses the forecasted load to create agent schedules for the workgroups for the particular time period. The system programmatically activates and deactivates the agents into and out of the workgroups at scheduled points in time based on the calculated schedules. The call center server routes each of the queued communications to a particular agent that is activated on a particular one of the workgroup.

Abstract: A communication system including a media server through which communication packets are exchanged for recording and monitoring purposes is disclosed. A tap is associated with each communication endpoint allowing for cradle to grave recording of communications despite their subsequent routing or branching. An incoming communication is routed to a first tap and upon selection of a receiving party; the first tap is routed to a second tap which forwards communication packets on to the receiving party. The taps may be used to forward communication packets to any number of other taps or destinations, such as a recording device, monitoring user, or other user in the form of a conference.

Abstract: A computer system and method is disclosed for automatically establishing a screen sharing session between a first party and a second party based upon device associations. A computer telephony system establishes a telecommunication session between at least a first and second party. The computer telephony system receives a request for a screen sharing session from one party to the telecommunication session. Using a configuration plan, the computer telephony system is able to determine the proper computing devices between which to establish the screen sharing session absent user entry. A screen sharing session is created between the parties of the telecommunication session and optionally tied thereto.

Abstract: A computer-implemented system and method for assisting managers of a contact center is provided. The monitoring of agent communications is performed automatically and the communications are assigned to a group of supervisors for scoring. The scores assigned to the communications are then received and programmatically evaluated against predetermined criteria to determine the quality of the supervisors' performance. If the quality of performance is below an acceptable threshold, then the need for supervisor performance improvement is indicated. In one embodiment, the system automatically schedules a session for establishing/reinforcing a set of scoring guidelines in response to the indication.

Abstract: A computer system and method is disclosed that includes a telephony server that receives a spoken dialing command, sends the command to a speech recognition server, and dials a command based on the result. A computer system and method is disclosed that improves audio message delivery reliability. A computer system and method is disclosed that improves audio message manipulation. A computer system and method is disclosed that manages memory when audio messages are received. A system and method is disclosed that supports multiple speech recognition engines.

Abstract: A system of networked computers is disclosed having a number of servers and a number of clients. The clients are each provided with access to server selector service and the servers are each provided with access to a server reporter service. The server selector service is operable to obtain server processing load information from the server reporter service. The server selector service is responsive to a client activation request for a software task designated for server execution to select two or more servers to interrogate for server processing load information and designate one of the servers to execute the software task based on the server processing load information obtained by this interrogation.

Abstract: A computer system and method is disclosed that includes a call queue server that receives incoming calls and routes the calls to a telephone at the agent's workstation only after the agent accepts the request to take the call. A system and method is disclosed that includes a plurality of call queue servers, a queue monitor server, and a plurality of agent workstations, for distributing calls across multiple call center locations. Each call queue server receiving an incoming call sends a notification to the queue monitor server that in turn notifies each of the remaining call queue servers about the call. Each call queue server is thus able to maintain a current view of all activity across multiple call centers.

Abstract: A unified messaging system is configured to store and retrieve email, facsimile, pager, and voicemail messages. A telephone operated by a person is operatively coupled over a public switched telephone network to the unified messaging system. The system receives over the public switch telephone network a signal from the telephone corresponding to an administer multiple messages command for multiple messages having a common trait. In one form, the multiple messages having the common trait are then deleted from the database in response to this command. In another form, the multiple messages are filed into a folder specified by the person.

Abstract: A system for implementing a technique for operatively integrating an automatic call distributor and an interactive voice response unit is disclosed. Upon receiving and storing an interaction input from a caller seeking information, the automatic call distributor determines the availability of an agent workstation to respond to the interaction input. The interactive voice response unit provides the caller with access to the information when the automatic call distributor determines an agent workstation is unavailable to respond to the interaction input. The automatic call distributor transmits the interaction input to an appropriate agent workstation whenever that particular agent workstation becomes available to respond to the interaction input.

Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system places outbound calls using a predictive dialer at a call center and, optionally, receives inbound calls. The predictive dialing components use information about the substantive stage of the active calls at a given point in time to decide whether to begin to dial another outbound call. The calls that are considered may be inbound or outbound. In one form of the invention, statistics are maintained regarding each agent's passage through the various stages of an active call, then the statistics are used to control the predictive dialer.

Abstract: A novel customer interaction center server, and a novel method of operating a customer interaction center server, are disclosed. In one embodiment, a network of nodes (each representing one or more subsystem processes) and dependency relationships (indicating which processes depend on what other processes) is used to start the server, and the processes are monitored. In some of these embodiments, a failure of a particular process in the set of target processes is detected and logged and/or handled by implementing a selective shutdown and restart of only a subset of the processes represented in the network, based on the dependency information therein.

Abstract: A system for notifying and updating status of selected customer agent includes a customer computer, a computer network, and a customer contact processing computer. The customer contact processing computer is coupled to the customer computer by the computer network. The customer contact processing computer includes a storage unit to store a status indication for each agent. The customer contact processing computer is responsive to an input from the customer computer over the computer network, which corresponds to a selection of at least one of the agents by a customer computer. The customer contact processing computer transmits over the computer network the status indication for the selected agents from the storage unit to the customer computer. The customer contact processing computer updates the status indication transmitted to the customer computer for the agents from time to time.