Abstract: Contact centers employ agents to provide services to customers. In particular, artificial agents are provided that have a rich background and continuing life with the realm of social media. The artificial agent's profile is selected in accord with the profiles of current or prospective customers. As the customers age and progress in life, the artificial agent profile is updated in accord with the customers' changing profiles and similarly ages and progresses in life. When a customer desires to interact with artificial agent, for a purpose provided by a contact center, a human agent may be provided the profile and/or history of the artificial agent so as to impersonate the artificial agent and promote the relationship with the customer.

Abstract: Contact centers may benefit from routing messages to agents who have similar, or complementary, attributes as the customer of the message. In a text message, certain message attributes provide artifacts that may be common to one particular customer attribute. Messages containing that particular message attribute provide a derived customer attribute and the message routed accordingly. In addition, agents responding to a customer may be provided with guidance to ensure their response is appropriate for the derived customer attribute of the customer.

Abstract: Some social networks provide message histories that record information about previous posts that users make to the social media network. From this information, a contact center determines trends in the usage of a social media network by a user. The contact center can mine the message history database for times, frequency of posts, location of the user during posts, and other information provided in the message histories. From this information or metadata about the messages, the contact center develops trends about the user's postings of messages on social media networks. The contact center can further receive subsequent posts and read metadata related to the subsequent posts. The new metadata can be used to modify the trends over time.

Abstract: A contact center system can receive messages from consumers. The system can then interact with the consumer or customer using a dialog. Before conducting the session with the consumer, past interactions using the dialog are reviewed to determine words, phrases, and other information that caused the dialog to be successful. The information is stored as norms. Upon beginning a new interaction with the dialog, the norms and the past successful dialogs are retrieved and compared to the active dialog while the interaction is on-going. The comparison is then used to ensure that the present active dialog will lead to a successful outcome or to resolve any issued if the outcome is not likely to be successful.

Abstract: Methods and systems for automatically extending a sentiment dictionary are provided. Starting with an initial set of elements (e.g., words, emoticons, etc.) having a known sentiment, messages can be analyzed for words frequently appearing in association with such words. As a result the frequently appearing words may then be associated with a sentiment and used to help determine the sentiment of a message.

Abstract: The sentiment of a message may not be obtainable from the message itself. However, many messages have an associated context that provides information useful in determining the sentiment of a message. Messages may include links to other resources, such as graphics or videos, which in turn include titles, comments, viewer ratings or other attributes that may provide a sentiment of the message.

Abstract: An automatic timeline and topic normalization mechanism is described along with various methods and systems for administering the same. The temporal correction system proposed herein creates fully interpreted and reordered representations of events within and external to a dialog, reducing the amount of time and expensive resources typically required for reading, comprehension, and response to written communications.

Abstract: Automated method and systems are provided for determining a gap exists in an enterprise's knowledge base. Once a gap is determined, a question is developed in accord with the gap. An answer is then developed to answer the question and the knowledge base is updated accordingly. The source of the information may be cross-domain information such that an enterprise may include relevant information, and/or more usable information, than what could be otherwise provided by information limited to the enterprise's domain.

Abstract: A semantic translation model system is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The semantic translation model system proposed herein creates an intermediate representation and a knowledge base in multiple languages, reducing the amount of time and expensive resources typically required for translation and automatic response to written communications. The system also removes the problem of a translation being influenced by a person's writing style and human misinterpretation and provides ongoing translation to keep the system current.

Abstract: Social media websites contain posts which may benefit persons affected by an emergency situation or natural disaster. Discovering trustworthy posters of useful information is disclosed such that messages indicating relevant information, and an associated trust value, may be provided to interested parties.

Abstract: A prioritization and time allocation by customer service is provided, whereby the customer service agents are incentivized to accept those tasks which more closely align with the objectives of a call center. Individual agents will then be able to pursue their own methodology to achieve their own goals and, in the process, pursue an objective of the contact center.

Abstract: A trend is identified by examining multiple communications in a contact center. For example, a trend can be a specific issue or problem related to a product. A communication related to the trend is identified. Based on identification of the trend, a process for routing the communications in the contact center is altered. In one embodiment, different menus/items in an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system are changed based on the identified trend. In other embodiments, communications related to the trend are identified and moved to different queues or held in queues until there is a valid response. The identified communications can be responded to automatically, by specific agents, by group mailings, and the like. In addition, prior communications that relate to the trend are identified. This allows additional responses to be sent or processes to be altered in order to provide the customer with a better quality of service.

Abstract: A contact center system can receive messages from consumers. The system can then interact with the consumer or customer using a dialog. Before conducting the session with the consumer, past interactions using the dialog are reviewed to determine words, phrases, and other information that caused the dialog to be successful. The information is stored as norms. Upon beginning a new interaction with the dialog, the norms and the past successful dialogs are retrieved and compared to the active dialog while the interaction is on-going. The comparison is then used to ensure that the present active dialog will lead to a successful outcome or to resolve any issued if the outcome is not likely to be successful.

Abstract: A contact center system can receive messages from social media sites or centers. The messages may be in a foreign language. The system can review messages by identifying content in the social media messages with negative/positive sentiment and then identify a seed term in the messages. A seed term can be a word in another language, different from the message body. The seed term is then used to find one or more other words, in the foreign language, that are correlated with the seed term. The identification of the found words in other messages can then be used to determine sentiment in the foreign language.

Abstract: A contact center system can receive messages from social media sites or centers. The messages may include derogatory or nefarious content. The system can review messages to identify the message as nefarious and identify the poster as a social media provocateur. The system may then automatically respond to the nefarious content. Further, the system may prevent future nefarious conduct by the identified social media provocateur by executing one or more automated procedures.

Abstract: A contact center system can receive messages from social media sites or centers. The system can review long messages by identifying content in the long message with negative sentiment. The content with negative sentiment is further analyzed to determine whether the identified content is actionable. If the identified content is actionable, the communication system can automatically routed the long message to an agent for response.

Abstract: A system can determine a best routing of a customer contact based on analysis of one or more automatically generated answers. A customer may provide an inquiry through a social media contact. The contact center can analyze the inquiry to generate one or more automated answers. The system then analyzes the automated answers. The analysis may include studying various attributes of the answer, either in relation to the inquiry or based in historical data. From the analysis, the system can modify the answers and/or provide a different or improved pool of agents to handle the contact. Thus, an improved set of answers and agents is provided for managing the contact.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided to estimate the amount of service time left in a contact with a contact center. A system records metadata factors associated with contacts and the service time for the contacts. This information is incorporated into one or more service time probability distributions. A service time probability distribution is a function describing how much time a contact, having certain, defined characteristics, took historically. The distribution can subsequently be used to estimate service time for future contacts that have the same or similar characteristics.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are provided for processing “on hold” commands in a call center. A communication dialog is processed by storing a checkpoint containing a context of the communication; monitoring the communication dialog for an “on-hold” condition; and suspending the communication dialog when the “on-hold” condition is detected The “on-hold” condition can be detected by monitoring telephony signaling. The communication dialog can optionally be returned to a restart point, such as a checkpoint, when the “on-hold” condition is detected. The communication dialog can be monitored for an “off-hold” condition and restarted from a checkpoint when the “off-hold” condition is detected. A resume context message can optionally be provided to the caller when the “off-hold” condition is detected.

Abstract: A system and method for securing the mobile device applies the rules to determine if an event associated with an application is a secure event. If the event is a secure event, the system applies the rules to determine if the event is authenticated. If the event is authenticated, the event is authorized and the system updates rule data associated with the event and/or other associated events. Updating the rule data allows other associated events to be authenticated. If the event is not authenticated, the system requests authentication from a user. If the authentication is valid, the event is authorized and the system updates the rule data associated with the event and/or other associated events. If the authentication is not valid, the system secures the mobile device. Authorizing the event enables a user to access the application and/or data associated with the application.