Abstract: The invention provides a customer service response system (CSRS), that a customer service agent can selectively employ to simultaneously interact with one or more customers. When a caller places a telephone call to the customer service call center, the CSRS answers the call and plays a message to the calling party. The message may be a greeting message and may prompt the calling party for information such as a claim number. The CSRS then displays this information on a graphical user interface at the call center. The customer service agent in front of the GUI can answer the call, or can respond to the caller with a question by clicking a button on the GUI.

Abstract: A telephony system sends an outgoing message to a caller and expects to receive a reply message. In order to be prepared to process the reply, a speech input unit is activated by a subliminal keying signal. The keying signal is provided in time relation to the outgoing message on the same transmission path as the outgoing message. The keying signal is both subliminal, so it is “heard” by the speech input unit and not by the caller, and has a signal pattern unlike normal speech, so as to avoid false keying of the input unit. The input unit can thus be activated at an appropriate time to be ready to process a reply. This avoids inefficiencies of a continuously activated input unit and loss of opening elements of a reply message due to the latent period of a voice-activated input unit.

Abstract: Playback of pre-recorded messages to respond to caller inquiries has been subject to delays inherent in speech retrieval. Latent periods, both initial and intra-message, are reduced by breaking speech elements (words, phrases, sentences, etc.) into opening fragments and remaining portions. For each pre-recorded speech element for a particular application, an opening fragment (e.g., 4K bytes of speech data) is stored in active computer memory. The remaining portion of each speech element, regardless of length, is stored in a large capacity speech storage facility. For an incoming call, an appropriate responsive message is determined. The opening fragment of a pre-recorded speech element for that message is retrieved from active memory and used to initiate message transmission to the caller. Contemporaneously, a remaining portion of the speech element is retrieved from the storage facility and moved to active memory.