US 2,003,225,730 · Filed 2002-06-03

The Patent That Made Phone Trees Less Infuriating

Imagine calling customer support and the menu options rearrange themselves based on what thousands of other callers picked—putting the most common solutions first. This patent describes a smart phone system that learns from call patterns and reorganizes its menu in real time to get you answers faster without making the company hire more people.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a dynamic automated phone support system that captures actual call data from users, analyzes which menu options and responses are selected most frequently, and automatically reorders the menu structure to prioritize those options. What's protected here is the integration of a live knowledge base with the phone system's interface, allowing the system to reorganize itself based on caller behavior—either from individual call patterns or historical trends across many callers.

Why it matters

Before this patent, every caller encountered the same rigid phone menu, regardless of what they actually needed. By letting the system learn and reorder itself, companies could improve customer experience and reduce call times without hiring additional support staff. For a company like RightNow Technologies, which sold customer support software, this kind of intelligent adaptation became a competitive advantage in making support systems feel less frustrating and more efficient.

Real-world use

When you call a bank's customer support line and the first three options match your most likely needs, that's because the system has learned what thousands of previous callers actually wanted and surfaced those choices first.

Original USPTO abstract

A system, method, and computer program product for dynamically adapting selections in an automatic phone support system is described. The invention may integrate a dynamic knowledge base of responses with the menu selections on an automated phone system or other response system to present the most frequently used items earlier in the option list, or otherwise order options and information. Call data may be captured from single callers or historical ensembles of callers. An automatically generated similarity relationship may be used to initialize the system without historical call data, based on textual similarity or other techniques. Prioritization of options provides a more enjoyable, efficient experience for callers without increasing administrative overhead.

Patent details

Publication number: US 2,003,225,730
Filing date: 2002-06-03
Grant date: Application — not yet granted
Assignee: Rightnow Technologies, Inc.
Inventor(s): WARNER DOUG, MYER MIKE, ABSHIRE TOM
CPC class: H04M3/493

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