US 6,826,745 · Granted 2004-11-30

The Smart Script Patent That Shaped Modern Call Center Software

Imagine a flowchart that guides a telemarketer through a phone call—asking different follow-up questions depending on what the customer says. This patent protects software that lets companies build, customize, and update those interactive call scripts without needing a programmer every time they want to change a question or branch.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers interactive scripting systems where the path through a call dynamically changes based on customer responses. What's protected here is the method of configuring and reconfiguring scripts so that a telemarketer's next prompt automatically adapts to what the customer just answered. The protection extends to the system architecture that allows non-technical call center managers to build and modify these decision trees themselves.

Why it matters

Call centers were (and still are) huge cost centers for companies, and efficiency directly affects profit margins. By letting call center supervisors build and tweak scripts without IT involvement, this patent addressed a real operational bottleneck in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It became part of Siebel's broader customer relationship management platform, which dominated enterprise software during that era. The patent essentially locked down the idea of user-configurable, branching call scripts—a core feature competitors would have wanted to replicate.

Real-world use

When you call a customer service line and the agent asks a question that clearly depends on what you just said, they're often reading from software guided by this kind of patent-protected logic.

Original USPTO abstract

The invention provides user configurable and reconfigurable scripting, methods of scripting, and systems for scripting for use by call centers, technical support centers, and marketers. Scripts are interactive tools that guide a telemarketer, a sales person, or a technical support technician through a telephone call with a customer. Scripts are characterized by going on to particular subsequent questions as a function of the customer's answer to a previous question.

Patent details

Publication number: US 6,826,745
Filing date: 2001-05-30
Grant date: 2004-11-30
Assignee: Siebel Systems, Inc.
Inventor(s): COKER JOHN L., MALDEN MATTHEW S., NIX KEVIN R.
CPC class: G06Q30/02

View original record on Google Patents →

Want to file your own patent?

Curious about how software patents protect business processes? Explore our free scanner to see what makes a workflow or application unique enough to patent.

Free patentability scan