US 6,850,949 · Granted 2005-02-01

The Patent That Made Phone Trees Less Infuriating

Imagine calling customer support and the menu magically rearranges itself so the option you need appears first instead of buried at the end. This patent describes a system that tracks what callers actually choose and reshuffles the menu to put popular options up front, saving everyone time and frustration.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a dynamic phone menu system that automatically reorders its options based on call data. What's protected here is the specific method of capturing what choices callers make, analyzing patterns (either from individual callers or groups of them), and then intelligently repositioning menu items so the most frequently selected options appear earlier in the list. The system can also use text similarity to figure out which options relate to each other, helping organize menus even without historical call data.

Why it matters

Before this patent, phone support menus were static — the same order for everyone, every day. This invention solved a real pain point: callers wasted time listening to irrelevant options. By dynamically adapting based on actual usage patterns, companies could reduce average call duration and improve customer satisfaction without hiring more support staff. For a company like Right Now Technologies, which sold customer relationship management software, this kind of user experience innovation was a competitive advantage in the 2000s.

Real-world use

When you call your bank's support line and the first option is 'Check your balance,' that's because millions of callers chose that option first — a system like this one learned that pattern and moved it to the top.

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 6,850,949
Filing date: 2002-06-03
Grant date: 2005-02-01
Assignee: Right Now Technologies, Inc.
Inventor(s): WARNER DOUG, MYER MIKE, ABSHIRE TOM
CPC class: H04M3/493

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