Internet telephony for ecommerce

A method for facilitating a phone call between an end user using a computer connected to a data packet network and a call center connected to a public switched telephone network from a server, the method comprising the steps of:

• receiving a message from the computer indicating a desire to make a phone call;
• receiving a message from the computer including an identifier of a merchant to which a phone call is desired, the merchant having at least one call center;
• instructing, by a server, a gateway connected to the public switched telephone network and the data packet network to establish a call to the call center over the public switched telephone network;
• receiving at the server a message from a call center computer, the message including a phone line identifier of a particular phone line at the gateway over which the phone call is connected;
• retrieving context information using the phone line identifier;
• and
• transmitting the context information to the call center computer through the data packet network.

A system for establishing a phone call from an end user viewing a merchant web site and a merchant call center, the system comprising:

• a web server, the web server including a web page, the web page including an end user identifier, an address to which a message may be sent to receive software to enable a phone call to a merchant call center and an identifier of a merchant associated with the web page, the software being configured to transmit the end user identifier from a computer on which the software is installed to the call center;
• an application server, the application server being responsive to a message received at the address to transmit the software to an end user computer;
• a gateway connected to a data packet network and a public switched telephone network;
• a call server, the call server being responsive to a message including a merchant identifier from the end user computer to configure the gateway to exchange packets comprising digitized voice information with the end user computer over the data packet network and exchange voice information corresponding to the digitized voice information with a merchant call center associated with the merchant over the public switched telephone network.

A method for conducting a phone call between an end user using a computer connected to a data packet network and a called party connected to a public switched telephone network, the method comprising the steps of:

• downloading a call web page to the computer, the call web page including an identifier of the called party;
• establishing a phone call between the end user and the called party via a gateway connected to the data packet network and the public switched telephone network;
• transmitting a DTMF tone to the gateway from the called party via the public switched telephone network;
• translating the DTMF tone to a uniform resource locator (URL);
• and
• downloading a second web page corresponding to the URL to the computer.