US 7,117,158 B2 · Systems, methods and computer program products for designing, deploying and managing interactive voice response (IVR) systems

Abstract

An IVR system may be designed by accepting designer inputs to generate, on a display screen, a flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks and flowchart decision blocks that represent a process flow of processing steps and branches, respectively, in the IVR system. By allowing the designer to generate a flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks and flowchart decision blocks on a single display screen, a potentially simplified graphical user interface may be provided for designing an IVR system. The flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks and flowchart decision blocks may be executed, based on at least one designer input on a keypad image, to simulate or test the IVR system. A self-documenting audit trail may be provided during the design of the IVR system. These audit trails may be associated with a version of the IVR system, so that multiple versions of the system may be managed. When deploying the IVR system, caller inputs may be sequentially stored in an order in which they were provided by the caller, to provide call logging. Regulatory compliance thereby may be facilitated.

Claims39

Dependent claims

A method of designing an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, comprising:

accepting a plurality of designer inputs to generate, on a single display screen, a flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks and flowchart decision blocks that represent a process flow of processing steps and branches, respectively, in the IVR system, wherein the single display screen includes a keypad image;
and
executing the flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks that are displayed on the single display screen, and flowchart decision blocks that are displayed on the single display screen, based on at least one designer input on the keypad image to test the IVR system.

An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, comprising:

means for accepting designer inputs;
and
means for generating, on a single display screen, a flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks and flowchart decision blocks that represent a process flow of processing steps and branches, respectively, in the IVR system, in response to a plurality of designer inputs at the means for accepting, wherein the single display screen includes a keypad image;
and
means for executing the flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks and flowchart decision blocks that are displayed on the single display screen, based on at least one designer input on the keypad image to test the IVR system.

2 more elements

A computer program product that is configured to provide an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, the computer program product comprising a computer usable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied in the medium, the computer-readable program code comprising:

computer-readable program code that is configured to accept a plurality of designer inputs to generate, on a single display screen, a flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks and flowchart decision blocks that represent a process flow of processing steps and branches, respectively, in the IVR system, wherein the single display screen includes a keypad image;
and
computer-readable program code that is configured to execute the flowchart of interconnected flowchart processing blocks and flowchart decision blocks that are displayed on the single display screen, based on at least one designer input on the keypad image to test the IVR system.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Systems, methods and computer program products for designing, deploying and managing interactive voice response (IVR) systems

Life of this patent

Systems, methods and computer program products for designing, deploying and managing interactive voice response (IVR) systems

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims39