Technique for assisting a user with information services at an information/call center

Abstract

A service providing information assistance may maintain for a subscriber contacts folders comprising private directories of the subscriber, and a personal profile containing the subscriber's preferences. When a user calls the service to attempt to communicate with a desired party through the service, the service can ascertain whether the desired party has a personal profile and/or a contacts folder associated with him/her. If so, the caller is allowed to communicate with the desired party on the terms and conditions defined by the desired party in his/her personal profile and/or contacts folder. For instance, the desired party may have defined therein who should be allowed to contact him/her, when he/she should be contacted, by what communication means, and whether the caller can be told any of the desired party's communication addresses (e.g., telephone number, email address, etc.).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.