BACKGROUND

Providing efficient and effective customer support is essential to the successful operation of most businesses. This is more than just a guideline or observation, as assisting customers or prospective customers with resolving the issues they encounter using products and services is often a key to successful onboarding and customer retention. For example, a customer or prospective customer may require assistance in configuring a device or service, in operating a device, in establishing an account, in making a payment, etc. Each of these needs for assistance should be addressed both quickly and correctly to ensure a good customer experience and continued use of the product or service.

Whereas previously the primary method of accessing a customer service representative was a telephone call, this method of contact has expanded to include email. However, even with the additional communication channel provided by email, today's customer engagement with companies providing a product or service is reactive and is based on the use of those legacy communication channels.

Conventional approaches to providing customers with access to support and assistance with products or services is based on legacy communication channels such as telephone and email. These conventional approaches suffer from one or more disadvantages, including being reactive and often lacking relevant contextual information regarding the current state of a problem (which in some cases must be provided by the customer). Embodiments of the disclosure are directed toward solving these and other problems individually and collectively.

SUMMARY

The terms “invention,” “the invention,” “this invention,” “the present invention,” “the present disclosure,” or “the disclosure” as used herein are intended to refer broadly to all of the subject matter described in this document, the drawings or figures, and to the claims. Statements containing these terms should be understood not to limit the subject matter described herein or to limit the meaning or scope of the claims. Embodiments covered by this disclosure are defined by the claims and not by this summary. This summary is a high-level overview of various aspects of the disclosure and introduces some of the concepts that are further described in the Detailed Description section below. This summary is not intended to identify key, essential or required features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used in isolation to determine the scope of the claimed subject matter. The subject matter should be understood by reference to appropriate portions of the entire specification, to any or all figures or drawings, and to each claim.

As mentioned, present forms of customer engagement with companies providing a product or service is typically reactive and based on using legacy communication channels such as telephone and email. However the inventors have developed an approach for providing customer service that is more automated and pro-active, and leverages modern digital capabilities and communication channels such as (text) messaging, chat bots, digital assistants and artificial intelligence techniques to make the customer service experience more relevant and efficient.

An important factor in enabling automated, effective and pro-active customer support interactions is provision of relevant data and context to the entity providing the customer support or service. In some embodiments, the described system, apparatuses, and methods enable engagement by a customer with a customer service or support entity (e.g., a customer service platform, person, application or (chat)bot) that is initiated using a physical or digitally represented bootstrap “code”.

In some embodiments, the code is provided with a physical product, such as by being part of a label or “tag” (RFID, NFC, or other similar form of device or element that is capable of exchanging data with another device or application). In some embodiments, the code may be transferred to an electronic device of a customer and caused to be displayed on the device. In some embodiments, the code may be transferred to a customer in the form of an image provided to a device using text messaging, email, a wireless communications technique, etc.

In some embodiments, the bootstrap code or other form of data is generated by a customer support provider/platform and is transferred to the customer and used to authenticate the customer and enable access to securely stored contextual information regarding the device and/or identification information regarding the customer (e.g., device model, device configuration, device features, customer identification, customer location, etc.). In some embodiments, the code may be provided by a customer support or service platform (such as that operated by the assignee of the present application) to a company and then provided to the customer. In some embodiments, the company is a manufacturer of the device or an organization that sold the device to the customer (and with whom they may have a customer service or support agreement or warranty).

Embodiments of the disclosure are directed to systems, apparatuses, and methods for more effectively providing automated or semi-automated customer support services while maintaining the security of customer and device data and information. In some embodiments, these capabilities and functions are provided by obtaining and securely storing information regarding one or more of a customer, a device, or a service and providing a token or code to the customer when they require assistance. The token or code enables the customer to identify themselves with the entity providing the customer service assistance and also enables that entity to access the securely stored information. In some embodiments, the stored information may include information regarding the customer, device, or service that is obtained contemporaneously with the customer's need for assistance. For example, the information may include an error message or status flag for a device, or a location of a customer.

Other objects and advantages of the systems and methods described will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art upon review of the detailed description and the included figures. Throughout the drawings, identical reference characters and descriptions indicate similar, but not necessarily identical, elements. While the exemplary embodiments described herein are susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will be described in detail herein. However, the exemplary embodiments described herein are not intended to be limited to the particular forms disclosed. Rather, the present disclosure covers all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the appended claims.

