1. Field of the Invention
This application is directed to the field of telephony-based applications for computer software, and, more particularly, to telephony-based order-taking software applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nearly all commerce at this point in time is driven by taking orders of one kind or another, whether it be taking an airplane reservation over the telephone or making a reservation for a doctor's appointment. It is a current trend in the art to automate the order taking procedure to the greatest extent possible. This has several benefits both to the consuming public and to the business that provides the goods or services being ordered. For example, for the consumer, automated telephony-based order taking would permit the user to place an order at his or her convenience at any time of the day or night. The business' needs are served by maximizing the potential for revenue by increasing the possibility of securing a new order. The businesses are also best served by removing, to the extent possible, the human order taker from the equation, since that is a large component of the cost of an order taking operation.
A first generation attempt to provide for automated order taking was a simple voice messaging system whereby people seeking to place an order or make an appointment would leave a message on an automated voice answering system, such as an answering machine, and request that an order be sent or that an appointment be made. This increased some opportunities for users to access the system for placing an order or making an appointment, but suffered from several drawbacks. First, in making a doctor's appointment, for example, if the physician with whom the appointment was being made did not have the particular time slot available, this method required repeated back-and forth telephone calls to establish the appointment. Similarly, for taking an order for tangible goods it would always would be possible that the supplier of the goods would be out of the particular goods that were ordered or would otherwise not be able to meet the delivery schedule requested by the ordering party. Thus, this system ultimately proved unsatisfactory.
A later generation of automated voice-ordering arrived with the advent of touch-tone dialing, via dual-tone multi frequency (“DTMF”) telephony. It became possible to have an automated ordering system accessible through a touch pad of a telephone, so that a user could call up a system, and access the system over the telephone and “push one for . . . . ” This provided a significant improvement over simple voice messaging technology but suffered from many of its own drawbacks. First, users were required to “drill down” to reach a desired option. While it would be possible to make a selection quickly if the user knew the available option on a particular menu, the user would still be required to go through individual menus to reach a desired selection. Secondly, it required the user to navigate through use of the touch pad of the phone rather simply through voice.
A later generation of responses allowed users to make selections through voice commands rather than through the key pad, so that the user could use the menu by speech rather through pressing the key pad. This provided an improved experience for the customer, and greater convenience for navigating the menus, but still required following drill-down menus.
Currently, the technology has evolved to permit the use of “directed dialog” grammars. This means that a current system may have voice prompts, such as, for example: “are you having a billing or reception problem” (for a cable company). In response, the user is directed to make a selection for one or more (possibly free-form) answers. The key, however, is that the user is only provided a limited number of options to choose from, whether expressly or implicitly provided.
This suffers from the drawback of providing a user experience which is not necessarily a pleasant one. There would be a benefit to having a user-ordering experience which more closely approximates the interaction of placing an order with a live human, such as waiter or operator, without the expense of having human personnel.
There is thus a need in the art for a method and system for accepting orders that enhances the user experience and at the same time lowers the cost of the development and maintenance of the order taking system.