Patent ID: 9378505
Filing Date: 2016-06-28
CPC Classification: G06Q,H04L,H04M

Claim Text:
1. A method of optimizing outcomes of interactions with existing customers by optimizing interactive communications systems, the method comprising: providing, with an interactive communications system, a customer interface for interacting with customers of a merchant, wherein the merchant is a client of a provider operating the interactive communications system, wherein the interactive communications system comprises at least one of an interactive voice response (“IVR”) system, an interactive electronic mail (“email”) communications system, an interactive web-based communications system, an interactive electronic chat communications system, or an interactive short message service (“SMS”) communications system; receiving, at the customer interface, a contact from an existing customer of the merchant; identifying the customer at the interactive communications system; determining, with the interactive communications system, a status group of the customer, wherein the status group comprises a plurality of customers, each of the plurality of customers in the status group having similar characteristics with each other customer in the status group; determining, with the interactive communications system, a preferred outcome that is optimal for the merchant, the preferred outcome comprising at least one of an outcome in which a customer keeps the purchased product, an outcome in which an amount of any refund provided to a customer is minimized, an outcome in which satisfaction of existing customers is maximized, an outcome in which one or more new products are sold to a customer, an outcome in which a partial refund is provided when a customer keeps a product intended for return, an outcome in which one or more additional products are sold to a customer regardless of whether the customer returns previously purchased product, an outcome in which a customer accepts a particular offer, an outcome in which one or more of length, frequency, or communication channel of customer interactions is constrained, an outcome in which a series of prompts most quickly results in customer acceptance of an offer, an outcome in which a customer is encouraged to end telephone interaction and resume interaction via a website, or an outcome in which financial loss for the merchant is minimized; automatically selecting, by the interactive communications system, a prompt group for the customer, based at least in part on the status group of the customer and on a set of one or more multivariate testing rules proven to enhance a probability that the customer will accept the preferred outcome that has been determined to be optimal for the merchant; automatically presenting, by the interactive communications system using the customer interface, a series of prompts to the customer in accordance with the selected prompt group, each of the prompts providing an offer to the customer, the series of prompts being ordered according to a predefined path wherein the series of prompts comprises varying prompts, and wherein the series of prompts associated with a first prompt group differs from the series of prompts associated with a second prompt group by at least one of order, prompt content, or style of prompt; receiving, at the customer interface, an acceptance of an offer corresponding to one of the prompts; performing, by the interactive communications system, a fulfillment operation, based on the acceptance of the offer, the fulfillment operation comprising communication of the acceptance of the offer to a merchant computer system operated by the merchant; automatically evaluating, by the interactive communications system, the prompt group, based at least in part on the acceptance of the offer, wherein evaluating the prompt group comprises determining an effectiveness of the series of prompts in producing the preferred outcome that has been determined to be optimal for the merchant; automatically determining, by the interactive communications system, whether the prompt group is an optimal prompt group to maximize the probability that the customer will accept the outcome that has been determined to be optimal for the merchant, based at least in part on an evaluation of the prompt group; automatically modifying, by the interactive communications system, the prompt group, if an evaluation of the prompt group indicates that the series of prompts does not maximize the probability that the customer will accept the preferred outcome that has been determined to be optimal for the merchant, wherein the prompt group is one of a plurality of split test prompt groups and the customer is one of the plurality of customers; and automatically repeating iteratively for different customers of the plurality of customers, the operations of: wherein automatically evaluating the prompt group comprises automatically comparing, by the interactive communications system, a performance of the split test prompt group with the performance of each of the plurality of split test prompt groups to optimize performance of the interactive communications system in interacting with customers; wherein a first prompt group comprises a first prompt in a first series of prompts and a second prompt group comprises a second prompt in a second series of prompts, and wherein the first prompt and the second prompt provide the same offer to the customer, and the first prompt is ordered differently in the first series of prompts compared with an order of the second prompt in the second series of prompts.