Abstract:
Disclosed is a method and system for generating a response email template from previously transmitted response emails for use in responding more efficiently to a client email. The response email template is generated by identifying text strings common to the transmitted response emails and creating the template from at least some of the text strings.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0001]    The present invention is generally directed to email, and more particularly to generating templates for use in responding to emails. 
         [0002]    Each year, companies typically receive millions of emails from customers and consumers. Agents of a company are responsible for responding to these emails. Responding to the emails appropriately is often a time-consuming endeavor. In particular, agents have to respond to the email in a suitable fashion, such as attempting to resolve a customer&#39;s query or complaint. Due to the large number of emails received, the aggregate time needed to respond to the emails is typically long and grows with each additional email. 
         [0003]    One technique used by companies to speed up the time needed by an agent to respond to an email is by the use of response email templates. A response email template is an electronic file having an outline of a response to an email. An agent modifies a template to generate a specific response to an email. 
         [0004]    There are typically many possible response email templates from which to choose for any given email. As a result, a computer may suggest a template to an agent for use in responding to a particular email. This may occur from the classification of a received email. Specifically, when a company receives an email from a customer, the email may be classified into a category based on the email&#39;s contents or subject line. A predetermined template for a given classification can then be provided to the agent for use in responding to the email. For example, all emails dealing with incorrect bill amounts may be responded to in a similar fashion using the same response email template. 
         [0005]    As the number of classifications increase, however, the number of templates needed also increases. Furthermore, the template(s) for a given classification may not be directly applicable to a specific email. As a result, the agent may have to reply to the email without using a template. This increases the time needed to respond to the email. Additionally, as the number of templates available increases, the selection of an applicable template becomes more difficult and time consuming, thereby again increasing the time needed to respond to the email. 
         [0006]    There remains a need to reduce the time needed to respond to received emails. 
       BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0007]    In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, a response email template is generated from previously transmitted response emails. The response email template is generated by identifying text strings common to the transmitted response emails and creating the template from at least some of the text strings. The text strings may include one or more words, one or more sentences, or one or more paragraphs. 
         [0008]    In one embodiment, identifying text strings includes identifying word matches between a pair of previously transmitted emails. The word matches are extracted from the pair of previously transmitted emails. The identifying and extracting steps are repeated for each additional pair of response emails. The response email template can then be generated from text strings occurring a predetermined number of times. 
         [0009]    In one embodiment, the response emails are normalized. This normalization can occur by changing (e.g., performing an insertion, deletion, or replacement of) at least one text string in the response emails that is not particularly relevant to the content of the email. For example, names, dates, etc. can be changed to a generic word (e.g., the phrase “Sincerely John” can be changed to “Sincerely Name”) in order to remove these differences between emails. Once a response email template is generated, a customer&#39;s email can be responded to by revising the response email template appropriately. 
         [0010]    These and other advantages of the invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art by reference to the following detailed description and the accompanying drawings. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0011]      FIG. 1  is a block diagram of a system having a first client, a second client, and a third client in communication with a server having a template generation module in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; 
           [0012]      FIGS. 2A and 2B  are flowcharts illustrating the steps performed by the template generation module to generate a response email template; 
           [0013]      FIG. 3  is another flowchart illustrating the steps performed by the template generation module to generate a response email template; and 
           [0014]      FIG. 4  is a high level block diagram of a computer in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0015]      FIG. 1  shows a block diagram of a system  100  including a server  105  in communication with a first client  110 , a second client  115 , and a third client  120  over a network  125  such as the Internet. 
         [0016]    The server  105  receives a plurality of emails from the clients  110 ,  1   15 ,  120 . The server  105  may be a server of a company. One or more agents of the company respond to the one or more emails received from the clients  110 ,  115 ,  120 . In one embodiment, emails received from the clients  110 ,  115 , and  120  (referred to herein as client emails) and corresponding email responses (referred to herein as response emails) are stored in a database  130 . 
         [0017]    The server  105  includes a template generation module  140 . The template generation module  140  generates response email templates from previously transmitted response emails. The templates are used by agents in preparing response emails to current client emails. In particular, assume that similar client emails are responded to with similar replies. If the commonalities of the replies are detected and stored as templates, then a new email that is similar to the previous emails might be responded to using a template. 
         [0018]    The template generation module  140  identifies text strings common to previously transmitted response emails. In one embodiment, the template generation module  140  uses a longest common substring algorithm to determine the commonalities between response emails. The text strings are one or more words, one or more sentences, or one or more paragraphs in the response emails. The template generation module  140  creates a response email template from at least some of the text strings. The template generation module  140  may be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. 
         [0019]      FIGS. 2A and 2B  are flowcharts showing the algorithm used by the template generation module  140  to generate a response email template. The template generation module  140  retrieves (e.g., from database  130 ) previously transmitted response emails in step  205 . The template generation module  140  then identifies text strings common to the retrieved response emails in step  210 . In one embodiment, text strings common to the retrieved response emails are text strings that occur a predetermined number of times in the response emails (e.g., a sentence occurring in seventy-five out of one hundred response emails). Step  210  may be performed on a predetermined number of response emails (e.g., a pair of response emails) in the set of retrieved response emails or on all of the response emails retrieved in step  205 . In step  215 , the template generation module  140  generates a response email template from at least some of the text strings that are common to the response emails. In particular, after the text strings common to the retrieved response emails are identified, the text strings are extracted from the response emails. When the text strings are extracted, they are removed from the response emails and copied to another electronic file (i.e., the response email template). 
         [0020]    When the server  105  receives a client email (e.g., from the first client  110 ) in step  220  of  FIG. 2B , the server  105  then determines a response email template for the client email (step  225 ). This determination may be made by a machine learning program that is trained to associate client emails with templates based on past associations between agents&#39; selection of templates and client emails. The server  105  then provides an agent using the server  105  with the response email template. The agent creates a response email for the client email by modifying (e.g., inserting, substituting, or deleting) text in the response email template. The response email is then transmitted to the client in step  230 . 
         [0021]      FIG. 3  shows a flowchart of another embodiment of the steps performed by the template generation module  140  to generate a response email template.  FIG. 4  shows an example of a pair of stored response emails (i.e., first response email  405  and second response email  410 ) and one client email  415 . The flowchart of  FIG. 3  is described below with respect to the example emails shown in  FIG. 4 . 
         [0022]    The template generation module  140  obtains, in step  305 , the two response emails  405 ,  410  (e.g., from the database  130 ). The template generation module  140  normalizes the two response emails in step  310 . In one embodiment, the two emails are normalized by replacing certain variations in the two emails, such as names of customers, dates, service names, billing amount, etc., with a generic word or phrase. 
         [0023]    For example, the template generation module  140  determines that “George” and “Jen” differ in the two response emails  405 ,  410  but represent the same thing—a name. As a result, the template generation module  140  can replace the two names—George and Jen—with a generic phrase, such as Name. Further examples of normalization of the two response emails  405 ,  410  include replacing the billing amounts (e.g., $75.00, $65.00, $27.50, and $25.50) with a generic phrase such as Amount. 
         [0024]    In step  315 , the template generation module  140  compares the normalized response emails at the word level to identify the commonalities among the two response emails  405 ,  410 . The commonalities are maximized in step  320  by allowing for substitutions, insertions, and/or deletions of words in one or both of the response emails. For example, the phrase “We apologize” in the first response email  405  has the same meaning as “We are sorry” in the second response email  410  and one phrase can be replaced by the other phrase to maximize the commonalities between the two response emails  405 ,  410 . 
         [0025]    The cost of an error (substitution, insertion, and/or deletion) can be adjusted according to domain knowledge. Generally, a substitution, insertion, or deletion error is penalized equally. However, not all words and sentences have the same impact on the meaning of the response. An embodiment of the invention has the flexibility to weight changes to sentences differently based on the sentence&#39;s impact on the meaning of the response. For example, the deletion of legal statements in the response can be made prohibitively expensive while errors in the salutations part of the response might not be penalized as much. The locations of word matches in the pair of response emails are then identified in step  325 . A pattern of matched words is extracted in step  330 . 
         [0026]    For example, suppose the template generation module  140  substitutes “We apologize” for “We are sorry” in the second response email  410 . The template generation module  140  can then extract out this phrase (i.e., “We apologize”) from both response emails  405 ,  410 . Similarly, the template generation module  140  can extract out “we billed you the incorrect amount,” after substituting “incorrect” for “wrong” in the second response email  410 . The template generation module  140  can extract additional words or sentences out of the response emails  405 ,  410 . 
         [0027]    The template generation module  140  then determines whether a predetermined number of response emails have been analyzed. If not, the process returns to step  305  and the process repeats for an additional pair of response emails. In one embodiment, analyzing additional pairs of response emails includes analyzing every combination of response emails. Thus, in this embodiment, one response email is compared with all of the remaining stored response emails. Once the one email has been compared with all of the other stored response emails, then this one email is updated with another response email. In this way, every possible combination of response emails are compared with each other. 
         [0028]    If a predetermined number of response emails have been analyzed, then a response email template is generated in step  340  from the most commonly occurring pattern(s). For example, response email template  420  is generated from the response emails  405 ,  410  (assuming that, in this example, two response emails satisfy the predetermined number of response emails needed). In one embodiment, the template  420  includes several generic words, such as Name, Amount 1 , and Amount 2 , that need to be filled in by the agent when the agent determines to use template  420 . The template can be stored in a memory of the server  105  for future use. This template can then be used by an agent to create a response email to client email  415 . 
         [0029]    In another embodiment, response emails can be analyzed as described above to create a response telephone call template. A response telephone call template can be read by an agent to answer one or more telephone calls received from customers. For example, the response emails can be analyzed to determine frequently asked questions by customers and then a response telephone call template can be created to respond to these frequently asked questions. In one embodiment, the extracted response telephone call template can be used in an IVR application. As a result, in one embodiment a human operator can be bypassed. 
         [0030]      FIG. 5  shows a high level block diagram of a computer  500  which may be used to implement the template generation module  140 . The computer  500  can, for example, perform the steps described above (e.g., with respect to  FIGS. 2A ,  2 B and/or  FIG. 3 ). Computer  500  contains a processor  504  which controls the overall operation of the computer by executing computer program instructions which define such operation. The computer program instructions may be stored in a storage device  508  (e.g., magnetic disk, database) and loaded into memory  512  when execution of the computer program instructions is desired. Thus, the computer operation will be defined by computer program instructions stored in memory  512  and/or storage  508  and the computer will be controlled by processor  504  executing the computer program instructions. Computer  500  also includes one or more interfaces  516  for communicating with other devices. Computer  500  also includes input/output  524  which represents devices which allow for user interaction with the computer  500  (e.g., display, keyboard, mouse, speakers, buttons, etc.). One skilled in the art will recognize that an implementation of an actual computer will contain other components as well, and that  FIG. 5  is a high level representation of some of the components of such a computer for illustrative purposes. 
         [0031]    The foregoing Detailed Description is to be understood as being in every respect illustrative and exemplary, but not restrictive, and the scope of the invention disclosed herein is not to be determined from the Detailed Description, but rather from the claims as interpreted according to the full breadth permitted by the patent laws. It is to be understood that the embodiments shown and described herein are only illustrative of the principles of the present invention and that various modifications may be implemented by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. Those skilled in the art could implement various other feature combinations without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.