Patent ID: 7454368

Claim:
A method of assisting a customer in making purchases, comprising: locating a stored customer profile, the customer profile providing governing data for purchases for the customer, wherein locating the stored customer profile comprises, receiving caller identifier data through a voiced call from the customer, and looking up the customer profile according to the caller identifier data; initiating an automated search of purchase options over a communications network in accordance with the customer profile to gather purchase option data, wherein the purchase option data for the customer is associated with voice extensible mark-up language (VoiceXML) text and wherein the purchase option data includes a plurality of purchase options retrieved as a result of the automated search; prioritizing the purchase options in the purchase option data; converting the voice extensible mark-up language (VoiceXML) text to speech; generating and delivering an automated notification of the prioritized purchase options to the customer by speech; receiving voice instructions from the customer through the voiced call at a voice services node, the voice instructions pertaining to a purchase to be made for the customer from the purchase options; interpreting the voice instructions to generate instruction data; and initiating an automated purchase in accordance with the instruction data.