British Inventor Devises System to Let Alexa Communicate With Call Centers

A new British subsidiary of Vonage that supplies contact-center cloud services to Salesforce and others created a system and method to use Amazon Alexa devices and other virtual assistants to communicate with factory call centers and deliver enhanced, automated “consumer-facing” services through “end-to-end functionality,” said a patent application (20190028587) published Thursday at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As virtual assistants “become more and more widespread, and particularly as they are applied to home control and home assistant functions,” they can become a “natural entry point for consumers to interact with enterprises,” filed NewVoiceMedia Jan. 22, naming Chief Scientist Ashley Unitt one of its two inventors along with Brian Galvin, a patent lawyer in suburban Seattle. Vonage bought NewVoiceMedia for $350 million cash in September. Virtual assistants can place phone calls on demand, but “they do not take advantage of information and capabilities available in contact centers widely in use in the art,” said the application. An “interface” lets devices communicate with one another “for services and functionality to be improved and automated,” it said. NewVoiceMedia didn’t comment Thursday.