, Verizon revealed a means for using not only time for call routing it currently offers, but also a name recognition routing system. Knowing your Mom wants to be sure you are safe, this is just the technology to be sure she reaches you.
Verizon notes in its patent (filed in 2001) that previous systems require the phone to ring for the user to see Caller ID which may not accurately identify the actual caller. This solution includes a prompt for a person to say who they are as an identification.
Voice recognition call forwarding is only one of a number of ways to execute a phone routing system, but after Microsoft’s TellMe acquisition, Verizon’s invention has some merit and could smartly be added to iobi’s offering.
Beyond personal use, thinking of company customer service inbound call handling, this could be a friendly way to handle tiered service levels (opposed to punching in some user ID or code). For example, in the airline industry, a voice recognition differentiator that identifies Platinum members could pass them to the agent that gets a call every 5 minutes instead of every 30 seconds.
An exemplary claim in Verizon’s US Patent 7212618:
1. A method for forwarding a telephone call to a user, comprising: receiving a telephone call from a calling party; prompting the calling party during the telephone call to enter his/her name to obtain an entered name of the calling party during the telephone call; storing the entered name to obtain a stored entered name; providing the calling party with the stored entered name to permit the calling party to verify that the stored entered name is correct; comparing the stored entered name of the calling party to a list of names; and forwarding the telephone call to the user when the stored entered name of the calling party matches a name in the list.
Your Mom would like to see this technology used for good, so be sure to take the call. :)