Systems and methods are described herein for a computer-based communication application that displays, along with an incoming call notification, content specific to the parties involved. The application identifies electronic records of events attended by the users, and retrieves content specific to those records. For example, the application may identify electronic mail or meeting notifications sent between the users and concerning a particular subject matter. Images related to that subject matter are then retrieved and displayed during calls between those users. Users are thus presented with customized and personalized content specific to the subject matter of each call, thus helping them better recognize callers and more readily engage with the call.

Disclosed herein are a system, method, and computer-readable medium with instructions for recommending a service provider based on a user's approximate current location. The service provider may be recommended for a service that is verified under a user's insurance policy and is also within proximity to the user's approximate current location. The user's approximate current location may be determined by location-based technology. The entity that receives and/or recommends the service provider may initiate a request for the service from the service provider. Further embodiments are related to routing a call to provide information to the user that is responsive to the user's location-relevant request. For example, systems, such as an automotive telematics system, may request information and be routed to the appropriate division of a user's insurance provider such that the automotive telematics system can provide services to the user that are user-specific (e.g., covered by the user's insurance policy).

This application provides an interaction information transmission method and apparatus. The method includes: receiving, by a calling terminal from an RBT-AS, an SDP message including interaction information related to a video ring back tone; receiving, by the calling terminal from the RBT-MRS, a video ring back tone media stream including the video ring back tone; and playing, by the calling terminal, the video ring back tone in a display interface, and displaying interaction content related to the interaction information. Since the RBT-AS configures the interaction information into the SDP message and sends the SDP message to the calling terminal, the calling terminal does not need to perform decoding and can directly obtain the interaction information and the RBT-AS does not need to encode the interaction information either. Therefore, encoding and decoding processes are not required at a transmit end and a receive end respectively, avoiding extra processing overheads.

In a method for selectively authorizing calls and text messages, it is determined if an identification code, such as CallerID or phone number, included with a call or text from a remote phone is also included in a table or list of identification codes accessible to a user phone. In the event of no match, a user notification means of the user phone is not activated and a prompt is sent to the remote phone requesting entry of a passcode into the remote phone. Upon receipt of the passcode entered into remote phone at the user phone, it is determined if the received passcode is also included in a table or list of passcodes accessible to a user phone. In the event of a match, the user notification means of the user phone is activated. Otherwise, the user notification means of the user phone is not activated.

When a customer service representative (CSR) calls a customer, the customer may be able to authenticate himself or herself by providing the CSR with personal identifying information. However, the CSR may be unable to provide information to authenticate himself or herself to the customer. Thus, this patent document describes authentication techniques that can allow the CSR to authenticate himself or herself to the customer. For example, before or during a call that the second person (e.g., CSR) initiates to call a first person (e.g., customer), a notification message may be sent to the first person's user device. The content of notification message displayed on the user device may provide information to the first person which can allow the first person to determine whether the second person is trustworthy.

A telephony call connection process is provided which assumes that 100% of received calls have spoofed sources or contain otherwise untrustworthy caller-id (CID) information, and requires each caller to provide a prearranged personal identification number PIN (or secret code) associated with their caller-id (CID) in order to complete a connection. Additional mechanisms are provided to create and exchange the PIN (or secret code) in an environment in which the caller must first establish the ownership of the caller-id (CID) provided. The process described herein minimizes the risk of false positives and virtually eliminates the need for manual screening as is often required of the callee in similar systems. Furthermore, the process described herein is capable of operating entirely on the callee's equipment providing the same level of effectiveness entirely devoid of participation from any other switch or node in the call path or on the network.

A contact center interface is provided by co-operation between a search engine and a contact center. A search query entered by a user into the search engine is passed to the contact center and the contact center determines from the search terms an appropriate skillset to deal with that user query, returning to the search engine a link enabling the user to initiate a direct communications session to a live agent or queue having that skillset expertise, thereby bypassing interactive voice response sessions which are normally required to ascertain the nature of a query. By providing multiple search options to the user, the user is empowered to select the best skillset, and the accuracy of future searches can be improved.

The present invention relates to a method of augmenting a telecommunications call, the method comprising detecting a telecommunications call event at a user telecommunications device 10; selecting an item of media content 101, the item of media content 101 being associated with a uniform resource identifier or URI; augmenting the call with the item of media content 101; detecting a user interaction with the item of media content 101; and on termination of the call, performing an action in dependence on the resource identified by the URI. The invention extends to a corresponding system and apparatus.

A method and system for automatically blocking robocalls. A set of incoming call data is captured from the incoming call. The set of incoming call data, including captured audio data, is checked with plural different tests to determine if the robocall includes a voice call component. The plural different tests provide additional levels of detection for robocalls. The method and system automatically identify and process robocalls and help prevent call spoofing and neighbor spoofing by robocalls.

A communications system embodiment including an input device reactive to user input, circuitry, an output device, and an electronic device communicatively connected to the input device and/or the output device is provided. A tangible non-transitory computer readable medium having program instructions executed by a processor for determining a preselected public or private mode, determining a preselected type of communication for receipt, and filtering the communication based on the mode selected and the type of communication selected as well as whether the sender is on a particular contact list. The communications system embodiment may provide for responding to the incoming communication by speech response or via an input device or an output device, to reduce or eliminate the need for a user of the system to view the electronic device or contact the electronic device to receive or send communications, in some embodiments.