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[0001] This application for patent is a continuation-in-part of U.S. Utility patent application Ser. No. 09/415,560, entitled “A Method and System for Operating a Content Management System,” filed Oct. 8, 1999, and incorporated herein by reference.
[0002] The present invention relates to electronic content management systems. In particular, the present invention relates to a system and method for managing consumer feedback in such electronic content management systems.
[0003] Electronic content management systems are used to manage the production and publication of, for example, newspapers, magazines, on-line journals, and other types of publications. The content in these publications may include, for example, news stories, political commentaries, product reviews, and similar items of interests. The electronic content management system allows the content to be received, edited, reviewed, and approved by appropriate personnel prior to dissemination. The content may then be released for publication, either on-line or via a more traditional medium. An example of such an electronic content management system may be found in U.S. Utility patent application Ser. No. 09/415,560, referenced above.
[0004] In traditional electronic content management systems, the consumer feedback component (to the extent there is one) is isolated and separate from the production and publishing components of the system. As a result, there is often a disconnect between what the consumer would like to see or cares about and the content that is published. For example, consumer feedback regarding the articles in the “Sports” section of an on-line publication may never be seen (or at least not in a timely manner) by the managing editor of that section. The disconnect is usually not critical for non-information currency based industries because consumer feedback is not integral to the day-to-day sales or distribution of the product. Instead, it simply serves to shape the long term, future development and marketing strategies for the product. For industries that are based on information currency, however, the valuable life of the content, and hence the time it can be used to capture the consumer's attention, is very brief. Consumer feedback, therefore, is an integral part of the daily sales and distribution of the content in these industries.
[0005] Moreover, traditional electronic content management systems are designed under the premise that consumer response may be gauged using standard mass audience analysis techniques. These techniques rely on anonymous surveys and focus groups composed of randomly selected consumers who are statistically representative of the whole. While such techniques are generally applicable for homogeneous or relatively homogeneous audiences, they do not account for the extraordinary impact that certain statistical outliers often have on consumer consumption. For example, it has been found that consumption patterns in information currency based industries are often driven by a very small group (5-10%) of consumers who consume well over 50% of the product. These consumers are often the ones who take the time and effort to provide feedback. Standard mass audience analysis techniques, however, tend to dilute the impact of these consumers by averaging their consumption pattern with the consumption pattern of the rest (90-95%) of the consumers.
[0006] Accordingly, what is needed is an electronic content management system that is capable of closing the disconnect between consumer feedback and the product that is published. In addition, what is needed is an electronic content management system that is capable of tracking the consumption patterns of the consumers on an individual basis.
[0007] The present invention is directed to a method and system for managing consumer feedback in an electronic content management system. The method and system of the invention includes a mechanism for consumers to provide feedback regarding the content that is published. The feedback is routed to the appropriate personnel responsible for publishing the content. In this way, the disconnect between what the consumer would like to see or cares about and the content that is published is closed. In addition, the consumer feedback triggers monitoring of the consumer's content accessing activity, which allows the consumer's consumption pattern to be tracked on an individual basis. This information may then be used to better define the content that gets published in order to match the consumer's interests.
[0008] In general, in one aspect, the invention is directed to a method of managing consumer feedback in an electronic content management system. The method comprises the steps of receiving feedback from a consumer regarding published content, storing the feedback, and sending a response message to the consumer in response to the feedback. The method further comprises determining whether escalation of the feedback is needed, and if so, routing the feedback to a personnel responsible for the published content in order to close a loop between the personnel responsible for the published content and the consumer.
[0009] In general, in another aspect, the invention is directed to a user interface for managing consumer feedback in an electronic content management system. The user interface comprises a feedback form including a plurality of fields for capturing personal information about a consumer along with a feedback provided by the consumer regarding published content, and a feedback processing form including a plurality of fields for specifying a feedback type of the feedback, generating a response message to the feedback, and identifying a personnel responsible for the published content. The feedback processing form is capable of causing the response message to be sent to the consumer and the feedback to be forwarded to the personnel responsible for the published content.
[0010] In general, in yet another aspect, the invention is directed to a method of managing consumer feedback in an electronic content management system. The method comprises the steps of receiving feedback from a consumer regarding published content, parsing the consumer personal information from the feedback, and storing the consumer personal information and the feedback in the electronic content management system. The method further comprises monitoring all content accessing activity of the consumer using the consumer personal information in order to track a consumption pattern of the consumer, sending a response message to the consumer in response to the feedback, and determining whether escalation of the feedback is needed. If escalation is needed, the feedback is routed to a personnel responsible for the published content in order to close a loop between the personnel responsible for the published content and the consumer.
[0011] The above summary of the present invention is not intended to represent each embodiment, or every aspect, of the present invention.
[0012] The foregoing and other advantages of the invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description and upon reference to the drawings, wherein:
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[0025] While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will be described in detail herein. It should be understood, however, that the invention is not intended to be limited to the particular forms disclosed. Rather, the invention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
[0026] Following is a detailed description of illustrative embodiments of the invention with reference to the drawings wherein the same reference labels are used for the same or similar elements.
[0027] As mentioned above, embodiments of the invention provide a centralized consumer feedback procedure in an electronic content management system. The consumer feedback procedure of the invention is designed to receive, store, and route all consumer feedback to the appropriate personnel as needed for resolution. Such a formalized procedure closes the disconnect between what the consumer would like to see or cares about and the content that is published. The procedure also ensures that the consumption patterns of all consumers, or at least the ones who provide feedback, are tracked and analyzed on a consumer-by-consumer basis so that the impact of statistical outliers is not diluted.
[0028] For purposes of this description, it will be assumed that the content managed by the electronic content management system (as described in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/415,560) is published on one or more websites (e.g., DallasNews.com, DentonRC.com, etc.) which the consumer can access using any commercially available web browser. Further, the consumer is typically a subscriber to the content or has otherwise created an account with the content providers that requires the consumer to provide at least his first and last name and email address. The invention is equally applicable, however, to content that is published via more traditional mediums as well.
[0029] Referring now to
[0030] Once a feedback form is received from the consumer, it is subsequently provided to a help center at step
[0031] A ticket is generated at step
[0032] In some embodiments, the ticket is generated in a webform that may then be sent as an alert to a customer service representative. An automatically generated confirmation message is also emailed to the consumer at step
[0033] The customer service representative thereafter makes a determination at step
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[0035] The customer service representative may also escalate the ticket to a corporate help desk (e.g., Belolnteractive.com) at step
[0036] It is also possible to send the ticket to some other corporate entity besides the examples mentioned above, or to several corporate entities simultaneously instead of just one. Once the issue has been addressed by the corporate entity, a communication is sent to the customer service representative summarizing the nature of the resolution at step
[0037] In some embodiments, information regarding the escalation, the resulting resolution, as well as the ticket closure can all be optionally logged to the database, as shown by the dashed lines in
[0038] In some embodiments, the consumer feedback procedure
[0039] The workflow
[0040] Referring now to
[0041] Thus far, the invention has been described generally in terms of its primary functional components. Following now is a more detailed description of an exemplary implementation of a user interface for the invention with respect to
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[0045] Selecting (e.g., by clicking) one of the sites listed takes the customer service representative to an exemplary open cases form
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[0047] From this form, the customer service representative may modify the various properties of the ticket as he deems appropriate. For example, the customer service representative may change the feedback type field
[0048] The response portion of the ticket processing form
[0049] The message that is inserted in the body portion
[0050] In some embodiments, a spellcheck button
[0051] Once the customer service representative has completed filling in the body portion
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[0056] Pressing a search button
[0057] While the present invention has been described with reference to one or more particular embodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that many changes may be made thereto without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Each of these embodiments and obvious variations thereof is contemplated as falling within the spirit and scope of the claimed invention, which is set forth in the following claims.