Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090161859 | Method and Apparatus for Intelligent Processing of Suspend and Resume Operations in a Call Center - Methods and apparatus are provided for processing “on hold” commands in a call center. A communication dialog is processed by storing a checkpoint containing a context of the communication; monitoring the communication dialog for an “on-hold” condition; and suspending the communication dialog when the “on-hold” condition is detected The “on-hold” condition can be detected by monitoring telephony signaling. The communication dialog can optionally be returned to a restart point, such as a checkpoint, when the “on-hold” condition is detected. The communication dialog can be monitored for an “off-hold” condition and restarted from a checkpoint when the “off-hold” condition is detected. A resume context message can optionally be provided to the caller when the “off-hold” condition is detected. | 06-25-2009 |
20100056105 | Securing a Device Based on Atypical User Behavior - A system and method for securing the mobile device applies the rules to determine if an event associated with an application is a secure event. If the event is a secure event, the system applies the rules to determine if the event is authenticated. If the event is authenticated, the event is authorized and the system updates rule data associated with the event and/or other associated events. Updating the rule data allows other associated events to be authenticated. If the event is not authenticated, the system requests authentication from a user. If the authentication is valid, the event is authorized and the system updates the rule data associated with the event and/or other associated events. If the authentication is not valid, the system secures the mobile device. Authorizing the event enables a user to access the application and/or data associated with the application. | 03-04-2010 |
20100153171 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FURLOUGH, LEAVE, CLOSURE, SABBATICAL, HOLIDAY, OR VACATION GEO-LOCATION SERVICE - An interaction center system allows an enterprise to manage employees based on geo-location information, other characteristics of the employee, and/or company policies. The interaction center system is able to receive geo-location information about a person. The interaction center system can then identify the person and determine a status associated with the person. An exemplary status is any status for the employee while working with the enterprise or not working with the enterprise. For example, the status may be that the employee is on a furlough, is on vacation, is on leave, has been fired, is subject to a lay-off, is on sabbatical, is observing a religious holiday, or some other status associated with the employee. After determining the person and the status associated with the person, the interaction center system may determine an event rule or grammar that affects this person and deals with the status. | 06-17-2010 |
20100235218 | PRE-QUALIFIED OR HISTORY-BASED CUSTOMER SERVICE - System and methods are presented to receive presence information about a customer of an enterprise. The presence information can be geo-presence information, which may be provided by a geo-presence system or by a third party. Information within the geo-presence information can identify the customer. With the identity, personal information about the customer can be retrieved. The personal information can include aggregations or associations of the customer and other people, places, items, etc. From the presence and personal information, the system can inform, direct, or modify interactions with customers. The changes to the interactions can target customers that the enterprise may value more and may be more willing to engage in consumer activity. | 09-16-2010 |
20100293543 | VIRTUAL MACHINE IMPLEMENTATION OF MULTIPLE USE CONTEXTS - Methods, devices, and systems for dynamically changing between contexts running simultaneously on a single communication device, such as a mobile communication device. More particularly, each context can be run as a virtual machine on the same communication device and context-related parameters can be used to determine which context or combination of contexts should be applied at a particular time. | 11-18-2010 |
20110123015 | SOCIAL MEDIA LANGUAGE IDENTIFICATION AND ROUTING - A communication from a person in a first language is received at a contact center. A social network that the person frequents is searched to determine if the person can converse in a second language. The determination that the person can converse in the second language can be done through text analysis, voice analysis, picture analysis, video analysis, or different combinations of these. Based on the person being able to converse in the second language, the communication is routed differently within the contact center. | 05-26-2011 |
20110125550 | METHOD FOR DETERMINING CUSTOMER VALUE AND POTENTIAL FROM SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PUBLIC DATA SOURCES - A system can determine the value of a customer that uses social media. An enterprise can provide an identity of a customer, identities of customers, or a profile of one or more customers. The enterprise can also provide one or more criteria in which to base the customer value calculation. The criteria can include the number of friends for a social media site, the number posts the user creates, the number of responses to the user's postings, the tenor of the user's postings, etc. Resources of information, including historic and current activity on social media sites, public resources, and other sources, are examined to provide a score for each criteria. A customer value score may then be generated from the criteria scores. The value score may then be used to modify the interactions of a contact center with the customer. | 05-26-2011 |
20110125580 | METHOD FOR DISCOVERING CUSTOMERS TO FILL AVAILABLE ENTERPRISE RESOURCES - The provided contact center can locate customers that may be willing to buy goods or services, wherein those goods or services may have shelve lives or pending disposal dates. A profile for a customer is created in a dialog data structure; the customer is a likely purchaser of the goods or services. Social media messages are analyzed to determine if a poster is of a type that would be willing to buy a certain product. If the social media user is such a type, the contact center can contact the social media user and offer the product or service to that customer. As such, the enterprise receives a service that quickly locates customers that may be willing to products and allows them to dispose of the products that have certain shelve lives. | 05-26-2011 |
20110125697 | SOCIAL MEDIA CONTACT CENTER DIALOG SYSTEM - A communication system for conducting an interaction with customers using social media is provided. The communication system can include a social media gateway and a dialog system. The social media gateway can receive messages from social media networks and translate those messages into a form readable and usable by the dialog system. The dialog system, in turn, accepts the social media messages and associates those messages with one or more dialog structures. A dialog structure includes a set of executable rules that allow the dialog system to automatically respond to the social media message or refer that message to an appropriate human agent. With the social media gateway and the dialog system, the communication system is operable to interact with customers across different social media networks. | 05-26-2011 |
20110125793 | METHOD FOR DETERMINING RESPONSE CHANNEL FOR A CONTACT CENTER FROM HISTORIC SOCIAL MEDIA POSTINGS - Some social networks provide message histories that record information about previous posts that users make to the social media network. From this information, a contact center determines trends in the usage of a social media network by a user. The contact center can mine the message history database for times, frequency of posts, location of the user during posts, and other information provided in the message histories. From this information or metadata about the messages, the contact center develops trends about the user's postings of messages on social media networks. The contact center can further receive subsequent posts and read metadata related to the subsequent posts. The new metadata can be used to modify the trends over time. | 05-26-2011 |
20110125826 | STALKING SOCIAL MEDIA USERS TO MAXIMIZE THE LIKELIHOOD OF IMMEDIATE ENGAGEMENT - Methods and the systems allow a contact center to determine the presence, in near real time, of a user on a social media network. The contact center can receive an identity for a user and associate the user identity with one or more other identities, such as, a screen name, an email, or some other identity that may be used on social media networks. The contact center may then review posts to several social media networks, by several people, to determine one of the posts includes an identity of the user. If one of the posts does include the identity of the user, then the contact center may quickly introduce a human agent to the user on that social media network. As such, by “stalking” the social media user, the contact center is able to engage the customer in near real time or real time communications over the social media network. | 05-26-2011 |
20110196714 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR OVERRIDING APPARENT GEO-POD ATTRIBUTES - A system and method manage the exchange of information, especially geo-location information, between a customer and an enterprise. A customer can include any person that may enter into a relationship with the enterprise. An enterprise can be any business or organization that may provide goods, services, or be involved in a relationship with a person. The customer and enterprise are involved in a transaction. Thus, the relationship with the person and the enterprise may be temporal in that it will only last for a period of time or only be involved in certain periods of time or may be temporary. The customer is able to provide customer settings. Further, during the transaction, one or more transaction settings may be established by the enterprise and the customer. As such, when the exchange of information occurs, an enterprise server or other system may be able to limit the types of information provided per the customer settings and the transaction settings. | 08-11-2011 |
20110200183 | VARIABLE NOISE CONTROL THRESHOLD - An interface allows a simple control to be shared by one or more conference participants. One exemplary embodiment maps complex techniques associated with conference control into a simple control. The control may be a single slider to adjust both the amount of control and the level of aggressiveness to get the best quality in a dynamic and changing environment. Another exemplary type of control would be to use two sliders—one to select and/or aggregate conference control mechanisms, and the other to adjust the aggressiveness of the selected conference control mechanism or aggregated mechanisms. Another exemplary type of control could be a simple rotary dial to emulate the two-dimensionality of two or more sliders. These controls could have the techniques associated with each position dynamically chosen and/or updated, for example, throughout a conference. | 08-18-2011 |
20110276513 | METHOD OF AUTOMATIC CUSTOMER SATISFACTION MONITORING THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA - Methods and systems provided herein provide an enterprise with the ability to conduct automated customer feedback surveys. In particular, customer interactions on social media channels are intelligently monitored, aggregated, filtered, and analyzed to determine a customer's response to a particular product or service. Since customers are more likely to be truthful regarding their reaction to a product or service on a neutral forum, such as a social media channel, more accurate customer feedback can be obtained in a less intrusive manner than has previously been available. | 11-10-2011 |
20110288897 | METHOD OF AGENT ASSISTED RESPONSE TO SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACTIONS - Methods and systems provided herein provide an enterprise with the ability to conduct quickly and consistently respond to social media work items and other work items. In particular, a collaboration tool is provided to agents which allows the agents to view historical responses of other agents that have been determined, by an automated agent, to be relevant to a newly received work item. The relevant historical responses can be used to service newly received work items as either a suggestion for responding or as a response template. Responses to work items are then archived with data which describes the nature of the response and the work item for which it was created. | 11-24-2011 |
20120011208 | CONDITIONING RESPONSES TO EMOTIONS OF TEXT COMMUNICATIONS - A text communication, such as an email or blog posting from a user, is monitored to identify an issue. A score(s) of the text communication is determined by analyzing words/phrases in the text communication. A score can be based on various factors such as annoyance, language precision, help-ability, a communication length, and the like. A range for the score(s) is determined. When a response to the text communication is generated, a score(s) of the response to the text communication is determined. If one or more of the score(s) of the response is outside the range for the score(s), the response is rejected. Words/phrases are identified in the response to the text communication that can be changed in order to get the score(s) of the response within the range of the score(s) of the text communication. This information is displayed to an agent so an appropriate response can be formulated. | 01-12-2012 |
20120020471 | ROUTING OF CONTACTS BASED ON PREDICTED ESCALATION TIME - Systems and methods that employ contact escalation periods as criterion for managing routing procedures of a contact center. A prediction component can predict when a customer is likely to escalate a contact that is forwarded to a contact center, and hence facilitate resource matching based on such prediction. Accordingly, proactive and anticipatory contact interaction is enabled, wherein routing of contacts occur in-part based on predicted likelihood of escalations. | 01-26-2012 |
20120071145 | PERVASIVE CONTACT CENTER - Methods and systems that support the receipt of location data and/or touch data from a mobile communication device are provided. More particularly, a mobile customer service server is provided that can receive location data from or regarding a mobile communication device, and associate that location data with recognition data. The recognition data can in turn be delivered to other server side components, and used to select content to be returned to the mobile communication device. The mobile customer service server can also receive touch data input to the mobile communication device, and can provide recognition data related to the touch input to other server side component. Server side components provided with location or touch data by the mobile customer service server do not themselves need to natively support location recognition or touch recognition capabilities. | 03-22-2012 |
20120257518 | REAL-TIME PROBABILITY BASED CONTACT HANDLING TIME - Systems and methods are provided to estimate the amount of service time left in a contact with a contact center. A system records metadata factors associated with contacts and the service time for the contacts. This information is incorporated into one or more service time probability distributions. A service time probability distribution is a function describing how much time a contact, having certain, defined characteristics, took historically. The distribution can subsequently be used to estimate service time for future contacts that have the same or similar characteristics. | 10-11-2012 |
20120303659 | SOCIAL MEDIA IDENTITY DISCOVERY AND MAPPING - A server executing a social media identity and discovery application and method are provided that scan social networking sites for communications. The target content is found with content indicators when communications are put on a social networking site. The content is recorded and evaluated. If the identified content is contextually significant, the alias and the private user data are correlated based on events, and a notification of the correlation is sent to an agent or a contact center system. The agent may verify that the identity of a poster has been accurately correlated with a customer record in the database. The agent or the system has the opportunity to respond to the communication, despite the anonymity of the poster on the social networking site. | 11-29-2012 |
20130254170 | SOCIAL MEDIA IDENTITY DISCOVERY AND MAPPING FOR BANKING AND GOVERNMENT - A server executing a social media identity and discovery application and method are provided that scan social networking sites for communications. The target content is found with content indicators when communications are put on a social networking site. The content is recorded and evaluated. If the identified content is contextually significant, the alias and the user account data and/or user data from public records are correlated based on keywords and/or events, and a notification of the correlation is sent to an agency, agent, or a contact center system. The agent or agency may verify that the identity of a poster has been accurately correlated with a customer record in the database or with user data from public records. The agent, the agency, or the system has the opportunity to respond to the communication, despite the anonymity of the poster on the social networking site. | 09-26-2013 |
20140270145 | ANSWER BASED AGENT ROUTING AND DISPLAY METHOD - A system can determine a best routing of a customer contact based on analysis of one or more automatically generated answers. A customer may provide an inquiry through a social media contact. The contact center can analyze the inquiry to generate one or more automated answers. The system then analyzes the automated answers. The analysis may include studying various attributes of the answer, either in relation to the inquiry or based in historical data. From the analysis, the system can modify the answers and/or provide a different or improved pool of agents to handle the contact. Thus, an improved set of answers and agents is provided for managing the contact. | 09-18-2014 |
20140297764 | AUTOMATIC NEGATIVE QUESTION HANDLING - A contact center system can receive messages from social media sites or centers. The system can review long messages by identifying content in the long message with negative sentiment. The content with negative sentiment is further analyzed to determine whether the identified content is actionable. If the identified content is actionable, the communication system can automatically routed the long message to an agent for response. | 10-02-2014 |
20140301540 | DIALOG COMPATABILITY - A contact center system can receive messages from consumers. The system can then interact with the consumer or customer using a dialog. Before conducting the session with the consumer, past interactions using the dialog are reviewed to determine words, phrases, and other information that caused the dialog to be successful. The information is stored as norms. Upon beginning a new interaction with the dialog, the norms and the past successful dialogs are retrieved and compared to the active dialog while the interaction is on-going. The comparison is then used to ensure that the present active dialog will lead to a successful outcome or to resolve any issued if the outcome is not likely to be successful. | 10-09-2014 |
20140303981 | CROSS-LINGUAL SEEDING OF SENTIMENT - A contact center system can receive messages from social media sites or centers. The messages may be in a foreign language. The system can review messages by identifying content in the social media messages with negative/positive sentiment and then identify a seed term in the messages. A seed term can be a word in another language, different from the message body. The seed term is then used to find one or more other words, in the foreign language, that are correlated with the seed term. The identification of the found words in other messages can then be used to determine sentiment in the foreign language. | 10-09-2014 |
20140304343 | SOCIAL MEDIA PROVOCATEUR DETECTION AND MITIGATION - A contact center system can receive messages from social media sites or centers. The messages may include derogatory or nefarious content. The system can review messages to identify the message as nefarious and identify the poster as a social media provocateur. The system may then automatically respond to the nefarious content. Further, the system may prevent future nefarious conduct by the identified social media provocateur by executing one or more automated procedures. | 10-09-2014 |
20140321633 | PRIORITIZATION AND TIME ALLOCATION BY CUSTOMER SERVICE AGENTS - A prioritization and time allocation by customer service is provided, whereby the customer service agents are incentivized to accept those tasks which more closely align with the objectives of a call center. Individual agents will then be able to pursue their own methodology to achieve their own goals and, in the process, pursue an objective of the contact center. | 10-30-2014 |
20140359008 | CONTEXT-AWARE SOCIAL MEDIA DISASTER RESPONSE AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT - Social media websites contain posts which may benefit persons affected by an emergency situation or natural disaster. Discovering trustworthy posters of useful information is disclosed such that messages indicating relevant information, and an associated trust value, may be provided to interested parties. | 12-04-2014 |
20150073774 | Automatic Domain Sentiment Expansion - Methods and systems for automatically extending a sentiment dictionary are provided. Starting with an initial set of elements (e.g., words, emoticons, etc.) having a known sentiment, messages can be analyzed for words frequently appearing in association with such words. As a result the frequently appearing words may then be associated with a sentiment and used to help determine the sentiment of a message. | 03-12-2015 |
20150073775 | UNSPOKEN SENTIMENT - The sentiment of a message may not be obtainable from the message itself. However, many messages have an associated context that provides information useful in determining the sentiment of a message. Messages may include links to other resources, such as graphics or videos, which in turn include titles, comments, viewer ratings or other attributes that may provide a sentiment of the message. | 03-12-2015 |
20150127558 | METHOD FOR DETERMINING RESPONSE CHANNEL FOR A CONTACT CENTER FROM HISTORIC SOCIAL MEDIA POSTINGS - Some social networks provide message histories that record information about previous posts that users make to the social media network. From this information, a contact center determines trends in the usage of a social media network by a user. The contact center can mine the message history database for times, frequency of posts, location of the user during posts, and other information provided in the message histories. From this information or metadata about the messages, the contact center develops trends about the user's postings of messages on social media networks. The contact center can further receive subsequent posts and read metadata related to the subsequent posts. The new metadata can be used to modify the trends over time. | 05-07-2015 |
20150134325 | Deep Language Attribute Analysis - Contact centers may benefit from routing messages to agents who have similar, or complementary, attributes as the customer of the message. In a text message, certain message attributes provide artifacts that may be common to one particular customer attribute. Messages containing that particular message attribute provide a derived customer attribute and the message routed accordingly. In addition, agents responding to a customer may be provided with guidance to ensure their response is appropriate for the derived customer attribute of the customer. | 05-14-2015 |
20150139415 | AGGREGATED MULTI-TOPIC AGENT DESKTOP - A dialog aggregator provided by a contact center communication system for text-based interaction chains is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The dialog aggregator produces a summary, in real-time, of questions posed and existing answers in the interaction chain while identifying outstanding questions that have not been answered for display to an agent. The display includes any current answer the agent is working on as well as completed items and additionally executes rules based on the status of the remaining questions. The display in canonical form of the summary and outstanding question set enables a contact center agent or other observer of the interaction to quickly and efficiently assess the interaction history. | 05-21-2015 |
20150139416 | PSEUDO AGENT MATCHING - Contact centers employ agents to provide services to customers. In particular, artificial agents are provided that have a rich background and continuing life with the realm of social media. The artificial agent's profile is selected in accord with the profiles of current or prospective customers. As the customers age and progress in life, the artificial agent profile is updated in accord with the customers' changing profiles and similarly ages and progresses in life. When a customer desires to interact with artificial agent, for a purpose provided by a contact center, a human agent may be provided the profile and/or history of the artificial agent so as to impersonate the artificial agent and promote the relationship with the customer. | 05-21-2015 |
20150161216 | ANTI-TRENDING - An automated system for message analysis whereby messages within a given category may be identified and processed as a category connote. While a domain of messages may be monitored and processed in the due course of business, connote message are different. For example, a number of messages may fall into a domain of “poor airline food.” Such messages may be processed in the due course of business. However, a message with a different aspect, such as, “I found glass in my food,” may be initially identified as begin within the domain of “poor airline food,” and processed further to distinguish the message as being a connote with regard to the “poor airline food” category and warranting special handling. | 06-11-2015 |
20150163358 | NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING (NLP) AND NATURAL LANGUAGE GENERATION (NLG) BASED ON USER CONTEXT FOR ENHANCED CONTACT CENTER COMMUNICATION - Contact centers may incorporate automated agents to respond to inquiries. The inquiries may solicit a substantive response, for example, by providing a time when the inquiry asks for the departure time for a flight. Such responses omit the normal conversational subject matter used to embellish person-to-person conversations and appear are very machine-like. Herein, a source of user context, such as a social media website, customer database, or other data, is accessed. Certain aspects of the customer may then be identified and used to embellish the reply with additional and/or alternative content. As a result, the reply may be more conversational. | 06-11-2015 |
20150181039 | ESCALATION DETECTION AND MONITORING - Communications in a contact center may utilize one of a number of communications channels. Certain channels may operate at a lower cost or fewer resources while another channel is more secure and/or faster or otherwise better suited for a particular communication. A communication between an agent of a contact center and a customer may initially be on a first channel but during the communication a content indicator that the channel is inappropriate or less desirable than a second channel. Once such an event occurs, the communication on the first channel may be terminated and moved to a second communication channel. | 06-25-2015 |
20150206092 | IDENTIFICATION OF MULTI-CHANNEL CONNECTIONS TO PREDICT ESTIMATED WAIT TIME - Contact centers handle contacts from any number of channels. One agent may be simultaneously handling several chats, emails, or other messages. Customers behind the contact often want to know how long of a wait time they are likely to experience before an agent begins to address their inquiry. Herein, techniques are provided whereby contacts currently, and/or enqueued, for one or more agents are examined to determine an estimated effort for each task. One message may represent a number of tasks each having an associated time estimate. Furthermore, messages from one channel may be more time consuming than messages from another channel. Such factors, and others, are considered and the customer may then be notified of an estimated wait time and, optionally, notified if another channel may provide a more expeditious option. | 07-23-2015 |
20150261756 | MECHANISM FOR COMPUTING AND USING CONTEXTUALIZED SOCIAL MEDIA SCORES - A social media network is monitored for postings of a control group. The control group is a group of one or more individuals that posts on a particular topic. The postings of the control group may cover all the postings of each member of the control group for a period of time. A first relative social media score is calculated for the postings of the control group on the social media network. A social media score is calculated for a social media posting of a user or entity on the social media network. The relative social media score for the control group is compared to the social media score for the user or entity to see if there is a significant difference. If there is a significant difference, an agent in a contact center to is identified respond to the social media posting of the user or entity. | 09-17-2015 |
20150262237 | LOCATION SENSING AND RESPONSE FOR MOBILE MESSAGING - Businesses have long appreciated the advantages of anticipating potential customers' needs. Directing marketing activities towards non-customers, persons not having such a need, wastes resources of the business and may damage a business' reputation. By providing a location-based analysis of a user's activities, such as by an opt-in application for a mobile device carried by the user, subject matter relevant and timely information on goods and/or services of the business may be provided to the user. | 09-17-2015 |
20150264148 | CONNECTION OF PERSONS AND THINGS VIA MOBILE MESSAGING PRIVACY/SECURITY BROKER SYSTEM - Contact centers often have a significant pool of troubleshooting information related to devices that a customer may own or have access to. Connecting the device to a resource of the contact center presents challenges as customers and device manufacturers are reluctant to provide direct connectivity from the device to a public network, such as the Internet. A customer communication device, such as a smart phone, with an application allows a user to broker a communication between a resource of a contact center and a device. As a benefit, the customer can see and control the types of communication occurring and approve or deny according to their comfort level. When the resource-device session is concluded, the link is terminated and cannot be resumed without again obtaining approval. | 09-17-2015 |
20150264176 | LOCATION ENHANCEMENTS FOR MOBILE MESSAGING - Handheld communication devices, such as smart phones, comprise a number of data gathering sensors. The sensors may be utilized to provide an agent of a contact center with situational information regarding the user of the handheld device. While global positioning systems (GPS) provides one means to locate a user of a communication device, GPS is not always available. However, by utilizing radio receivers, internal condition sensors, motion detectors, and other sensing components, a situation for a customer may be determined to supplement or substitute for GPS-determined location as well as to identify more relevant situations for the user beyond those provided by GPS provided location information. | 09-17-2015 |
20150287039 | LIVE ASSIST - Customer assistance is provided by leveraging certain contact center infrastructure components to a retail setting. Often contact centers have a wealth of information regarding individual products and services a retail setting may offer. The information, as provided herein, may then be delivered to the customer in the form of a dialogue. The dialogue may be based, in part, on a contact center dialogue for the same or similar item. The customer may then be instructed to perform an act, such as retrieving another item at a certain location. Unlike a contact center, the physical presence of the customer provides an opportunity to receive feedback in the form of monitor the customer's actions to determine if the customer complied with instructions. Optionally, a follow up activity may be imitated based on the customer's compliance. | 10-08-2015 |
20150302499 | KIOSK ESCALATION - Automated kiosks are often provided in retail settings to provide a convenient and cost-effective means to assist customers of the retail setting and as an alternative or supplement to human agents. Kiosks may work well for certain customers and actions, however, the customer and/or kiosk may fail to effectively interact with each other and leave the customer dissatisfied with the interaction. By determining a meta-meaning associated with a customer's actions with a kiosk, the kiosk may be able to determine whether an agent should be summoned to assist the customer. For example, a customer may be using the kiosk for an unusually long time. In response, an available agent may be notified and approach the customer to offer their assistance; without the customer explicitly requesting such assistance. As a benefit, the retail setting may appear more in-touch with the needs of the customer. | 10-22-2015 |
20150324727 | STAFF WORK ASSIGNMENT AND ALLOCATION - Correctly staffing retail settings is a challenge. While calendar based staffing decisions, such as increasing staffing for a holiday sale, may provide high-level staffing recommendations. The activities of customers may be monitored to provide a more granular staffing allocation. Customers who, for example, spend a certain duration of time within one portion of the retail setting may be determined to indicate a need for assistance and a staff member of the retail setting allocated to assist the customer or customers within an area with a spike in customer activity. Similarly, customers who indicate a desire to purchase an item requiring certain staff skills (e.g., verify customer identity, complete legal documents, lift heavy items, etc.) may be detected and an appropriate staff member allocated. As a result, the customer may receive assistance from staff members having the required skills to complete their purchase. | 11-12-2015 |
20150324805 | PUBLIC NON-COMPANY CONTROLLED SOCIAL FORUM RESPONSE METHOD - Users may post issues and questions on public social media websites and other public forums. A business or product of the business may be the subject of the post. With a properly trained system the business can determined if another community member is likely provide and accurate, sufficient, and timely response to the post. If so, the business can avoid allocating resources to respond to such posts. However, if it is determined that an appropriate response is not likely, or not likely within an acceptable timeframe, the business may notify an agent to provide an appropriate response. As a benefit, the business may leverage a community of knowledgeable users to provide assistance to other users and thereby not expend resources unnecessarily. | 11-12-2015 |
20150348050 | HYBRID CLOUD ENCRYPTION METHOD - Contact centers receive work items for processing by resources, such as human or automated agents. Social media has become a popular medium to receive work items and communicate with customers. Legal concerns, such as those focused on customer privacy, may limit gathering and/or storing of certain customer data on resources controlled by the contact center or require the deletion of data collected from a revoked prior authorization. Storing at least some data, such as a token, within a customer's social media website allows a contact center to maintain connections, transactions, or other information related to a customer or a specific transaction with a customer as long as the customer and/or social media website chose not to delete the token. | 12-03-2015 |
20150358468 | OPTIMIZATION IN WORKFORCE MANAGMENT USING WORK ASSIGNMENT ENGINE DATA - Contact centers strive to match the demands and preferences of their customers with the skills and abilities of the agents who process work items associated with the customers (e.g., contacts). However, the preferred agent may be unavailable, non-existent, backlogged or otherwise ineligible to accept the work item. An agent who is non-preferred but still qualified may be utilized to process the work item, such as an agent with adequate skills with respect to a particular attribute of the work item. Reports for the selection of the non-preferred but qualified agents are provided herein. A contact center may then utilize such reporting to identify underserved areas of their customer base. | 12-10-2015 |
20150379527 | DERIVATIVE NETWORK PROFILE FOR CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS - Derivative network profile is provided for determining a more complete picture of a customer on a social media website or websites for improved customer interactions. A customer may have a social media presence with any number of connections to other individuals, businesses, etc. As provided herein, the relevancy of those connections is determined within the context of a “seed” or business purpose. As a benefit, a customer who may share a substantial amount of information (e.g., funny videos, favorite sports teams, etc.) with a large pool of connections, may have a particular relationship identified (e.g., a more obscure relative who travels frequently) when a contact center is interacting with the customer with respect to the business purpose (e.g., providing travel-related services to the customer). | 12-31-2015 |
20160034841 | TEAM WORKFORCE ASSIGNMENT - A contact center, methods, and mechanisms are provided for dynamically assembling a team of resources to handle a work item. The work item is analyzed for any needs and a suitable team of resources is selected based at least partially on those needs. Each of the resources can be reserved and applied to a work item for a duration of time that the work item is being handled. As the workflow associated with the work item progresses, the needs of the work item are reevaluated for any changes that may require a modification to the team of resources. When the changes require modification, the team of resources can be adjusted on the fly to suit the changing needs of the work item. | 02-04-2016 |
20160098663 | AGENT QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE MONITORING BASED ON NON-PRIMARY SKILL EVALUATION - Contact centers continually monitor the performance of their resources (e.g., human and automated agents) used for processing work items. An agent with a primary skill receives a flow of work items each having an attribute associated with that particular primary skill. However, agents often have non-primary skills and may serve as a backup for other agents. Measuring the agent's skill level with respect to a non-primary skill allows agents to be scored and potentially identified as having the skill as a primary skill. Selectively providing agents with non-primary work items and monitoring the agent's performance with those work items provides a means to assess an agent's non-primary skill using real work items and without the need for testing resources. | 04-07-2016 |
20160098665 | FLOWING SKILL REQUEST VECTORS TO WORKFORCE HIRING TOOLS - Systems are provided for the automatic analysis of skills in a contact center. More particularly to skills that are available, skills that are requested, and the difference between the two. The system may then determine a number of solutions that, if implemented by the contact center, would allow the contact center to have the skill differential. A decision is then made whereby a factor is utilized to select the more optimal solution from the number of solutions. | 04-07-2016 |
20160100059 | AGENT NON-PRIMARY SKILL IMPROVEMENT TRAINING METHOD - Agents of a contact center are trained and assessed without the need for a separate testing and assessment task. Work items are provided to agents, who are non-primary agents with respect to a particular skill associated with an attribute of a work item. With the controlled routing of the non-primary work items to the non-primary agent, the agent is provided with a chance to practice their non-primary skills, with the intention of improving said skills A number of successfully completed tasks may indicate the agent is entitled to “primary” designation and be provided with tasks having the attribute in the normal course of business. | 04-07-2016 |
20160104098 | CONTACT CENTER DELIVERY IN-BUILDING HOMING SERVICE - The delivery of goods to a customer comprises a substantial portion of human activity. To correct address errors and/or to more precisely locate delivery locations, systems are provided to assist human, human operated vehicle, or autonomous vehicles to locate a delivery point. Often the location of a delivery point is inaccurate or imprecise. GPS and other coordinate systems often fail or are imprecise without an unobstructed view of the sky. Even with coordinates available, the delivery point may be different from the coordinates or, more commonly, coordinates that are different from some standard point within a postal address associated with the coordinates. Providing a delivery system that utilizes a broadcasted identifier, such as an identifier associated with the order of the item, the delivery of the item may be made proximate to the source of the broadcasted identifier or further refined using the broadcasted identifier as a reference. | 04-14-2016 |
20160105543 | CODEC SEQUENCE DETECTION - In order to detect a specific codec sequence being used, a signal that is based on a codec sequence is analyzed. The signal is analyzed to determine if there is a pattern in the signal. A pattern of a codec sequence can be a unique pattern of frames, frequencies and/or frequency ranges that are generated based on a specific codec sequence. The pattern is compared to one or more previously stored patterns of codec sequences to see if there is a match. If there is a match, an event is generated. For example, if a known codec sequence that has a poor signal quality is determined to be in use for a voice call, the parties may be notified that the call is likely to be a low quality voice call. | 04-14-2016 |