Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080275751 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ASSESSING THE STATUS OF WORK WAITING FOR SERVICE - The present invention provides a system and method for assessing the status of work waiting for service in a work queue or a work pool. Work items are placed in the work queue or work pool and have a service time goal. The work items in the work queue or work pool are scanned and a required queue position for each work item is calculated according to the amount of time remaining prior to the expiration of the service time goal and weighted advance time for servicing of work items in the work queue or pool. An array of counters has elements which correspond to required queue positions. Upon the calculation of the required queue position for a work item, the counter corresponding to the required queue position is incremented. When all of the work items are scanned, the array of counters is analyzed to predict a future state of the work queue or work pool. | 11-06-2008 |
20080275752 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ASSESSING THE STATUS OF WORK WAITING FOR SERVICE - The present invention provides a system and method for assessing the status of work waiting for service in a work queue or a work pool. Work items are placed in the work queue or work pool and have a service time goal. The work items in the work queue or work pool are scanned and a required queue position for each work item is calculated according to the amount of time remaining prior to the expiration of the service time goal and weighted advance time for servicing of work items in the work queue or pool. An array of counters has elements which correspond to required queue positions. Upon the calculation of the required queue position for a work item, the counter corresponding to the required queue position is incremented. When all of the work items are scanned, the array of counters is analyzed to predict a future state of the work queue or work pool. | 11-06-2008 |
20080275766 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ASSESSING THE STATUS OF WORK WAITING FOR SERVICE - The present invention provides a system and method for assessing the status of work waiting for service in a work queue or a work pool. Work items are placed in the work queue or work pool and have a service time goal. The work items in the work queue or work pool are scanned and a required queue position for each work item is calculated according to the amount of time remaining prior to the expiration of the service time goal and weighted advance time for servicing of work items in the work queue or pool. An array of counters has elements which correspond to required queue positions. Upon the calculation of the required queue position for a work item, the counter corresponding to the required queue position is incremented. When all of the work items are scanned, the array of counters is analyzed to predict a future state of the work queue or work pool. | 11-06-2008 |
20100278318 | System and Method for Detecting Emotions at Different Steps in a Communication - The system and method establish a communication with a first party. A first emotion is detected during a first step during the communication. Steps in the communication can include: establishing a call, waiting in a queue, talking with an agent, communicating with an IVR system, and the like. A second emotion is detected at a different step in the communication. Alternatively, the first and second emotions are detected in two different but related communications. The detection of the first and/or second emotion determines how to process the communication. Examples of processing a communication can include routing the communication differently, selecting a different script for an agent, selecting a different agent, and the like. In addition, the communication can also be processed differently based on other additional parameters. | 11-04-2010 |
20110044320 | MECHANISM FOR FAST EVALUATION OF POLICIES IN WORK ASSIGNMENT - A work item routing mechanism is provided that is capable of employing a state map which compresses routing decisions and results of comparisons into a single bit. Thus, comparisons and determinations made in connection with work item routing are made prior to the routing mechanism receiving a work item. Once a work item is received, the routing mechanism only has to refer to the bit map to see if it is allowed to route the work item to a particular processing resource and if that resource is the best among all candidate processing resources. All of the work item routing decisions can, therefore, be made very quickly thereby reducing processing delay and wait time. | 02-24-2011 |
20110047002 | MECHANISM FOR MULTISITE SERVICE STATE DESCRIPTION - A distributed contact center is described and systems, methods, and devices for sharing state information between the various parts of the contact center are provided. Skill state information is condensed into one or several bits such that a message describing the state of multiple skills can be generated and shared with other parts of the contact center. This provides the ability to convey a large amount of state information for a particular site in a multi-site system without consuming a large amount of bandwidth or utilizing a large amount of processing capabilities. | 02-24-2011 |
20110071879 | BIDDING WORK ASSIGNMENT ON CONFERENCE/SUBSCRIBE RTP CLEARING HOUSE - A distributed contact center and method of managing tasks within such a contact center is provided. The various sites of the distributed contact center are adapted to bid on contacts by transmitting bids to a work item distribution mechanism via RTP streams, thereby enabling the work item distribution mechanism to analyze the bids in real-time and route the contact accordingly. | 03-24-2011 |
20110255681 | BITMAPS FOR NEXT GENERATION CONTACT CENTER - A queueless contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, achieve true one-to-one matching. Solutions are also provided for managing data structures utilized by the queueless contact center. Furthermore, mechanisms for generating traditional queue-based performance views and metrics for the queueless contact center are proposed to help facilitate a smooth transition from traditional queue-based contact centers to the next generation contact centers described herein. | 10-20-2011 |
20110255682 | HIGH PERFORMANCE QUEUELESS CONTACT CENTER - A queueless contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, achieve true one-to-one matching. Solutions are also provided for managing data structures utilized by the queueless contact center. Furthermore, mechanisms for generating traditional queue-based performance views and metrics for the queueless contact center are proposed to help facilitate a smooth transition from traditional queue-based contact centers to the next generation contact centers described herein. | 10-20-2011 |
20110255683 | ONE-TO-ONE MATCHING IN A CONTACT CENTER - A queueless contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, achieve true one-to-one matching. Solutions are also provided for managing data structures utilized by the queueless contact center. Furthermore, mechanisms for generating traditional queue-based performance views and metrics for the queueless contact center are proposed to help facilitate a smooth transition from traditional queue-based contact centers to the next generation contact centers described herein. | 10-20-2011 |
20110255684 | AUTOMATED MECHANISM FOR POPULATING AND MAINTAINING DATA STRUCTURES IN A QUEUELESS CONTACT CENTER - A queueless contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, achieve true one-to-one matching. Solutions are also provided for managing data structures utilized by the queueless contact center. Furthermore, mechanisms for generating traditional queue-based performance views and metrics for the queueless contact center are proposed to help facilitate a smooth transition from traditional queue-based contact centers to the next generation contact centers described herein. | 10-20-2011 |
20110255685 | VIEW AND METRICS FOR A QUEUELESS CONTACT CENTER - A queueless contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, achieve true one-to-one matching. Solutions are also provided for managing data structures utilized by the queueless contact center. Furthermore, mechanisms for generating traditional queue-based performance views and metrics for the queueless contact center are proposed to help facilitate a smooth transition from traditional queue-based contact centers to the next generation contact centers described herein. | 10-20-2011 |
20120134487 | PREDICTED PERCENT SERVICE LEVEL - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to calculate short-term predictor metrics for achieving particular percent service level objectives in a plurality of skills, determine an optimal skill based on the comparison of short-term predictor metrics, and assign an agent to the optimal skill to increase the contact center's overall operational efficiency and performance. | 05-31-2012 |
20120278136 | DYNAMIC WORK ASSIGNMENT STRATEGIES BASED ON MULTIPLE ASPECTS OF AGENT PROFICIENCY - A contact center having a plurality of performance goals is provided. The contact center includes a routing agent operable, when a work item is to be routed to a servicing destination, determine, for each performance goal, a status of goal realization and a corresponding set of selection criteria for the determined statuses of goal realization and a destination selector operable to select the servicing destination based, at least in part, on the set of selection criteria. | 11-01-2012 |
20120321073 | GOAL-BASED ESTIMATED WAIT TIME - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, determine an estimated wait time for contacts waiting to be serviced by resources of the contact center without relying on the traditional First-In-First-Out behavior of contact centers. | 12-20-2012 |
20130022194 | AGENT SKILL PROMOTION AND DEMOTION BASED ON CONTACT CENTER STATE - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, selectively promote and demote agent skills to respond to various changes in contact center conditions. This enables the contact center to respond to unexpected changes in processing conditions without significantly impacting the overall performance of the contact center. | 01-24-2013 |
20130083915 | INTERRUPTING AUXILIARY AGENTS - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, selectively interrupt a contact center agent in an AUXILIARY state. This enables the contact center to accommodate sudden influxes of work items without substantially increasing customer wait time. | 04-04-2013 |
20130083916 | ANALYTICS FEEDBACK AND ROUTING - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, dynamically and in real-time utilize contact center analytics feedback mechanisms to adjust parameters that are used in making work assignment decisions. The adjusted parameters may correspond to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for agents of the contact center rather than skill values for the agents. | 04-04-2013 |
20130085791 | SWITCHING ROUTING ALGORITHMS TO OPTIMIZE SATISFACTION OF LONG-TERM COMMITMENTS - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, monitor workload distribution to one or more sub-contractors and predict whether a contractual obligation will be met (or not) and based on such a prediction automatically switch routing algorithms within a contractual period of time to ensure that costs associated with a contract are minimized. | 04-04-2013 |
20130208883 | OUTBOUND EFFECTIVENESS THROUGH MANAGEMENT OF IDLE AGENT POOL - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, establish and maintain a pool of idle agents so that when an outbound call attempt is successful, the agent which is assigned to the successful outbound call attempt can be selected from a plurality of agents based on the agent's superior efficiency rather than being based on the fact that the agent is the next in line to be assigned to such a contact. | 08-15-2013 |
20130212205 | TRUE GEO-REDUNDANT HOT-STANDBY SERVER ARCHITECTURE - A server configuration provides a geo-redundant server that is ready as a hot-standby to the primary server in another location. This architecture can be easily implemented in a distributed contact center environment or any other server deployment where services provided by the primary server are mission-critical. One exemplary configuration provides a single active master server. This single active master server is responsible for making all service-based decisions, receiving and processing client requests, etc., as long as it is operational. A second server is provided at the same geographic site or location as the single active master and a high bandwidth active LAN connection is established between the two. The second server maintains synchronization with the single active master. The second server is also connected with a third server via a WAN. The second server provides the third server with the state information for synchronization with the single active master. | 08-15-2013 |
20130216037 | TRAINING OPTIMIZER FOR CONTACT CENTER AGENTS - The present disclosure describes various ways of monitoring the needs of a contact center in real-time and pushing training to a number of agents to address those needs. In determining to push training to agents, the short-term efficiency of the agent is balanced with the long-term efficiency of the contact center. When agents receive and then complete training events designed to address the monitored contact center needs the attributes associated with the agents are updated to allow them to handle the contacts requiring training. | 08-22-2013 |
20130223608 | CONTEXT-BASED DYNAMIC ADJUSTMENT TO PACING ALGORITHM - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, assess contextual information and adjust an outbound dialer's pacing algorithm based on the assessment thereof. The contextual information may be obtained from sources that are inside the contact center and outside the contact center. | 08-29-2013 |
20130223610 | ADJUSTMENT OF CONTACT ROUTING DECISIONS TO REWARD AGENT BEHAVIOR - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, reward positive agent behavior and performance by providing the agent with rewards and incentives. The rewards and incentives are provided to the agent by altering one or more aspects of the routing logic in the contact center. | 08-29-2013 |
20130223611 | BREAK INJECTION AT WORK ASSIGNMENT ENGINE OF CONTACT CENTER - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, include a break-type work item in a work pool that also contains traditional work items. The break-type work item comprises attributes that enable the break-type work item to be routed to one or more resources in the contact center with a work assignment engine that routes the traditional work items. | 08-29-2013 |
20130223612 | DYNAMIC ADJUSTMENT OF MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ROUTING RULE - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, support the ability to flexibly apply a plurality of different work assignment algorithms simultaneously, weight work item routing decisions received from each work assignment algorithm, and then make a final work item routing decision based on a weighted combination of the work item routing decisions. | 08-29-2013 |
20130223617 | CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAMING - The present disclosure describes various ways of providing agents with a configurable mechanism by which they may bid on training opportunities with contacts in a given contact center. Specifically, an architecture providing a team of agents and agents-in-training to service a contact or set of contacts and methods of employing that team architecture are described. The bids of one or more agents may be collected and evaluated to determine at least one winning agent that will team together with at least one subject matter expert, qualified agent, or team in handling a contact for the purposes of training. | 08-29-2013 |
20130223619 | ADAPTIVE ESTIMATED WAIT TIME PREDICTOR - Systems and methods for providing adaptive estimated wait time predictions for work items are provided. More particularly, a processor-enabled module may select a best estimated wait time algorithm from among a plurality of estimated wait time algorithms that meets the accuracy and calculation resource conditions of a contact center based on rules. Furthermore, the conditions of a contact center may change at times and as a result the selection of which estimated wait time algorithm is considered best will adapt to suit the contact center change. In addition, the selected best estimated wait time prediction can be provided to client communication devices. | 08-29-2013 |
20130268546 | QUALIFIER SET CREATION FOR WORK ASSIGNMENT ENGINE - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, define, in real-time, qualifier set combinations for work items. Thus, the contact center can create a dictionary of combinations of work item attributes that may be defined as work items are introduced to the system. The definition of the combinations allows for large qualifier sets without the large expenditure of resources to define all possible combinations of attributes for the contact center. | 10-10-2013 |
20130279685 | MULTI-TASKING RELIEF - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, determine performance efficiencies/metric associated with one or more multi-tasking agents and provide relief to agents based on rules. This multi-tasking relief may be provided to the one or more agents via reducing an amount of multi-tasking work, inserting breaks into the agent's work flow, and/or directing work items to other resources. | 10-24-2013 |
20130287202 | WORK ASSIGNMENT DEFERMENT DURING PERIODS OF AGENT SURPLUS - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, support deferring work item routing decisions for a predetermined amount of time even when agents that are technically qualified to handle the work item are available. The deferment of work item routing decisions helps to achieve better matching and, therefore, increases contact center efficiency even though decisions are delayed. | 10-31-2013 |
20140079209 | AUTOMATIC CALL NOTIFICATION GROUPS - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. Work assignment methods are disclosed that push notifications to one or more resources about available work item opportunities. The one or more resources can pull the work item from the notification groups to handle the work item. Moreover, the pushed notifications can be added to a traditional work assignment scheme to aid in the answering of work items and/or offer training to a plurality of resources. | 03-20-2014 |
20140079210 | RISKS FOR WAITING FOR WELL-MATCHED - A contact center which provides the ability to, among other things, support deferring work assignment decisions while simultaneously assessing the risks associated with such a deferred decision. The intelligent deferment of work assignment decisions helps to achieve better matching without losing the opportunity to timely assign work to an agent. | 03-20-2014 |
20140079211 | SYSTEM, METHOD, AND APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING EFFECTIVENESS OF ADVANCED CALL CENTER ROUTING ALGORITHMS - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, simultaneously execute two different work assignment algorithms on the same work flow either in real-time as the work flow is received or in a simulation environment. The differences in the way that each work assignment algorithm handles the same work flow are compared and contrasted to help describe the differences in the work assignment algorithms. | 03-20-2014 |
20140081687 | MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS CONTACT CENTER OBJECTIVES - Methods, devices, and systems are provided such that multiple contact center objectives can be simultaneously analyzed and normalized by a single algorithm. A solution is provided for executing an algorithm that is able to consider multiple objectives simultaneously rather than serially. By considering multiple objectives in parallel when making work assignment decisions instead of considering single objectives, decisions and contact center adjustments are made with more efficiency and with a minimal use of resources. | 03-20-2014 |
20140081689 | WORK ASSIGNMENT THROUGH MERGED SELECTION MECHANISMS - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. In particular, work assignment methods are disclosed that are configured to utilize multiple selection mechanisms in determining an optimal work assignment. By analyzing data relating to agent selection, queue information, and state information, of one or more contact centers, a work item may be efficiently assigned to achieve a work item optimal solution. In some cases, the optimal solution for a work item may be contrary to an optimal solution for a particular contact center. However, the primary goal of efficiently handling the work item via one or more resources can be achieved by merging selection mechanisms and intelligently assigning work items on a system-wide basis. | 03-20-2014 |
20140082179 | SCARCE RESOURCES MANAGEMENT - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. In general, methods are disclosed that are configured to analyze work assignments to determine one or more scarce resources for further management. By analyzing the attributes, that are common to a number of work assignments made over a period of time, resources possessing those attributes may be classified as scarce. These scarce resources may be managed in accordance with their demand and business rules. To efficiently handle work items associated with valued customers, the scarce resources may be removed from traditional work assignments and held in reserve. The reserved scarce resources may be applied to the valued customers' work items. | 03-20-2014 |
20140161248 | QUALIFIER SET CREATION FOR WORK ASSIGNMENT ENGINE - A contact center is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The contact center proposed herein provides the ability to, among other things, define, in real-time, qualifier set combinations for work items. Thus, the contact center can create a dictionary of combinations of work item attributes that may be defined as work items are introduced to the system. The definition of the combinations allows for large qualifier sets without the large expenditure of resources to define all possible combinations of attributes for the contact center. | 06-12-2014 |