Class / Patent application number | Description | Number of patent applications / Date published |
379265100 | Predictive (e.g., anticipating next available agent) | 25 |
20090041226 | System and Method for Using the Reliability of an Agent's Connectivity as an Agent Selection Criteria - A method for routing contacts to resources comprises receiving a contact to be routed to one of a plurality of resources. The method then proceeds by determining a reliability score for at least one of the plurality of resources. The reliability score is based at least in part upon connection statistics for at least one of the plurality of resources. The method continues by determining a particular resource of the plurality of resources to which to route the contact. This determination is based at least in part upon the reliability scores that were determined. The method concludes by routing the contact to the particular resource. | 02-12-2009 |
20090232294 | SKIPPING A CALLER IN QUEUE FOR A CALL ROUTING CENTER - Methods and systems are provided for routing callers to agents in a call-center routing environment. An exemplary method includes identifying caller data for at least one caller in a queue of callers, and skipping a caller at the front of the queue of callers for another caller based on the identified caller data. The caller data may include one or both of demographic data and psychographic data. Skipping the caller may be further based on comparing caller data with agent data associated with an agent via a pattern matching algorithm such as a correlation algorithm. In one example, if the caller at the front of the queue has been skipped a predetermined number of times the caller at the front is the next routed (and cannot be skipped again). | 09-17-2009 |
20090252318 | Service wait time notification - A system for communicating service information to a potential customer is provided. The system includes one or more potential customer devices, one or more session initiation protocol (SIP) client devices, and a SIP server. The SIP server is operable to determine an estimated service wait time based on information received from the one or more SIP client device and communicate the estimated wait time to the one or more potential customer devices. | 10-08-2009 |
20100020959 | ROUTING CALLERS TO AGENTS BASED ON PERSONALITY DATA OF AGENTS - Systems and methods are disclosed for routing callers to agents in a contact center, along with an intelligent routing system. An exemplary method includes routing a caller from a set of callers to an agent from a set of agents based on a pattern matching algorithm utilizing caller data associated with the caller from the set of callers and agent data associated with the agent from the set of agents. One or both of the caller data and agent data includes personality data, e.g., from a personality profile, associated with the caller or agent. The personality data and profile may be generated from administration of a personality test such as a Myers-Brigg Type Indicator questionnaire. | 01-28-2010 |
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 |
20120213356 | System and Methods for Predicting Future Agent Readiness for Handling an Interaction in a Call Center - A system for making outbound calls includes a first node connected to a network for placing outbound telephone calls, a second node connected to the network and accessible to the first node for reporting agent status relative to busy, ready, and time to ready, a number of agent appliances connected to the network and accessible to the second node, and a number of agent activity applications installed one per on the agent appliances. In a preferred embodiment outbound calls are predicted based on the number of agents reported ready to accept a call plus the number of agents predicted to be ready to accept a call within a specified time window. | 08-23-2012 |
20120281825 | Managing interactive communications campaigns with customer recovery - A campaign strategy manager (CSM) component for a hosted communications campaign system allows users to define more granular and specific campaign strategies, including pass escalation for alternative channels (e.g., text and email) and/or based upon attempt results, contact attributes and response group data. The campaign strategy manager allows users to define pass strategies statically and dynamically, to manage lists across multiple campaigns, and to view results in real-time. A defined strategy is a static strategy created by a user for a particular campaign that, once created, typically is not modified. A dynamic strategy is one where, during the course of a day (e.g., as a sub-campaign is running), a user may alter the defined strategy, preferably just for that day (or portion thereof). The CSM may be used to implement a recovery strategy using a dialer pass. | 11-08-2012 |
20130101109 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ROUTING CALLERS TO AN AGENT IN A CONTACT CENTER - Methods are disclosed for routing callers to agents in a contact center, along with an intelligent routing system. One or more agents are graded on achieving an optimal interaction, such as increasing revenue, decreasing cost, or increasing customer satisfaction. Callers are then preferentially routed to a graded agent to obtain an increased chance at obtaining a chosen optimal interaction. In a more advanced embodiment, caller and agent demographic and psychographic characteristics can also be determined and used in a pattern matching algorithm to preferentially route a caller with certain characteristics to an agent with certain characteristics to increase the chance of an optimal interaction. | 04-25-2013 |
20130202100 | Scheduling an Agent Based On a Contact Center History - When a customer communicates with a contact center, a history of the communication is stored. The communication from the customer can be in various media, such as a voice call, a video call, an email, an Instant Message (IM), a text message, and/or a blog posting. The history includes a context such as a reason for the communication and a time of the communication. The history of the communication is used to determine a pattern of the communication based on the context. Using the pattern, a time that the customer will communicate with the contact center is predicted. An agent associated with the customer is scheduled to be available at the predicted time. The predicted time can also be based on future events such as a product release or an event such as a political event, a sports event, and/or a convention. | 08-08-2013 |
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 |
20130329880 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR IMPROVING THE PRODUCTIVITY OF CALLING AGENTS AND CALL YIELD - A method and system for increasing call yield and the productivity of agents in an environment such as a contact or call center, for example, is described. Attributes may be used to classify calls and contact information. A system may learn from collected data. Calculations may be performed to aid in forecasting such as probabilities, call yield, and expected call handle time. Such calculations may be used to determine the best time to call a contact to achieve a desired result. | 12-12-2013 |
20140270133 | REAL-TIME PREDICTIVE ROUTING - The methods, apparatus, and systems described herein are designed to route customer communications to the best available agent. The methods include predicting a personality type of the customer, determining the occupancy level of agents to provide a list of available agents, providing a routing recommendation based on the predicted personality type of the customer and agent data such as proficiency in handling customers with the predicted personality type, and/or analyzing real-time customer-agent interactions. | 09-18-2014 |
20140270134 | AGENT STATISTICS BY LOCATION - The present disclosure is directed to methods including obtaining a location data of a source; obtaining at least one performance measure; correlating the location data and the at least one performance measure to obtain a correlation; and analyzing the correlation to obtain an analysis report. The present disclosure is further directed to systems that include a source related to a contact center, and a processor configured to: obtain a location data of the source; derive at least one performance measure; correlate the location data and the at least one performance measure to obtain a correlation; and analyze the correlation to obtain an analysis report. | 09-18-2014 |
20140355748 | OPTIMIZED PREDICTIVE ROUTING AND METHODS - The methods, apparatus, and systems described herein facilitate optimizing routing decisions. The methods include retrieving and/or predicting a profile of a current customer and future customers, determining which agents are currently available and which agents are expected to be available, and providing a routing recommendation based on the profile retrieval or prediction for the current customer and the future customers, and the currently available agents' and expected available agents' proficiency at handling customers with the retrieved and/or predicted profiles. | 12-04-2014 |
20140355749 | OPTIMIZED PREDICTIVE ROUTING AND METHODS - The methods, apparatus, and systems described herein facilitate optimizing routing decisions. The methods include retrieving and/or predicting a profile of a current customer and future customers, determining which agents are currently available and which agents are expected to be available, and providing a routing recommendation based on the profile retrieval or prediction for the current customer and the future customers, and the currently available agents' and expected available agents' proficiency at handling customers with the retrieved and/or predicted profiles. | 12-04-2014 |
20150086002 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING OUTBOUND INTERACTIONS - A method and system for managing a plurality of outbound interactions is provided. The system comprises an interaction management platform and a parallel predictive dialer. The parallel predictive dialer comprises multiple predictive dialers. The interaction management platform classifies multiple contacts into contact groups based on contact classification criteria and classifies multiple agents into agent groups based on agent classification criteria. Further, the interaction management platform, maps each the contacts in the contact groups to one or more the agent groups. The parallel predictive dialer assigns the predictive dialers to the agent groups and the predictive dialers place the outbound interactions to the contacts in the contact groups. The interaction management platform then determines available contacts from the contact groups and concurrently processes the answered interactions. | 03-26-2015 |
20150304492 | COMMUNICATIONS ARBITRATOR - Content of a communication session, such as a voice communication between a user and an agent of a contact center is monitored. A keyword, a phrase, an emotion, or a gesture related to a topic in the monitored content of the communication session is identified. A rule based on the identified the monitored content is applied. In response to applying the rule based on the monitored content, one or more topic suggestions are identified and presented to the user. For example, the rule can detect that the agent changed the discussion from a first topic to a second topic. In response to the agent discussing the second topic, the user is presented with two topics suggestions for the two topics. The user can select one of the topic suggestions to focus the agent on a specific topic suggestion. The selected topic suggestion along with discussions options are then displayed to the agent. | 10-22-2015 |
20160036976 | System And Method For Providing Agent Guidance - A system and method for providing agent guidance is provided. Speech communicated by a user to an agent is monitored during a call within a call center. Traits of the user are identified during the call based on the speech of the user. A determination is made as to how likely the user is to accept an offer provided by the agent based on the user traits. The user is classified as belonging to one of a plurality of stages of persuasion based on the likelihood determination, and guidance is provided to the agent based on classification of the user in at least one of the classes. The offer is provided to the user based on the guidance. | 02-04-2016 |
20160036977 | DYNAMIC SELECTION OF OPTIMUM CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT CHANNEL - Embodiments of the invention provide systems and methods for handling a customer contact in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system by defining one or more channel models, each channel model mapping one or more contact purposes or one or more contact types to one or more of the plurality of channels. Real-time information about a received customer contact can be collected and one or more of a plurality of channels can be selected to handle the customer contact based at least in part on a predictive analysis of the collected real-time information. A contact purpose or a contact type for the received customer contact can be determined based on the collected real-time information. In such cases, selecting one or more of the plurality of channels can be further based on the determined contact purpose or contact type for the received customer contact and the defined one or more channel models. | 02-04-2016 |
20160036982 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANTICIPATORY DYNAMIC CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION FOR A CONTACT CENTER - System and method for enhanced interaction processing in a contact center that includes dynamically determining customer segmentation. A processor detects a pending interaction with a customer. The processor retrieves, in response to detecting the pending interaction, identification of a first customer segment to which the customer belongs. The first customer segment is associated with a first objective of the contact center. The processor predicts an outcome of the pending interaction, and identifies a second customer segment based on the predicted outcome. The processor re-associates the customer to a second customer segment, where the second customer segment is associated with a second objective of the contact center different from the first business objective. The processor handles the pending interaction according to the second objective instead of the first objective. | 02-04-2016 |
20160048502 | Sentiment Management System - A method of managing customer sentiment includes: monitoring an interaction of a customer with customer interactive media; deriving a sentiment of the customer from the interaction of the customer with the customer interactive media; generating sentiment data for the customer; and updating customer data in a customer database with the sentiment data in real-time. | 02-18-2016 |
20160119476 | PERSONALIZING COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES USING ENVIRONMENTAL DATA - A method for personalizing communication services includes setting a series of selectable options as a default for a system that provides personalized communication services. When a communication from an initiating party is received, a computer of the system automatically determines, based on environmental data provided for the communication independent of information provided by the initiating party during the communication, predictive information that predicts potential objectives potentially sought by the initiating party in initiating the communication. Probabilities are assigned, based on the predictive information, that selectable options will address the potential objectives. The default series of selectable options are dynamically updated based on the assigned probabilities. Communications with the initiating party are in accordance with a script that includes the dynamically updated series of selectable options. | 04-28-2016 |
20160150087 | SYSTEM AND METHOD TO USE PREDICTED AGENT STATE TO OPTIMIZE SELECTION STRATEGY - System and method to improve self-service operation in a contact center, the method including: determining a characteristic of the new customer contact; determining a characteristic of an existing customer contact; determining a communication delay latency between an assignment engine and a contact center agent; determining a time to assign the new customer contact to the contact center agent, wherein the time to assign is made in a predetermined amount of time in advance of receiving a ready indication from the contact center agent, the predetermined amount of time determined from the communication delay latency. | 05-26-2016 |
20160165052 | AUTOMATIC CONTACT CENTER EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION - A contact center, methods, and mechanisms are provided for dynamically scaling a contact center based on scaling triggers and monitored activity. The monitored activity includes information provided from one or more sources. This information serves to indicate whether a contact center activity is increasing, decreasing, or maintaining a steady-state. When the activity at a contact center is increasing, a scaling mechanism increases a number of resources provisioned to the contact center according to rules. When the activity at a contact center is decreasing, a scaling mechanism decreases a number of resources provisioned to the contact center according to rules. The scaling triggers are created, removed, modified, or otherwise classified as correlations between monitored activity and contact center scaling are observed. | 06-09-2016 |
20160381224 | 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. | 12-29-2016 |