Abstract: In a customer contact center (100), a plurality of customers' communications are serviced simultaneously by one resource (120-128) (agent or port). A conferencing function (136) connects the plurality of customers (110-118) to the one resource and/or to each other. When a resource becomes available, a batch service function (140) determines (206-226), for each skill of the resource, the value to the contact center of having the resource presently serve communications needing that skill, and uses the conferencing function to conference (234-236) a plurality of communications needing the skill having the highest value with the resource. The conference connection may be listen-only, listen-and-talk, or listen-only/then listen-and-talk.

Abstract: The flow of work items (40) through a workflow process (50) is optimized by repeatedly reordering (FIG. 3) work items enqueued in inbox queues (21) of workflow process tasks (500) to maximize results according to a given business strategy expressed through target times. Each enqueued work item has an associated in-queue rating (IQR 28) that represents the number of queue positions (23) that the work item can be retarded or needs to be advanced to meet its target time. When a work item enters a queue and whenever a work item changes its queue position, its IQR is computed. An optimization function is then performed (404) on the queue to determine an order of the enqueued work items that optimizes a metric of those work items that may fail to meet their target times. The work items in the queue are then reordered (406) accordingly.

Abstract: In a customer contact center (100), a plurality of customers' communications are serviced simultaneously by one resource (120-128) (agent or port). A conferencing function (136) connects the plurality of customers (110-118) to the one resource and/or to each other. When a resource becomes available, a batch service function (140) determines (206-226), for each skill of the resource, the value to the contact center of having the resource presently serve communications needing that skill, and uses the conferencing function to conference (234-236) a plurality of communications needing the skill having the highest value with the resource. The conference connection may be listen-only, listen-and-talk, or listen-only/then listen-and-talk.