Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: A contact center is provided that pushes 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: Provided herein is a system and method for sharing control of a customer service provided by a contact center. The method may include: receiving, from a customer, a customer contact to request the customer service; communicating by use of a communication channel between the customer and the contact center in order to provide the customer service; receiving a join request, from the customer, to join an outside party to the customer service; and joining the outside party to the customer service.