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 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. 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.

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, 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.

Abstract: 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.

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 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.

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, 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.

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 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.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: Agents in a contact center are grouped dynamically by defining performance metrics against which agents are to be judged, and generating an evaluation score for each of a number of agents by comparing their actual performance data to the defined performance metrics. Agents are assigned to the groups based on their performance scores. This provides the ability to generate reports and route contacts according to actual agent performance judged relative to user-specified performance metrics. The sizes of groups can be adjusted in real time to take account of actual or anticipated levels of contacts with different requirements, and agents can be reallocated among the resized groups on the fly based on the ranking of their evaluation scores.

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, 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.

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, 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.

Abstract: 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.

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.

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 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.

Abstract: Provided herein is a system and method for determining a service agent start time objective for a customer contact and matching agents and customers based on meeting that objective. The method may include: receiving a customer contact to request service; determining a service completion objective for the customer contact based upon a service-level agreement; determining a handling time limit based on a historical elapsed handling time; and subtracting the handling time limit from the service completion objective, to produce the service agent start 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, 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.