Abstract: Contact centers handle contacts from any number of channels. One agent may be simultaneously handling several chats, emails, or other messages. Customers behind the contact often want to know how long of a wait time they are likely to experience before an agent begins to address their inquiry. Herein, techniques are provided whereby contacts currently, and/or enqueued, for one or more agents are examined to determine an estimated effort for each task. One message may represent a number of tasks each having an associated time estimate. Furthermore, messages from one channel may be more time consuming than messages from another channel. Such factors, and others, are considered and the customer may then be notified of an estimated wait time and, optionally, notified if another channel may provide a more expeditious option.

Abstract: Communications in a contact center may utilize one of a number of communications channels. Certain channels may operate at a lower cost or fewer resources while another channel is more secure and/or faster or otherwise better suited for a particular communication. A communication between an agent of a contact center and a customer may initially be on a first channel but during the communication a content indicator that the channel is inappropriate or less desirable than a second channel. Once such an event occurs, the communication on the first channel may be terminated and moved to a second communication channel.

Abstract: Social media websites occasionally experience a spike in activity known as a viral event or “going viral.” While some viral events are purely entertainment based, such as the latest cat video, other viral events can be specifically relevant to a domain, such as an industry or business. A social media event, such as a common thread of posts, may attract no more than the usual amount of interest or it may be about to “go viral.” As provided herein, social media events may be monitored and evaluated for virality. If an event indicates it will go viral, but has not yet done so, an affected party may be made aware of the event and take steps to curtail negative viral events or to leverage, or even promote, positive viral events.

Abstract: Contact centers may incorporate automated agents to respond to inquiries. The inquiries may solicit a substantive response, for example, by providing a time when the inquiry asks for the departure time for a flight. Such responses omit the normal conversational subject matter used to embellish person-to-person conversations and appear are very machine-like. Herein, a source of user context, such as a social media website, customer database, or other data, is accessed. Certain aspects of the customer may then be identified and used to embellish the reply with additional and/or alternative content. As a result, the reply may be more conversational.

Abstract: An automated system for message analysis whereby messages within a given category may be identified and processed as a category connote. While a domain of messages may be monitored and processed in the due course of business, connote message are different. For example, a number of messages may fall into a domain of “poor airline food.” Such messages may be processed in the due course of business. However, a message with a different aspect, such as, “I found glass in my food,” may be initially identified as begin within the domain of “poor airline food,” and processed further to distinguish the message as being a connote with regard to the “poor airline food” category and warranting special handling.

Abstract: A dialog aggregator provided by a contact center communication system for text-based interaction chains is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The dialog aggregator produces a summary, in real-time, of questions posed and existing answers in the interaction chain while identifying outstanding questions that have not been answered for display to an agent. The display includes any current answer the agent is working on as well as completed items and additionally executes rules based on the status of the remaining questions. The display in canonical form of the summary and outstanding question set enables a contact center agent or other observer of the interaction to quickly and efficiently assess the interaction history.

Abstract: Contact centers employ agents to provide services to customers. In particular, artificial agents are provided that have a rich background and continuing life with the realm of social media. The artificial agent's profile is selected in accord with the profiles of current or prospective customers. As the customers age and progress in life, the artificial agent profile is updated in accord with the customers' changing profiles and similarly ages and progresses in life. When a customer desires to interact with artificial agent, for a purpose provided by a contact center, a human agent may be provided the profile and/or history of the artificial agent so as to impersonate the artificial agent and promote the relationship with the customer.

Abstract: Contact centers may benefit from routing messages to agents who have similar, or complementary, attributes as the customer of the message. In a text message, certain message attributes provide artifacts that may be common to one particular customer attribute. Messages containing that particular message attribute provide a derived customer attribute and the message routed accordingly. In addition, agents responding to a customer may be provided with guidance to ensure their response is appropriate for the derived customer attribute of the customer.

Abstract: Some social networks provide message histories that record information about previous posts that users make to the social media network. From this information, a contact center determines trends in the usage of a social media network by a user. The contact center can mine the message history database for times, frequency of posts, location of the user during posts, and other information provided in the message histories. From this information or metadata about the messages, the contact center develops trends about the user's postings of messages on social media networks. The contact center can further receive subsequent posts and read metadata related to the subsequent posts. The new metadata can be used to modify the trends over time.

Abstract: The sentiment of a message may not be obtainable from the message itself. However, many messages have an associated context that provides information useful in determining the sentiment of a message. Messages may include links to other resources, such as graphics or videos, which in turn include titles, comments, viewer ratings or other attributes that may provide a sentiment of the message.

Abstract: Methods and systems for automatically extending a sentiment dictionary are provided. Starting with an initial set of elements (e.g., words, emoticons, etc.) having a known sentiment, messages can be analyzed for words frequently appearing in association with such words. As a result the frequently appearing words may then be associated with a sentiment and used to help determine the sentiment of a message.

Abstract: An automatic timeline and topic normalization mechanism is described along with various methods and systems for administering the same. The temporal correction system proposed herein creates fully interpreted and reordered representations of events within and external to a dialog, reducing the amount of time and expensive resources typically required for reading, comprehension, and response to written communications.

Abstract: Automated method and systems are provided for determining a gap exists in an enterprise's knowledge base. Once a gap is determined, a question is developed in accord with the gap. An answer is then developed to answer the question and the knowledge base is updated accordingly. The source of the information may be cross-domain information such that an enterprise may include relevant information, and/or more usable information, than what could be otherwise provided by information limited to the enterprise's domain.

Abstract: A semantic translation model system is described along with various methods and mechanisms for administering the same. The semantic translation model system proposed herein creates an intermediate representation and a knowledge base in multiple languages, reducing the amount of time and expensive resources typically required for translation and automatic response to written communications. The system also removes the problem of a translation being influenced by a person's writing style and human misinterpretation and provides ongoing translation to keep the system current.

Abstract: A prioritization and time allocation by customer service is provided, whereby the customer service agents are incentivized to accept those tasks which more closely align with the objectives of a call center. Individual agents will then be able to pursue their own methodology to achieve their own goals and, in the process, pursue an objective of the contact center.

Abstract: A trend is identified by examining multiple communications in a contact center. For example, a trend can be a specific issue or problem related to a product. A communication related to the trend is identified. Based on identification of the trend, a process for routing the communications in the contact center is altered. In one embodiment, different menus/items in an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system are changed based on the identified trend. In other embodiments, communications related to the trend are identified and moved to different queues or held in queues until there is a valid response. The identified communications can be responded to automatically, by specific agents, by group mailings, and the like. In addition, prior communications that relate to the trend are identified. This allows additional responses to be sent or processes to be altered in order to provide the customer with a better quality of service.

Abstract: A system can determine a best routing of a customer contact based on analysis of one or more automatically generated answers. A customer may provide an inquiry through a social media contact. The contact center can analyze the inquiry to generate one or more automated answers. The system then analyzes the automated answers. The analysis may include studying various attributes of the answer, either in relation to the inquiry or based in historical data. From the analysis, the system can modify the answers and/or provide a different or improved pool of agents to handle the contact. Thus, an improved set of answers and agents is provided for managing the contact.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided to estimate the amount of service time left in a contact with a contact center. A system records metadata factors associated with contacts and the service time for the contacts. This information is incorporated into one or more service time probability distributions. A service time probability distribution is a function describing how much time a contact, having certain, defined characteristics, took historically. The distribution can subsequently be used to estimate service time for future contacts that have the same or similar characteristics.

Abstract: A system and method for securing the mobile device applies the rules to determine if an event associated with an application is a secure event. If the event is a secure event, the system applies the rules to determine if the event is authenticated. If the event is authenticated, the event is authorized and the system updates rule data associated with the event and/or other associated events. Updating the rule data allows other associated events to be authenticated. If the event is not authenticated, the system requests authentication from a user. If the authentication is valid, the event is authorized and the system updates the rule data associated with the event and/or other associated events. If the authentication is not valid, the system secures the mobile device. Authorizing the event enables a user to access the application and/or data associated with the application.

Abstract: Methods and systems that support the receipt of location data and/or touch data from a mobile communication device are provided. More particularly, a mobile customer service server is provided that can receive location data from or regarding a mobile communication device, and associate that location data with recognition data. The recognition data can in turn be delivered to other server side components, and used to select content to be returned to the mobile communication device. The mobile customer service server can also receive touch data input to the mobile communication device, and can provide recognition data related to the touch input to other server side component. Server side components provided with location or touch data by the mobile customer service server do not themselves need to natively support location recognition or touch recognition capabilities.