Abstract: According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of allocating calls coming into a call center from a caller location remote from the call center, receiving a call from a caller which includes information from an RFID chip located in close proximity to the caller location; decoding the information from the RFID chip to determine one or more parameters relating to the information; using said one or more parameters to allocate the call from the caller at the call center to ensure calls are handled in accordance with the parameters. This has the advantage of much more efficient management of the of the calls within the call center and ensures that the calls are sent to the agent with the most appropriate skill set.

Abstract: A semantic contact center management method and system is provided in which the resources of a contact center (including agents and contacts) are represented as resources connected by properties such as skills and shared prior interactions. Contacts are allocated to agents based on the degree of connectedness and the availability of agents, and this provides visual tools to represent the state of the contact center and to enable automated and supervisor intervention.

Abstract: A system for monitoring contact sessions of a contact center. The system comprises a work assignment engine for allocating contacts received at the contact center to resources of the contact center and a monitoring module, arranged to detect an allocation of a contact to a resource to determine a skill requirement of the contact. The work assignment engine is further arranged to fork a session between an originator of the contact and the resource, to a monitor resource, in response to the detected skill requirement satisfying a monitor resource skill requirement.

Abstract: A system for adapting a contact center configuration in order to achieve a specific business goal is provided. The system comprises a display for displaying to a user a representation of an actual state of a performance metric of the contact center, an interactive tool for enabling the user to interact with and thereby modify the representation of the performance metric to a desired state, and a computation engine. The computational engine is arranged to determine a measure of the modification of the representation and to identify at least one contact center configuration parameter, which if adjusted, results in an update of the actual state of the performance metric which more closely approaches the desired state represented by the modification.

Abstract: Contacts are managed within a contact centre by representing each contact as a software object which contains skillset and priority identifiers. Contact objects are queued relative to one another by means of references to and/or from the object(s) immediately ahead of and behind each contact. In this way a conventional queue can be dispensed with. Queries can be made to a plurality of contact centres across a network to identify objects matching certain criteria at the top of each local queue. In this way a set of local queues substitutes for a network queue providing increased resilience in the case of the failure of any individual component of the network or of the network itself.

Abstract: Contacts are managed within a contact centre by representing each contact as a software object which contains skillset and priority identifiers. Contact objects are queued relative to one another by means of references to and/or from the object(s) immediately ahead of and behind each contact. In this way a conventional queue can be dispensed with. Queries can be made to a plurality of contact centres across a network to identify objects matching certain criteria at the top of each local queue. In this way a set of local queues substitutes for a network queue providing increased resilience in the case of the failure of any individual component of the network or of the network itself.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method of reserving resources for a customer contacting a contact center. The method includes the steps of identifying the customer associated with a contact received at the contact center, accessing a customer profile to determine at least one non-agent resource to be associated with the contact based on the customer profile; reserving the non-agent resource for the contact; and allocating the non-agent resource to the contact.

Abstract: Calls made using the session initiation protocol (SIP) are augmented by exchanging data in the form of messages between terminals where the message content is defined by items of information expressed as uniform resource indicators (URIs). The receiving terminal can extract and process such information based on the semantic information in URI format.

Abstract: Statistics relating to the operation of physical, logical and software components of a contact center are generated by or on behalf of the components themselves rather than by a statistics engine based on event notifications from the components. In this way, the locally generated statistical information can be communicated as part of presence information for such components. By subscribing to a presence service for presence information for the components of interest, a statistics service can collect the locally produced statistics coming from each component. This provides a less centralised, more dynamic and adaptable way of managing statistical information in a contact center and provides in addition alternative methods of generating alarms and alerts.

Abstract: A system for receiving and decoding packet-based video signals, and method of operation and computer program product for such system are disclosed. The system receives a packet-based data stream encoding a video or television signal. The content is analysed in accordance with user-editable rules to find matches between conditions specified in the rules and corresponding actions to be taken. On detection of a match with the received content, a corresponding action is implemented by issuing a command to control a component which is under the control of said receiving and decoding system.

Abstract: A method of representing communications sessions in a virtual environment employs a presentation entity which is provided at a location in the environment where it will be visible and/or audible from the observation point of a user with whom a communications session has been requested. The presentation entity, which can represent a character or an object in the environment, for example, presents information to the user from within the environment. Also disclosed is an automated inhabitant which can operated to interact with other inhabitants of such an environment, obtaining information which is passed to and used by a contact center to queue contacts between such other inhabitants and contact center agents.

Abstract: A contact center has an interface with a virtual environment implemented in a computer system. The operation of the contact center includes receiving, from the virtual environment, spatial information relating to the spatial position within the virtual environment of an inhabitant of the virtual environment, and queuing a contact relating to that inhabitant in a queuing system of the contact center. Queuing decisions are based, at least in part, on the spatial information of the inhabitant in the virtual environment.

Abstract: Queuing to a mobile agents is accomplished by assigning each mobile agents to one of a plurality of location zones based on information received from a tracking system, and maintaining a plurality of location-specific queues of requests, each location-specific queue having one or more of the location zones associated therewith, and each location-specific queue being serviced only by those mobile agents whose assigned location zone matches a location zone of that location-specific queue. On receiving a location-based request for the services of a mobile agent, an optimum queue is selected for the request from among the plurality of location-specific queues based at least in part on a comparison between the request location and a location zone associated with the optimum queue, subject to a servicing constraint that a queue can only be selected as the optimum queue if at least one agent is currently servicing the queue.

Abstract: Access to a resource in a virtual environment is controllably granted by: a) receiving, from a user of the environment, a request for access to the resource; b) allocating the request to a queue of requests for the resource; c) determining a maximum permissible rate of access of users to the resource; d) providing a mechanism which is operable to grant users of the virtual environment with access to the resource at a rate no greater than the maximum permissible rate; e) allocating requests from the queue to the mechanism at a controlled allocation rate no greater than the maximum permissible rate; f) upon allocation of the request from the user to the mechanism, the mechanism granting the user with access to the resource within the virtual environment.

Abstract: Improved indexing of telephony sessions is achieved by: (a) receiving, during the recording of the telephony session or during a playback of the recording, an indication including parameters which identify a discrete segment of the recording as being of interest; and (b) storing, in an index associated with the recording of the session, an identifier which identifies that discrete segment of the recording.

Abstract: A system for monitoring a communication session in a contact center comprises a store of one or more defined speech events which may occur in a communication session for a contact being handled by an agent operating an agent station of the contact center, a speech event comprising at least one occurrence of at least one word in an audio stream of a communication session. A speech analyser is operable, during a communication session involving an agent station of the contact center, to detect the occurrence of one of the speech events. An event generator is responsive to detection of one of the speech events, for issuing an event notification during the communication session identifying the speech event to a reporting component of the contact center which has been configured to receive such event notifications.

Abstract: A method and apparatus of dynamically customizing a virtual world. A first user and a second user engage in a conversation with respect to a location in the virtual world. A speech processor monitors the conversation and detects that a sound made matches a key sound. The virtual world is altered to include a virtual world customization based on the key sound. The virtual world customization may also be based on user information associated with the user in the conversation that made the sound.

Abstract: An application for a client device which is arranged to receive and render selected video streams including content indicators relating to content to be rendered at a given location on a screen of the client device is disclosed. The application responds to user interaction with a rendered stream at rendered locations of the content to store an indicator of the user's interest in the content. The application then cooperates with an analyzer, arranged to analyse the user's interest in the content, and responds to the interest satisfying business logic by providing an indication of an interaction opportunity to the user of the client device during the rendering of the video stream.

Abstract: A method is provided for distributing packets to multiple addressees over a network. A template packet is generated by the usual routing stack for each addressee to include the routing information necessary to send a packet to that addressee. From this template packet a template is formed and stored for each addressee. The data stream to be transmitted is formed into a stream of data packet payloads. Rather than sending this stream through the routing stack for each addressee, the template for each addressee is applied to each data packet payload to thereby generate a plurality of packets from every data packet payload each addressed to a different addressee. This enables multicast-like efficiencies to be achieved without using multicast protocols which are frequently disabled or unavailable on networks, and avoids the processor-intensive alternative of sending each data packet through the IP stack once for each addressee.

Abstract: Participants who are in communication with a communications system can be placed in contact with one another by assigning each participant an agent profile allowing contact requests to be assigned to that participant in the capacity of an agent. One participant submits a contact request having details which can be matched against agent profiles, and that contact request is queue based on its content. A match is made between the contact request and a second participant by assigning the requests in the queue to participants whose agent profiles are matched with the queue. The second participant is thereby offered the opportunity to respond to the contact request in the capacity of an agent. It will be appreciated that rather than providing an unstructured environment (such as a free-for-all discussion forum), the method of the invention provides a way for a group of interested participants to respond to requests submitted by one another and to route such requests to a suitable and competent member of the group.