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 strive to provide quality customer service in a timely manner as well as to maintain profitability to ensure continued business operations. Having optimal agents available to accept every work item a customer may have is expensive and, when such skills are unneeded, wasteful. Once a work item is received, an optimal agent or agents are identified; however, if the wait time is unacceptable, the work item may be passed to a suboptimal agent who is able to process a portion of the work item. Once the optimal agent becomes available, the work item is joined by the optimal agent or, alternatively, a second non-optimal agent is brought in to address a second portion of the work item.

Abstract: Co-browsing sessions provide a way for one party to see exactly what is being displayed on another party's computer or similar device. Co-browsing is particularly useful to an agent to help a customer solve a problem on a computer. Contact centers may determine portions of a co-browsing session that have been successful, capture the associated inputs, and have them play back to future customers. The agent may then be relieved from portions of the co-browsing interaction that are predictable and provide manual inputs having less predictability. The instructions for the automated co-browsing portions may be executed by the agent's device, the customer's device, and/or a server and may appear to the customer to be originating from the agent.

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: Many factors can affect the operation of a contact center, especially contact centers utilizing human agents. An agent's health may be utilized as a predictor of performance with respect to a particular task. Having sensors to gather health data are provided. The data may then be aggregated into a long-term health trend, which may be determined to indicate that a change in an agent's performance is likely and may allow the contact center to reallocate tasks and/or other resources to accommodate the change in performance to mitigate the effect of the change in the agent's health. Work tasks are then routed to agents accordingly.

Abstract: Contact centers strive to match the demands and preferences of their customers with the skills and abilities of the agents who process work items associated with the customers (e.g., contacts). However, the preferred agent may be unavailable, non-existent, backlogged or otherwise ineligible to accept the work item. An agent who is non-preferred but still qualified may be utilized to process the work item, such as an agent with adequate skills with respect to a particular attribute of the work item. Reports for the selection of the non-preferred but qualified agents are provided herein. A contact center may then utilize such reporting to identify underserved areas of their customer base.

Abstract: The delivery of goods to a customer comprises a substantial portion of human activity. To correct address errors and/or to more precisely locate delivery locations, systems are provided to assist human, human operated vehicle, or autonomous vehicles to locate a delivery point. Often the location of a delivery point is inaccurate or imprecise. GPS and other coordinate systems often fail or are imprecise without an unobstructed view of the sky. Even with coordinates available, the delivery point may be different from the coordinates or, more commonly, coordinates that are different from some standard point within a postal address associated with the coordinates. Providing a delivery system that utilizes a broadcasted identifier, such as an identifier associated with the order of the item, the delivery of the item may be made proximate to the source of the broadcasted identifier or further refined using the broadcasted identifier as a reference.

Abstract: Allocation of resources utilized by a contact center remains a balancing act between the burden of having resources that are generally underutilized and underperforming due to resource constraints. Many contact centers support a variety of communication types (e.g., audio-video, audio, text, email, etc.) associated with a respective communication channel. Communications may be dynamically incentivized or allocated from one communication channel having greater resource demands to another communication channel having lesser resource demands. Additionally, the resources of the contact center may be shared by customers of clients utilizing the contact center. As a result, one customer having a spike in demand may have their, and/or another customer's, communications reallocated to the less demanding channel to manage contact center resource utilization.

Abstract: Agents of a contact center often encounter conversational delays when speaking with a customer. These delays may be introduced by transmission delays, which include the distance between the agent and the customer, and processing delays, such as those introduced by systems and processes within a contact center. By providing an agent with information based on the amount of the delay, the agent can be prompted to overtalk the customer by a target amount. As a result, the customer may experience a more natural conversation with the agent. Furthermore, if a customer prefers more or less of a delay, such as based on their cultural norms, the delay may be modified to account for those cultural norms and better accommodate the conversational preferences of a diverse customer base.

Abstract: At least one social media channel includes a plurality of user messages, which are accessible via a communication network. At least some of the stored messages are retrieved from the at least one social media channel via the communication network, and a collection of frequently asked questions (FAQ) is generated or updated by analyzing the retrieved messages to form a plurality of topical issue clusters. Each topical issue cluster is associated with at least one topic parameter from among a plurality of topic parameters, each topic parameter relates to at least one of use, installation or maintenance of a product or service, and each topical issue cluster includes at least one issue identified by a community of users and at least one resolution of the issue identified by the community of users. The generated or updated FAQ is uploaded to a storage location accessible to the community of users.

Abstract: Even with the best efforts to design and deliver accurate systems with usable interfaces, customers often encounter difficulties in completing a task using an electronic device, such as completing a form on a web page, using a software application, or navigating an interface. This may be due to a programming error, inaccurate instructions, or an unusual situation not contemplated by the programmers or designers. Without interaction with a human agent, a cue may be provided to the user upon detection of an issue for completing the task. A co-browse operation may be automatically initiated to provide a cue selected in accord with the issue that thereby allows the user to complete the task.

Abstract: An agent may be qualified to perform a number of tasks, each requiring different levels of mental and/or physical ability. Prior to scheduling the agent to work a particular task, a scheduling process receives biometric data for the agent and, based on the biometric data and the demands of the various tasks, schedules the agent to work on one task versus another task. As a benefit, the agent's present abilities and/or impairments may be better utilized by scheduling the agent to perform tasks for which they are better suited and/or not scheduling the agent to perform tasks for which they are less well suited. Agents may be incentivized to provide the biometric data and/or maintain their ability to be able to perform certain tasks.

Abstract: In order to detect a specific codec sequence being used, a signal that is based on a codec sequence is analyzed. The signal is analyzed to determine if there is a pattern in the signal. A pattern of a codec sequence can be a unique pattern of frames, frequencies and/or frequency ranges that are generated based on a specific codec sequence. The pattern is compared to one or more previously stored patterns of codec sequences to see if there is a match. If there is a match, an event is generated. For example, if a known codec sequence that has a poor signal quality is determined to be in use for a voice call, the parties may be notified that the call is likely to be a low quality voice call.

Abstract: A contact center system can receive messages from social media sites or centers. The messages may be in a foreign language. The system can review messages by identifying content in the social media messages with negative/positive sentiment and then identify a seed term in the messages. A seed term can be a word in another language, different from the message body. The seed term is then used to find one or more other words, in the foreign language, that are correlated with the seed term. The identification of the found words in other messages can then be used to determine sentiment in the foreign language.

Abstract: A contact center system can receive messages from social media sites or centers. The system can review long messages by identifying content in the long message with negative sentiment. The content with negative sentiment is further analyzed to determine whether the identified content is actionable. If the identified content is actionable, the communication system can automatically routed the long message to an agent for response.

Abstract: The delivery of goods to a customer comprises a substantial portion of human activity. To correct address errors and/or to more precisely locate delivery locations, systems are provided to assist human, human operated vehicle, or autonomous vehicles to locate a delivery point. Often the location of a delivery point is inaccurate or imprecise. GPS and other coordinate systems often fail or are imprecise without an unobstructed view of the sky. Even with coordinates available, the delivery point may be different from the coordinates or, more commonly, coordinates that are different from some standard point within a postal address associated with the coordinates. Providing a delivery system that utilizes a broadcasted identifier, such as an identifier associated with the order of the item, the delivery of the item may be made proximate to the source of the broadcasted identifier or further refined using the broadcasted identifier as a reference.

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: Customer of a contact center often provide information related to their call that is use to route the call to an appropriate agent. As a result, a work item is created and routed to an agent selected, at least in part, as having a skill associated with the information provided. However, the information is often missing or wrong. As an agent processes the work item, it may become apparent that the work item was misrouted and if the true nature of the work item was known earlier, the work item would have been routed to a different agent. Provided with respect to certain embodiments, misrouted work items are identified and, if appropriate, rerouted to an appropriate agent for processing.

Abstract: Agents of a contact center process work items for clients of the contact center. Agents may, at some point, experience “burnout.” Detecting early signs, and automatically mitigating the burnout allows agents to maintain interest in their work and avoid expensive training of new agents and lost experience of burnt-out agents. Agents may be monitored for single events and/or a pattern of events indicating burnout. Automatic detection and response to the burnout provides agents indicating burnout to have more interesting, less difficult, or otherwise more favorable working conditions. Feedback monitoring determines if the mitigation efforts are successful. If not, and an agent is burnt out and likely to quit, measures may be automatically launched to prevent the burnt-out agent from “infecting” other agents.

Abstract: Agents of a contact center often encounter conversational delays when speaking with a customer. These delays may be introduced by transmission delays, which include the distance between the agent and the customer, and processing delays, such as those introduced by systems and processes within a contact center. By providing an agent with information based on the amount of the delay, the agent can be prompted to overtalk the customer by a target amount. As a result, the customer may experience a more natural conversation with the agent. Furthermore, if a customer prefers more or less of a delay, such as based on their cultural norms, the delay may be modified to account for those cultural norms and better accommodate the conversational preferences of a diverse customer base.