Call Center Input/Output Agent Utilization Arbitration Method and System
Disclosed herein are systems and methods that provide for maintenance of the status of availability of call-center agents through the use of local arbitration between processes and applications that may interact with more than one resource of telephone contacts between differing activities or work for these call-center agents. Detailed information on various example embodiments of the inventions are provided in the Detailed Description below, and the inventions are defined by the appended claims.
Latest INSIDESALES.COM, INC. Patents:
- Using machine learning to predict behavior based on local conditions
- Email optimization for predicted recipient behavior: determining a likelihood that a particular receiver-side behavior will occur
- Email optimization for predicted recipient behavior: suggesting changes that are more likely to cause a target behavior to occur
- Enhancement of machine learning techniques for an electronic message system
- Adaptive User Interfaces
This application is a divisional application of U.S. Utility patent application Ser. No. 13/468,030 filed May 9, 2012, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/484,201, filed May 9, 2011, both of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety.
BACKGROUNDPersons have been hired for many years to operate telephonic equipment in connection in a variety of business activities. These activities have included bill collection, the placement of orders from customers, the taking of surveys, providing customer assistance, registration of persons for classes and events, the providing of medical and legal assistance to the public, and many others. Such persons have traditionally worked from a call center, which is ordinarily a room containing equipment designed for these persons to speak with others such that they aren't required to travel to the center itself. Today, call centers are less and less confined to a single room or building, and those working within a call center are more frequently located at multiple sites and even sometimes across the world. Call centers sometimes even now include locations within employee residences where network access is available.
Those working within call centers are ordinarily agents for a business, sometimes referred to as call service agents, or hereinafter just agents. Traditionally all that has been required for these agents to perform their work has been a telephone and some form of informational carriage such as book of membership or a pad of paper. However, with the advance and availability of computer technology, the work of these agents as been made more efficient.
The computer setup for a call center agent has varied widely, but the discussion will now reference one kind of exemplary setup as an introduction for the inventions presented herein. Now referring to
The exemplary setup also includes computer interface equipment 106, by which agent 101 may interact with a computer system. That system could include a monitor, a keyboard, a printer, or any other means of providing to or receiving from the agent data in conjunction with calls involving the agent. For example, agent 101 might be engaged in the placing of calls for a survey. Displayed on equipment 106 might be the telephone number being called and the name of the person assigned thereto. If there is a directory available including further information, equipment 106 might provide further information such as for a particular person being contacted, their name, their age, their sex, an account number, a history of interaction, etc. Thus, equipment 106 may facilitate the interaction with a remote person being called such that that person's information need not be requested during the call itself.
Displayed on equipment 106 might also be information of an incoming caller. This display might be called up by the agent 101 upon asking for identification of a caller, or it might be linked to equipment that pulls up such caller information automatically upon receipt of an identity associated with an incoming call, such as a telephone number. In the setup of
Thus, setups such as the one shown in
Disclosed herein are systems and methods that provide for maintenance of the status of availability of call-center agents through the use of local arbitration between processes and applications that may interact with more than one resource of telephone contacts between differing activities or work for these call-center agents. Detailed information on various example embodiments of the inventions are provided in the Detailed Description below, and the inventions are defined by the appended claims.
Reference will now be made in detail to particular implementations of the various inventions described herein in their various aspects, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings and in the detailed description below.
DETAILED DESCRIPTIONNow turning to
However, the system of
Incoming and outgoing calls are fairly straightforward in a system without an Automated Call Manager, such as that of
In a system such as that shown in
Thus, in a preferred method, the agent begins his efforts in the call center by accessing a server 109 at a pre-defined URL, which may be specific to the ACM to be accessed. In response, the server 109 may deliver instructions executable on the agent's computer 110, which are then executed, for example, within the agent's browser. In the course of that execution, the user is presented an entry for his identity, and upon validating him he may begin to interact with the call center platform. That interaction may include the connection of phone 102 to server 103, allowing for telephone conversations both incoming or outgoing.
Upon validation, the agent may be presented with information upon interface 106 disclosing to him the information of an incoming contact. Thus, if phone 102 is ringing or otherwise notifying of an incoming call, information concerning the identity of the individual on the other side of the call, the purpose of the call, the history and reputation of the caller, and many other informational items may be presented to the agent specific to the caller through software delivered from server 109.
Similarly, the agent may be directed by the ACM and/or the call center software to engage in outgoing contact activity. The software may present to the agent 106 a list of contacts to be called, information about the persons to be called, potentially prioritized for the efficiency of the agent. The agent may interact with software operating upon interface 106 and computer 110, retrieving new activities to perform from ACM, which activities may be informed by the contact database 105. Upon the entry of a command to interface 106, a connection to a contact may be initiated upon sever 103 and phone 102.
As calls are initiated and terminated to agent 101 and outside persons, ACM 108 may be notified from server 103. As such notifications are received, ACM 108 may maintain state information as to the state of agents 101, that is idle, on a call, not logged in, engaged in a break, etc. Thus, when agent 101 completes a call with an outside party, he may be prompted upon display 106 for the outcome of the conversation, and his display updated with a new contact to engage.
Although it may be desired to focus agents upon either incoming or outgoing calls, in some situations it may be desired to engage agents in both. In one example, it may be that the incoming calls are sporadic, leaving some agents idle if activities other than the receipt of incoming calls are not allowed. Thus, an ACM could assign incoming calls to those agents that aren't presently engaged in an outgoing call. This permits a more effective utilization of agent personnel. To enable such utilization of agent personnel, handling both incoming and outgoing calls, agent state may be maintained at the ACM such that polling or test-forwarding of incoming calls to agent computers is not required.
However, a system employing one ACM connected to one contact database might still idle agents during times when there is little outgoing call work. An agent might be exposed only to a single customer contact database, bounding the work that he can do. A more sophisticated call center setup might be fashioned such as the one of
Continuing further in the example of
However, in the handling of incoming contacts, the setup of
A more graceful procedure of the maintenance of agent status is now presented herein. Now turning to
Within the setup of
Upon initialization of agent computer 110, an arbitrator program may be loaded and run. Under this mode of initialization, the arbitrator program is pre-installed to the agent computer. However this need not be the case, as the arbitrator program might be downloaded at runtime from, for example, server 109. This could be through manual action by an agent, or by an automatic execution when a first window 111 is called up. It is preferred, however, that the arbitrator program not be a sub-process of any process operating through windows 111, so that if one of those window process terminates the arbitrator need not be restarted.
As windows 111 and their associated processes 112 are started, each process tests for the presence of an arbitrator 113. If one is present, a window process may communicate with arbitrator 113, both informing the arbitrator of status relative to its own window and querying status relative to others as will become clear from the discussion below. In one example, the arbitrator communicates with window processes through socket-based communication available on many window-based platforms. Further in that example, window processes 112 are generated underneath a web browser having an interpreter incorporated therein. Thus, each window 111 can be an independent web-browser window, each accessing a server 109 to initiate call center operations. In response to such accessing, server 109 can return an executable object, for example in Javascript, that initiates a window-process 112. That window-process then generates an interface for the agent within the browser window, coordinating activities with other processes running under other browser windows, tabs or other separations. Again, the execution of the object obtained from server 109 could test for the presence of an executing arbitrator, and start up one if one is not detected. Alternatively, the executing server object could simply recognize that an arbitrator is not available, and interact directly with any connected ACMs or remote objects as needed relying upon agent state tracking elsewhere.
In the present example, communication between window processes 112 and the arbitrator 113 is polled, that is initiated by the window processes both to inform the arbitrator of state changes and to request state maintained there. This may provide for simplified programming and operation, however if desired a setup could be configured to push communication from the arbitrator to the window processes.
In run-time operation, window processes 112 may keep windows 111 updated for the benefit of the local agent. For example, if an agent is operating two windows 111a and 111b as shown, each window would recognize and show his status. Thus, if he was on a call associated with one of the windows, the other window could recognize and show that a call was taking place. If the agent was taking a break or was otherwise unavailable, each of the windows could recognize that fact by regularly polling the arbitrator. ACMs interacting with an agent's computer 110 would interact with both window processes and any operating arbitrator, as follows.
At various times, windows 111 would be updated to reflect the current call-center activity. This might involve the updating of contacts shown and the activities involving those contacts, for example. As in a system without an arbitrator, window processes 112 would communicate directly with ACMs using ordinary network communications, particularly for informational displays that are not directly affected by the local agent's status.
However, the agent can benefit from the arbitrator in several ways. First, the agent's state with respect to one window can be propagated to the others. For example, the agent may initiate a telephone call to a contact displayed in window 111a, and may so command through interaction with that window and interface 106. Associated application 112a would receive the user's command, and provide necessary ACM interaction. To keep other applications 112 informed of this activity, application 112a sends a packet to arbitrator 113 notifying that a call is in progress. When the call is completed, the ACM involved notifies associated window process 112a, which then sends another packet to arbitrator 113 to recognize the agent's new state as not on a call for the benefit of other processes 112. As commands are received by window processes 112 to initiate new calls, queries can be made to arbitrator 113 to ensure that such commands are not accidental.
For incoming calls, each window process 112 receives notification from an associated ACM. Upon notification of an incoming call, a window process can query arbitrator 113 as to the status of the agent. If that status is on a call, the window process can so inform the ACM and the incoming call directed to another agent. Otherwise, the call can be routed to the local agent for handling. In another alternative, an ACM could communicate with an arbitrator 113 directly if provision is so made.
Now it is to be understood that the setup of
The status of an agent can include more than merely whether or not he is presently on a call, but can also include other status such as whether that call is inbound or outbound, whether he is available or taking a break, informational items such as the agent's telephone number or station, and rules regarding the agent's behavior or interaction, such as whether the agent is allowed to be in certain groups.
A system employing multiple agents can also utilize an automated call distribution system that evaluates the suitability of the agents presently available, assigning incoming calls to those best suited to handle them. For incoming calls, a new URL may be created for a contact by the distribution system or another component, which may then be forwarded to the agent through an available window process giving him the information needed to handle the call.
A specific user interface will now be described utilizing techniques and systems described above. Now turning to
When an agent has logged in, he is presented with a display as shown in
Upon selection of ACMs, the agent is presented with a screen as shown in
Upon changing his status to available, the agent then sees a window as shown in
Upon receipt of an inbound call, the agent then sees a window as shown in
Now turning to
In the system producing this exemplary interface, agent status is ordinarily set to “not available” to allow for the finishing of the handling of the call, for example entering notes and other information into the contact database. After an agent has finished an inbound call, he sees a window as shown in
Now it may be that the agent wishes to notify that he is “not available”, and may so do using the pull-down list in either the interaction window or in the summary area. Upon doing so, he sees a window as shown in
The interface of
Now although certain systems, products, components, functions and methods have been described above in detail, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that these functions and methods are adaptable to other systems and products that utilize call-center equipment. Likewise, although the described functions have been described through the use of block diagrams, flowcharts, software and hardware descriptions, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that most of the functions described herein may be implemented in software or hardware. The exact configurations described herein need not be adhered to, but rather the diagrams and architectures described herein may be varied according to the skill of one of ordinary skill in the art. Therefore, the inventions disclosed herein are to be fully embraced within the scope as defined in the claims. It is furthermore understood that the summary description and the abstract are provided merely for indexing and searching purposes, and do not limit the inventions presented herein in any way.
Claims
1. A method of utilizing an arbitrator in a system that includes a terminal located on a network, the terminal capable of executing processes having a individual presentation on a display, said method comprising:
- recognizing the identity of a call agent;
- executing processes that establish links of network communication between a recognized agent at an agent terminal and one of a plurality of automated call managers, each link of communication providing a relationship between the recognized agent and one of the plurality of automated call managers for assignment of communications with distant parties over a telephone set positioned for use by the recognized agent located at the agent terminal and utilizing the individual display associated with a process;
- receiving assignments of telephone calls for a recognized agent from linked automated call managers;
- maintaining the state of the recognized agent located at the agent terminal as to his availability for assignment of a telephone call;
- running an arbitrator, and through the arbitrator, notifying processes operating on the network and having established relationships between the linked automated call managers and the recognized agent of his availability and unavailability, as assignment of a telephone calls are received and completed for that recognized agent; and
- transferring items of activity-specific information onto the individual presentation associated with a process receiving an assignment from an automated call manager, said transferring optionally including transfer of the identity of a distant party.
2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:
- through the arbitrator, notifying linked automated call managers of the availability of the recognized agent at the terminal, as assignments of telephone calls are received or completed for that recognized agent.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein said maintaining the state of the recognized agent includes both automatic state changes caused by system events and manual state changes caused by commanded events.
Type: Application
Filed: Jul 29, 2015
Publication Date: Apr 14, 2016
Applicant: INSIDESALES.COM, INC. (Provo, UT)
Inventors: David Elkington (Springville, UT), Thomas Purdy (Springville, UT), Daniel E. Telschow (Spanish Fork, UT)
Application Number: 14/813,047