IPC분류정보
국가/구분 |
United States(US) Patent
등록
|
국제특허분류(IPC7판) |
|
출원번호 |
US-0835384
(2007-08-07)
|
등록번호 |
US-8745576
(2014-06-03)
|
발명자
/ 주소 |
- Broughton, Justin
- McPartlan, Kevin J.
- Rodgers, Elizabeth
- Rodgers, Robert S.
- Covdy, Ivan
- Ho, Roy
- Kowalski, Carl Raymond
- McCalmont, D. Thompson
- Stine, Art
|
출원인 / 주소 |
|
대리인 / 주소 |
|
인용정보 |
피인용 횟수 :
0 인용 특허 :
64 |
초록
▼
A tiered service model for a digital multimedia contact center assigns an entering contact to an initial service tier based on routing criteria for the contact and may escalate or de-escalate the contact to a different service tier if the routing criteria chances. The routing criteria is initially d
A tiered service model for a digital multimedia contact center assigns an entering contact to an initial service tier based on routing criteria for the contact and may escalate or de-escalate the contact to a different service tier if the routing criteria chances. The routing criteria is initially determined based on a media type associated with the contact. The digital multimedia contact center contains a set of media routers, each of which passes a contact of a particular media type to a workflow engine which executes workflows to direct the processing of contacts at service tiers that require agent activity. Agents are allocated to contacts by a dynamic automate contact distributor and the appropriate media router is used to route the contact to an agent. The workflow engine also executes workflows for agents to control the allocation of agents to contacts.
대표청구항
▼
1. A machine comprising: one or more processors and one or more memories, the memories being encoded with programming instructions collectively executable by the processors as:(a) a workflow engine operable for executing a workflow for a contact, where the workflow for the contact specifies processi
1. A machine comprising: one or more processors and one or more memories, the memories being encoded with programming instructions collectively executable by the processors as:(a) a workflow engine operable for executing a workflow for a contact, where the workflow for the contact specifies processing of the contact;(b) a set of media routers coupled to the workflow engine, each media router operable for sending a contact associated with a particular media type to the workflow engine and operable for routing the contact to an agent if an agent is allocated to the contact;(c) a dynamic automatic contact distributor coupled to the workflow engine and operable for allocating an agent to the contact when requested by the workflow and for returning an identifier for the allocated agent to the workflow engine;(d) an agent desktop coupled to the workflow engine and operable for receiving a contact routed by a media router and presenting the contact to the allocated agent for processing; and(e) a database coupled to the workflow engine for recording the processing of the contact by the allocated agent. 2. The machine of claim 1, wherein the particular media types are selected from the group consisting of analog voice, digital voice, video, email, fax, and Web. 3. The machine of claim 1, wherein the workflow engine is further operable for executing a workflow for an agent that controls the contacts allocated to the agent. 4. The machine of claim 1, wherein the workflow engine comprises: (a) a set of contact workflow subsystems, each contact workflow subsystem operable for starting a workflow for a contact associated with a particular media type and coupled to the media router associated with the particular media type;(b) an agent workflow subsystem coupled to the agent desktop and operable for starting a workflow for an agent logged into the agent desktop; and(c) workflow logic for executing the workflows and coupled to the workflow subsystems through a message passing layer. 5. The machine of claim 1, wherein the workflow engine is further operable for creating a directed graph that represents a workflow. 6. The machine of claim 5, wherein the workflow engine is operable for creating the directed graph from a template file defining prototype nodes representing steps and a configuration file for the workflow that defines a structure for the graph. 7. The machine of claim 1, wherein each of the media routers is coupled to an external system, each external system operable for receiving, from a communications channel, contacts having the particular media associated with the coupled media router, each external system being associated with a particular media type and further operable for routing a contact to the agent desktop when instructed by the coupled media router. 8. The machine of claim 7, wherein one of the media routers is an email escalator coupled to an email server, the email escalator operable for escalating an email contact from a deferred service tier to an immediate service tier based on pre-determined email escalation criteria. 9. The machine of claim 7, wherein one of the media routers is a collaboration router coupled to a web server, the collaboration router operable for escalating a web contact from a self-service tier to an immediate service tier in response to user input. 10. The machine of claim 7, wherein one of the media routers is a voice router coupled to a voice server, the voice router operable for de-escalating a voice contact from an immediate service tier to a self-service service in response to contact information and further operable for escalating a voice contact from the self-service tier to the immediate service tier in response to user input. 11. The machine of claim 7 further comprising a database unification layer coupled between the database and the workflow engine and further coupled to the external systems to integrate information maintained by the external systems and the database. 12. The machine of claim 11, wherein the workflow engine further comprises a database subsystem to interpret database accesses made by a workflow into accesses for the database unification layer. 13. The machine of claim 1, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to maintain an unordered list of waiting contacts and an unordered list of available agents to allocate a contact to an agent. 14. The machine of claim 13, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to allocate a new contact to an agent by evaluating the unordered list of available agents using a first expression of weighted attributes. 15. The machine of claim 14, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to place the new contact in the unordered list of waiting contacts if no agent in the unordered list of available agents satisfies the first expression. 16. The machine of claim 14, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to allocate a newly available agent to a contact by evaluating the unordered list of waiting contacts using a second expression of weighted attributes. 17. The machine of claim 16, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to place the newly available agent in the unordered list of available agents if no contact in the unordered list of waiting contacts satisfies the second expression. 18. A tangible computer-readable medium having computer-executable modules comprising: (a) a workflow engine to execute a workflow for a contact that specifies processing of the contact;(b) a plurality of media routers for coupling to the workflow engine to send a contact associated with a particular media type to the workflow engine and to route the contact to an agent if an agent is allocated to the contact; and(c) a dynamic automatic contact distributor for coupling to the workflow engine to allocate an agent to the contact when requested by the workflow and return an identifier for the allocated agent to the workflow engine. 19. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 18 wherein the computer-executable modules further comprise: a database for coupling to the workflow engine to record the processing of the contact by the allocated agent. 20. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 19 having further computer-executable modules comprising: a database unification layer operable to integrate information maintained by the database and a plurality of external systems for particular media types. 21. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 20 having further computer-executable modules comprising: a database subsystem to interpret database accesses made by a workflow into accesses for the database unification layer. 22. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 18 having further computer-executable modules for the workflow engine comprising: (a) a plurality of contact workflow subsystems to initiate a workflow for a contact associated with a particular media type and for coupling to the media router associated with the particular media type;(b) an agent workflow subsystem for coupling to an agent desktop and to start a workflow for an agent logged into the agent desktop; and(c) workflow logic to execute the workflows and for coupling to the workflow subsystems through a message passing layer. 23. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein each of the media routers is further operable for coupling to an external system that receives, from a communications channel, contacts having the particular media associated with the coupled media router, each external system being associated with a particular media type to route a contact to an agent desktop when instructed by the coupled media router. 24. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein one of the media routers is an email escalator for coupling to an email server to escalate an email contact from a deferred service tier to an immediate service tier based on pre-determined email escalation criteria. 25. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein one of the media routers is a collaboration router for coupling to a web server to escalate a web contact from a self-service service tier to an immediate service tier in response to user input. 26. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein one of the media routers is a voice router for coupling to a voice server to de-escalate a voice contact from an immediate service tier to a self-service service tier in response to contact information and to escalate a voice contact from the self-service tier to the immediate service tier in response to user input. 27. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to maintain an unordered list of waiting contacts and an unordered list of available agents to allocate a contact to an agent. 28. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to allocate a new contact to an agent by evaluating the unordered list of available agents using a first expression of weighted attributes. 29. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 28, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to place the new contact in the unordered list of waiting contacts if no agent in the unordered list of available agents satisfies the first expression. 30. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 28, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to allocate a newly available agent to a contact by evaluating the unordered list of waiting contacts using a second expression of weighted attributes. 31. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 30, wherein the dynamic automatic contact distributor is operable to place the newly available agent in the unordered list of available agents if no contact in the unordered list of waiting contacts satisfies the second expression. 32. A method of communicating between a media router and a contact workflow subsystem in a digital multimedia contact center comprising: (a) issuing, by the media router to the contact workflow subsystem, a startworkflow call including an identifier for the media router and attributes of a contact; and(b) returning, by the contact workflow subsystem to the media router, an identifier for a workflow for the contact in response to receiving the startworkflow call; and(c) issuing, by the contact workflow subsystem to the media router, an assigncontacttoagent call including an identifier for a workflow for a contact and an identifier for a workflow for an agent; and(d) returning, by the media router to the contact workflow subsystem, a response indicating if the contact was routed to the agent. 33. The method of claim 32, further comprising, before issuing the assigncontacttoagent call: (a) issuing, by an agent desktop to an agent workflow subsystem, a startworkflow call including attributes of the agent; and(b) returning, by the agent workflow subsystem to the agent desktop, an identifier for the workflow for the agent in response to receiving the startworkflow call. 34. The method of claim 33 further comprising: issuing, by the media router to the agent workflow subsystem, an injectevent call including the identifier for the workflow and an event to be injected into the workflow. 35. The method of claim 33 further comprising: issuing, by the media router to the agent workflow subsystem, a handlesagent call including an identifier for an agent workflow; and(b) returning, by the agent workflow subsystem to the media router, a response indicating if the agent workflow subsystem is handling the agent workflow. 36. A method of operating a multimedia contact center comprising: (a) receiving, by a media router, a contact of a media type particular to the media router;(b) sending, by the media router, the contact to a workflow subsystem particular to the media type of the contact;(c) initiating, by the workflow subsystem, a workflow for the contact;(d) based on the workflow for the contact, sending an agent request for the contact to an automatic contact distributor;(e) allocating, by the automatic contact distributor, an agent to the contact;(f) sending, by the automatic contact distributor, an identifier for the agent allocated to the contact to the workflow subsystem;(g) sending, by the workflow subsystem, the identifier for the agent to the media router; and(h) routing, by the media router, the contact to the agent allocated to the contact. 37. The method of claim 36 further comprising: (a) receiving, by an agent desktop, a login by the agent;(b) sending, by the agent desktop, agent information to an agent subsystem;(c) receiving, by the agent subsystem, the agent information;(d) initiating, by the agent desktop, a workflow for the agent;(e) based on the workflow for the agent, sending a contact request for the agent to the automatic contact distributor;(f) sending, by the automatic contact distributor, an identifier for the contact to the agent subsystem;(g) sending, by the agent subsystem, an indication to the workflow that the agent has been allocated to the contact; and(h) receiving, by the agent desktop, the contact from the media router, 38. A computerized server for a digital multimedia contact center comprising: (a) a processing unit;(b) a memory coupled to the processing unit through a bus;(c) a network interface coupled to the processing unit through the bus and further operable for coupling to a network;(d) a media router executed from the memory: (i) to cause the processing unit to receive a contact of a media type particular to the media router from the network interface,(ii) to send the contact to a workflow subsystem particular to the media type of the contact, and(iii) to route the contact to an agent identified by the workflow subsystem through the network interface;(e) the workflow subsystem executed from the memory: (i) to cause the processing unit to initiate a contact workflow for the contact received from the media router,(ii) to request an agent from an automatic contact distributor,(iii) to receive an identifier for an agent from the automatic contact distributor, and(iv) to send the identifier for the agent to the media router;(f) the contact workflow executed from the memory to cause the processing unit to send a request for an agent to handle the contact to the workflow subsystem; and(g) the automatic contact distributor to cause the processing unit to allocate an agent to the contact and to send the identifier for the agent allocated to the contact to the workflow subsystem. 39. The computerized server of claim 38, wherein the automatic contact distributor is further operable to cause the processing unit to receive a contact request from an agent subsystem and to send an identifier for the contact allocated to the agent to the agent subsystem, and further comprising: (a) the agent subsystem executed from the memory: (i) to cause the processing unit to receive agent information from the network interface,(ii) to initiate an agent workflow for the agent,(iii) to request a contact allocation from the automatic contact distributor,(iv) to receive the identifier for the contact form the automatic contact distributor and(v) to send an indication to the agent workflow that the agent has been allocated to the contact; and(b) the agent workflow executed from the memory to cause the processing unit to send the contact request to the agent subsystem. 40. The method of claim 37 wherein: (a) the workflow for the contact comprises: (i) classifying the contact; and(ii) determining a level of service to provide to the contact;(b) the workflow for the agent comprises: (i) determining if the agent is allowed to take a break; and(ii) if the agent is allowed to take the break, waiting for an off-break event for the agent. 41. The machine of claim 8, wherein: (a) the digital multimedia contact center comprises an email server configured to: (i) receive emails;(ii) classify the received emails;(iii) route the received emails into a plurality of predefined email queues based on the classification; and(b) the email escalator is operable for escalating email the deferred service tier to the immediate tier based on predetermined email escalation criteria by performing acts comprising: scanning the predefined email queues;(ii) comparing the email in the predefined mail queues with the predetermined email escalation criteria.
※ AI-Helper는 부적절한 답변을 할 수 있습니다.