Did You Know...
...that after Parker Brothers executives turned down the game of Monopoly because it had "52 fundamental errors" (including taking too long to play), a copy of the game wound up in the home of the company president who stayed up until 1 a.m. to finish playing it? He was so impressed by the game that the next day he wrote to inventor Charles Darrow and offered to buy it!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8175254 | Prediction of threshold exceptions based on real time operating information A contact center includes a real time threshold prediction module that determines that a selected performance measure will, during a future time interval, likely cross a selected threshold and, in response, performs at least one of the following operations: (i) dete... | 05/08/2012 |
| 7426267 | Declarative ACD routing with service level optimization A method including determining a current rate of satisfying a service level agreement constraint, wherein the service level agreement constraint is associated to selected ones of each incoming contact within a contact center, comparing the current rate to a target r... | 09/16/2008 |
| 7346151 | Method and apparatus for validating agreement between textual and spoken representations of words A method and apparatus are disclosed for validating agreement between textual and spoken representations of words. A voice input verification process monitors a conversation between an agent and a caller to validate the textual entry of the caller's spoken responses... | 03/18/2008 |
| 7343010 | System and method for integrated resource scheduling and task allocation According to the invention, a system and method for integrating call routing and workforce management functions in contact centers, enabling them to work together without opposing the influence of one against that of the other, is disclosed. In an embodiment of the ... | 03/11/2008 |
| 7321657 | Dynamic force management system Systems and methods for dynamic allocation of agents for a network, which in one embodiment among many, can be broadly summarized by a representative method of receiving network data for a given time interval, where the network data is related to calls between users... | 01/22/2008 |
| 7313232 | Monitoring for operator services The present invention provides for efficient monitoring of operator services calls. A packet gateway is provided in association with a telephony switch, such that circuit-switched connections through a switching fabric of the telephony switch are supported by the pa... | 12/25/2007 |
| 7257217 | Call features for automatic call distribution system Call features for an Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) system implemented within a packet-based telephone environment are disclosed. Within a packet-based network, data messages are transferred between the ACD system and customer telephone stations while the custome... | 08/14/2007 |
| 7254546 | System and method for complex schedule generation A system and method for generating a schedule for multiple employees in a complex environment. In one embodiment, the method includes generating a schedule for multiple employees with varying skill sets for a time period, wherein the plurality of employees have vary... | 08/07/2007 |
| 7233980 | System and method for dynamic queuing in an automatic call distributor A method and system for dynamic queuing utilizes a SIP messaging structure within a call center's architecture for interacting with a caller. The method and system can be used for ACD services developed for IP telephony using SIP as the signaling protocol. A SIP sub... | 06/19/2007 |
| 7230946 | Remote agent access method to a VoIP contact center where high QoS is not supported A system and method of providing remote agent access to a voice over internet protocol contact center by allowing an agent to login to the contact center with a data circuit through a remote data access device such as a VPN device are disclosed. The system and metho... | 06/12/2007 |
| 7203655 | Method and system for providing performance statistics to agents A method and a system for providing and presenting performance statistics to an agent. A further embodiment of the present invention provides performance comparison reporting between an agent and an agent data group and/or a management unit. This is achieved by coll... | 04/10/2007 |
| 7155399 | System and method for complex schedule generation A system and method for generating a schedule for multiple employees in a complex environment. In one embodiment, the method includes generating a schedule for multiple employees with varying skill sets for a time period, wherein the plurality of employees have vary... | 12/26/2006 |
| 7127059 | System and method for integrated resource scheduling, task allocation and agent work management According to the invention, a system and method for integrating agent scripting, call routing and workforce management functions in contact centers, enabling them to work together without opposing the influence of the workforce management system against those of the... | 10/24/2006 |
| 7103562 | System and method for generating forecasts and analysis of contact center behavior for planning purposes A method of predicting expected performance of a processing center system is provided. The method includes receiving performance information from a performance monitoring system associated with the processing center system. A computer model of the processing center ... | 09/05/2006 |
| 7085728 | Method for forecasting and managing multimedia contracts Multimedia contacts are forecasted, propagated, and managed for each period in a range. The number of contacts received in a period are forecasted using historical methods and are propagated to succeeding periods based on the business goals, such as how quickly a ce... | 08/01/2006 |
| 7058589 | Method and system for employee work scheduling A method is provided for assigning a group of agents to a plurality of available schedules, including determining preferences for a plurality of factors for each agent. Each agent provides an order of importance for the plurality of factors. For each factor, a diffe... | 06/06/2006 |
| 7046789 | TracM-task and resource automation for call center management A relationship call center management system and method is used in a call center by a call center manager or supervisor. The relationship management system and method permits call center resources to be grouped into relationship profiles. A relationship key field co... | 05/16/2006 |
| 6970554 | System and method for observing calls to a call center An observation system for observation calls to a call center includes an automatic call director (ACD) unit, an interactive voice response (IVR) unit, and a recorder unit. The ACD receives incoming calls to the call center and also queues and switches the calls to v... | 11/29/2005 |
| 6959078 | Apparatus and method for monitoring and adapting to environmental factors within a contact center A quality monitoring system is implemented within a communications contact center. All electronic data associated with incoming and outgoing communications is monitored and can selectively be recorded. The recording of the communications data is controlled by a set ... | 10/25/2005 |
| 6931103 | Failover mechanisms for remote networked phones A method of providing failover service to network phones. A failure of communication between a network phone and a primary call manager is identified. Communication is established with a default network device and directory information is provided to the default net... | 08/16/2005 |
| 6882723 | Apparatus and method for quantifying an automation benefit of an automated response system An automation benefit of an automated call processing center is quantified as saved agent-time by gathering event-sequence data for a plurality of calls received by the call processing center; calculating an amount of time a task would take if performed by an agent ... | 04/19/2005 |
| 6868153 | Customer touch-point scoring system A method and apparatus are provided for measuring a call handling efficiency of a call center. The method includes the steps of measuring a touch-point indicia for a call and adding the measured indicia to a touch point history of the call. ... | 03/15/2005 |
| 6847715 | Method and system for informing callers within a queue A system for implementing a technique for operatively integrating an automatic call distributor and an interactive voice response unit is disclosed. Upon receiving and storing an interaction input from a caller seeking information, the automatic call distributor det... | 01/25/2005 |
| 6823062 | Arrangement for predicting call-center status in a network call-routing system A router routes calls to a network of call centers based on estimated call in-queue wait times (EWTs). The router periodically polls all call centers for the EWT and average advance time (AAT) of each queue, and increments each received EWT by a product of the AAT a... | 11/23/2004 |
| 6760414 | Personal computer banking system and method A personal computer banking system and method in which a personal computer is connected by a network service provider directly to a host computer system of a bank such that customer service requests can be processed automatically without need for intervention by cus... | 07/06/2004 |
| 6700971 | Arrangement for using dynamic metrics to monitor contact center performance An arrangement (100) for monitoring contact-center (104-108) performance automates the monitoring process by using a database schema (250-270) that records (200-224) the contact center to be monitored, its skills, the locations where the skills are locate... | 03/02/2004 |
| 6694009 | Estimation of a work item's wait-time from the present stages of processing of preceding work items To improve the prediction of wait times of calls (23) waiting to be processed, or to improve the prediction of completion times of calls that are presently being processed, in low-volume call centers (10) or splits/skills (21), additional data points are ... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6490350 | Monitoring system for telephony resources in a call center An automated monitoring system monitors telephone resources in a call center. The call center may include agent stations at which agents are stationed to handle calls. A monitoring server monitors calling activity by the agents to maintain state informati... | 12/03/2002 |
| 5867572 | Customer queuing arrangement A customer queuing system receives telephone calls on one port of a switching system for handling by servers attached to output ports of the switching system. The queuing system estimates the waiting time which may be expected by each customer arriving at... | 02/02/1999 |
| 5854832 | Monitoring system and method used in automatic call distributor for timing incoming telephone calls A monitoring system (200) and method for an automatic call distributor (100) which selectively interconnects an incoming telephone call from a caller and one of a plurality of agents are provided. The monitoring system (200) detects a length of time the a... | 12/29/1998 |
| 5790635 | System and method for automatic monitoring of active telephone calls in a telephonic switch A monitoring system and method for substantially automatically monitoring active incoming telephone calls being routed through a telephone switch, such as an automatic call distributor (ACD). The monitoring system includes a timing circuit which measures ... | 08/04/1998 |
| 5740233 | System and method for statistical diagnosis of the operation of an automated telephone system There is disclosed a system and method for monitoring the performance of a multi-line automated telephone system and detecting complete or intermittent faults on the incoming phone lines and in interactive applications accessed by the automated telephone ... | 04/14/1998 |
| 5327490 | System and method for controlling call placement rate for telephone communication systems A system and method is disclosed for controlling call placement rates for telephone systems providing call pacing system in which outbound calls are automatically paced so that as attendants become available a valid call is completed to be handled by the ... | 07/05/1994 |
| 5247569 | System and method for controlling outbound and inbound calls in a telephone communication system There is disclosed an inbound/outbound call handling system and method in which outbound calls are automatically paced so that as attendants become available a valid call is completed to be handled by the available attendant. As an inbound call is receive... | 09/21/1993 |
| 5214688 | Method and apparatus for dynamic and interdependent processing of inbound calls and outbound calls A method for optimizing the pacing and processing of inbound calls and outbound calls. Statistics are generated concerning inbound calls and outbound calls, and concerning the performance of each agent for inbound calls and outbound calls. Separate statis... | 05/25/1993 |
| 5185780 | Method for predicting agent requirements in a force management system A method for predicting a number of agents required to provide a given service level in a force management system is described. The force management system has the capability to generate call handling performance data including average call arrival rate a... | 02/09/1993 |
| 4694483 | Computerized system for routing incoming telephone calls to a plurality of agent positions A telephone call routing system for routing incoming telephone calls assigns each such incoming call to a selected one or more of a plurality of agent display modules. The agent display module has a visual output indicating which of a plurality of telepho... | 09/15/1987 |
