SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CALUCLATING AND DISPLAYING ESTIMATED WAIT TIMES FOR TRANSACTION REQUEST BASED ON THE SKILL REQUIRED TO PROCESS THE TRANSACTION REQUEST

• US 20080300956A1
• Filed: 02/06/2008
• Published: 12/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Nishikawa, Akira, Yokote, Masato, Moriya, Tsutomu
• Granted Patent: US 8,209,210 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06311 Scheduling, planning or task assignment for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063112 Skill-based matching of a person or a group to a task
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06314 Calendaring for a resource
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06315 Needs-based resource requirements planning or analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1097 Task assignment
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/10 specially adapted for electronic funds transfer [EFT] systems; specially adapted for home banking systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes

Abstract

A reception management system for handling transactions includes a plurality of ACMs (Automated Contract/Consulting Terminals) for receiving procedure requests for predetermined transactions from customers, a plurality of ROTs (Remote Operation Terminals) to be employed by an operator for handling the procedure requests, a server for storing information for managing the operators for each transaction skill, and information about queues formed for each transaction skill upon a procedure request accepted from an ACM, and a queue monitoring terminal for monitoring the queues by receiving information from the SACD server.

Claims

1-4. -4. (canceled)

5. ) A management system for handling transactions, comprising:

a plurality of contract consulting machines, each for accepting procedure requests for transactions from customers;

a plurality of consulting operation terminals, each having an operator, for handling the procedure requests; and

a queue monitoring device for managing the operators on a transaction skill basis, and for monitoring queues of said contract consulting machines formed for transaction skills in response to procedure requests accepted from said contract consulting machines.

6. ) The management system for handling transactions according to claim 5,

wherein said queue monitoring device displays a list of contract consulting machines waiting to be assigned, each consulting machine having a priority level.

7. ) The management system for handling transactions according to claim 6,

wherein said queue monitoring device allows the queues to be changed by altering priority levels in said list of contract consulting machines.

8. ) A terminal, comprising:

a request accepting unit for accepting a reception request for a transaction from a customer;

an outputting unit for outputting the reception request and information about said transaction to a server;

a receiving unit for receiving, from said server, an estimated waiting time for a reception requested by the reception request, the estimated waiting time being determined from a reception status of at least one person having predetermined transaction skills; and

a display unit for displaying said estimated waiting time received by said receiving unit.

9. ) The terminal according to claim 8, further comprising a customer identification unit for identifying the customer making the reception request,

wherein said estimated waiting time is determined further based on information about the customer identified by said customer identification unit.

10-19. -19. (canceled)