Pacing in Knowledge Worker Engagement

• US 20100266116A1
• Filed: 02/23/2010
• Published: 10/21/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/21/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Genesys Cloud Services Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Incorporated (Genesys Cloud Services Incorporated)
• Inventors: Reiman, Martin Ira, Ristock, Herbert, Mezhibovsky, Vladimir, Stolyar, Aleksandr, Korolev, Nikolay
• Granted Patent: US 9,955,012 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/266.10
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/14 Delay circuits; Timers
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42042 Notifying the called party of information on the calling party details within substation equipment H04M1/57, signalling details H04Q3/72
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42365 Presence services providing information on the willingness to communicate or the ability to communicate in terms of media capability or network connectivity
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/523 with call distribution or queueing

Abstract

A method for mapping ready agents to incoming transactions has steps for (a) placing incoming transactions in a first queue managed by software executing from a machine-readable medium on a computerized appliance; (b) issuing a determined number of invitations in a period of time to agents known to be available to consider an invitation to interact with an incoming transaction; (c) placing identification of ready agents, who have accepted an invitation to interact, in a second queue managed by the software; (d) mapping transactions from the first queue to agents from the second queue; (e) monitoring changes in state of both the first and the second queues in the time period; and (f) adjusting determined number of invitations in step (b) in a manner to drive a chosen system performance metric toward a desired target value.

Claims

1. A method for mapping ready agents to incoming transactions, comprising the steps of:

(a) placing incoming transactions in a first queue managed by software executing from a machine-readable medium on a computerized appliance;

(b) issuing a determined number of invitations in a period of time to agents known to be available to consider an invitation to interact with an incoming transaction;

(c) placing identification of ready agents, who have accepted an invitation to interact, in a second queue managed by the software;

(d) mapping transactions from the first queue to agents from the second queue;

(e) monitoring changes in state of both the first and the second queues in the time period; and

(f) adjusting determined number of invitations in step (b) in a manner to drive a chosen system performance metric toward a desired target value.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the performance metric is the difference between the number of agents in the second queue and the number of transactions in the first queue, and the desired value is zero.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein an algorithm determines the number of invitations to issue, and the algorithm incorporates a known average rate of transactions received per time period.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein the algorithm determines the number of invitation to issue, and operates without a priori knowledge of average call arrival rate.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein the performance metric is a number of transactions abandoned in the time period, and the algorithm determines the number of invitations to issue to maintain the average rate of transactions abandoned at a preselected value.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the period of time is a fixed, repeating period.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the period of time is determined by occurrence of one or more system events.

8. A system for mapping ready agents to incoming transactions, comprising:

a population of agents available to receive an invitation to interact with an incoming transaction;

a first queue provided by software executing from a machine-readable medium on a computerized appliance, the first queue managing incoming transactions to be matched to agents; and

a second queue provided by the software, the second queue managing identities of ready agents, who have accepted an invitation to interact;

wherein the software maps transactions from the first queue to agents from the second queue, monitors changes in state of both the first and the second queues in a period of time, and determines a number of invitations to issue in the period of time in a manner to drive a chosen system performance metric toward a desired target value.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the performance metric is the difference between the number of agents in the second queue and the number of transactions in the first queue, and the desired value is zero.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein an algorithm determines the number of invitations to issue, and the algorithm incorporates a known number of transactions received in the time period.

11. The system of claim 9 wherein the algorithm determines the number of invitation to issue, and operates without knowledge of the average rate of transactions received per time slot.

12. The system of claim 9 wherein the performance metric is the average rate of transactions abandoned per time slot, and the algorithm determines the number of invitations to issue to maintain the average rate of transactions abandoned at a preselected value.

13. The system of claim 8 wherein the period of time is a fixed, repeating period.

14. The system of claim 8 wherein the period of time is determined by occurrence of one or more system events.