AUTOMATIC CLOUD CAPACITY ADJUSTMENT

• US 20160330131A1
• Filed: 05/05/2015
• Published: 11/10/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 05/05/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avaya Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Avaya Incorporated
• Inventors: Matula, Valentine C., Skiba, David, Erhart, George
• Granted Patent: US 10,873,538 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0897 by horizontal or vertical scaling of resources, or by migrating entities, e.g. virtual resources or entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5096 wherein the managed service relates to distributed or central networked applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/762 triggered by the network
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/83 based on usage prediction
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1004 Server selection for load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/61 taking into account QoS or priority requirements
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/40 related to call centers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/18 Information format or content conversion, e.g. adaptation by the network of the transmitted or received information for the purpose of wireless delivery to users or terminals

Abstract

Allocation of resources utilized by a contact center remains a balancing act between the burden of having resources that are generally underutilized and underperforming due to resource constraints. Many contact centers support a variety of communication types (e.g., audio-video, audio, text, email, etc.) associated with a respective communication channel. Communications may be dynamically incentivized or allocated from one communication channel having greater resource demands to another communication channel having lesser resource demands. Additionally, the resources of the contact center may be shared by customers of clients utilizing the contact center. As a result, one customer having a spike in demand may have their, and/or another customer'"'"'s, communications reallocated to the less demanding channel to manage contact center resource utilization.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a set of resources utilized in providing a service to a customer of the contact center during electronic communications between the customers and agents of the contact center and the set of resources having a monitored resource;

a first communications channel utilizing a first subset of the resources comprising at least the monitored resource;

a second communication channel utilizing a second subset of the resources;

a resource manager configured to monitor utilization of the monitored resource and upon determining the utilization of the monitored resource has reached a previously determined threshold, incentivize a portion of the electronic communications to utilize the second communications channel.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the previously determined threshold is adjusted based upon the resource manager receiving indicia of historical events known to impact the demand on the monitored resource for at least one set of customers associated with at least one client of the contact center.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the first communications channel and the second communications channel comprise a portion of the resources to facilitate communication on one of audio-video, audio, text chat, email, real-time communications, and non real-time communication.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the monitored resource comprises human agents.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the monitored resource comprises human agents having a particular skill.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the monitored resource comprises a communication resource providing communication connectivity between the customers and the agents of the contact center.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the resource manager is further configured to omit incentivization of the portion of electronic communications to utilize the second communications channel upon determining the monitored resource has not reached the previously determined threshold.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the resource manager incentivizes the portion of the electronic communications to utilize the second communication channel for communications associated with customers of a first client of the contact center and not for a second client of a contact center.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the monitored resource comprise is utilized to a greater degree by the customers of the second client of the contact center.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the resource manager is further configured to incentivize utilization of the second communication channel comprising disabling the first communications channel for the portion of the electronic communications.

11. A method, comprising:

monitoring utilization of a monitored resource of a set of resources of a contact center, the monitored resource being one resource of a set of resources utilized in providing a service to customers of the contact center during electronic communications between the customers and agents of the contact center;

determining the monitored resource is overutilized;

in response to the determination, incentivizing a portion of the electronic communications to utilize a second communications channel having a lesser demand on the monitored resource than a first communication channel.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein:

the customers of the contact center are associated with one of a first client and the second client; and

wherein the step of incentivizing further comprising incentivizing customer associated with a first client of the contact center to utilize the second communications channel.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein, the step of incentivizing further comprising incentivizing customers associated with both the first client and the customers associated with the second client to utilize the second communications channel.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the step of incentivization is provided to a first client of the contact center to incentivize the first client to have customers associated with the first client utilize the second communications channel.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the first communications channel utilizes the resources comprising human agents and the second communications channel comprises the resources comprising automated agents.

16. A non-transitory computer-readable medium with instructions thereon that when read by the computer cause the computer to perform:

monitoring utilization of a monitored resource of a set of resources of a contact center, the monitored resource being one resource of a set of resources utilized in providing a service to customers of the contact center during electronic communications between the customers and agents of the contact center;

determining the monitored resource is overutilized;

in response to the determination, incentivizing a portion of the electronic communications to utilize a second communications channel having a lesser demand on the monitored resource than a first communication channel.

17. The non-transitory medium of claim 16, wherein:

the customers of the contact center are associated with one of a first client and the second client; and

wherein the step of incentivizing further comprising incentivizing customer associated with a first client of the contact center to utilize the second communications channel.

18. The non-transitory medium of claim 17, wherein the instructions for incentivizing further comprise instructions for incentivizing customers associated with both the first client and the customers associated with the second client to utilize the second communications channel.

19. The non-transitory medium of claim 18, wherein the instructions for incentivization further comprise instructions to provide incentives to a first client of the contact center to incentivize the first client to have customers associated with the first client utilize the second communications channel.

20. The non-transitory medium of claim 16, wherein the first communications channel utilizes the resources comprising human agents and the second communications channel comprises the resources comprising automated agents.