Dynamic staffing of service centers to provide substantially zero-delay service
First Claim
1. A resource management method in a service system, comprising:
- for each of a number of customers currently in service;
classifying the customer in service according to an attribute known for the customer, and predicting, based on the attribute, a time when the customer in service will terminate service;
based on the predicted times of termination of the customers in service, estimating a number of the customers in service that will remain in service at a predetermined future time;
predicting a number of customers expected to arrive in the future that will remain in service at the predetermined future time; and
scheduling a number of agents sufficient to serve the predicted number of remaining customers in service and the predicted number of new customers at the predetermined future time.
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Abstract
A service system provides substantially zero delay service and dynamically adjusts resources required to provide the service. According to an embodiment of the present invention, future staffing requirements of the service system are predicted by determining, of a number of customers currently in service, how many will remain in service at a predetermined future time and how many customers to arrive to the system in the future can be expected to remain in service at the predetermined future time. For customers in service, customers may be classified according to one or more attributes known for the customer. The attributes may be helpful to identify a type of service being provided to the customer and determine a remaining service time for the customer. Thus, the customer attributes may provide for more accurate staffing predictions than in the prior art.
109 Citations
18 Claims
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1. A resource management method in a service system, comprising:
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for each of a number of customers currently in service;
classifying the customer in service according to an attribute known for the customer, and predicting, based on the attribute, a time when the customer in service will terminate service;
based on the predicted times of termination of the customers in service, estimating a number of the customers in service that will remain in service at a predetermined future time;
predicting a number of customers expected to arrive in the future that will remain in service at the predetermined future time; and
scheduling a number of agents sufficient to serve the predicted number of remaining customers in service and the predicted number of new customers at the predetermined future time. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A method of predicting resource requirement for a service system, comprising the steps of:
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predicting a number of customers currently in service that will remain in service at a predetermined time, predicting a number of future customers expected to arrive to the system before the predetermined time, for each future customer, estimating a holding time of the future customer, estimating a number of future customers that will remain in service at the predetermined time, scheduling a number of agents sufficient to provide service to the number of current customers and the number of future customers that will remain in service at the predetermined time. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
predicting a number of future customers to arrive for each of a variety of call types and estimating an aggregate number of future customers based on the predicted number of future customers of each call type.
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17. The method of claim 11, wherein the step of predicting a number of future customers includes a prediction based on historical arrival rates of calls to the service system.
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18. A resource management method, comprising:
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for each source of current demand;
classifying the source according to an attribute known for the source, and predicting, based on the attribute, a time when the source will cease its demand for service, based on the predicted times of cessation of the source of current demand, estimating a level of demand at a future time from the sources of demand expected to arrive in the future and remain at the future time, and identifying an amount of service resources that will be required that will be required to meet the local level of demand in the future.
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Specification