Implementing a contact center using open standards and non-proprietary components

• US 8,259,923 B2
• Filed: 02/28/2007
• Issued: 09/04/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Mandalia, Baiju D., Moore, Victor S., Nusbickel, Wendi L.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Khai N
• Application Number:
  US11/680,304
• Publication Number:
  US 20080219429A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,015 Days
• Field of Search: 379/265.02, 379/265.03, 379/265.05, 379/265.11, 379/265.12, 379/265.01, 379/265.04, 379/265.06, 379/265.07, 379/265.08, 379/265.09, 379/265.13, 379/265.14, 379/266.01, 379/266.02, 379/266.03, 379/266.04, 379/266.05, 379/266.06, 379/266.07, 379/266.08, 379/266.09, 379/266.1, 709/203
• US Class Current: 379/265.02
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5175 Call or contact centers supervision arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5233 Operator skill based call distribution
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/006 Networks other than PSTN/ISDN providing telephone service, e.g. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) , including next generation networks with a packet-switched transport layer H04L65/00 takes precedence; aspects not specific to the type of network H04M3/00; special services in those networks H04M3/42

Abstract

The present invention discloses an open contact center formed from multiple contact center components that conform to open standards and that intercommunicate utilizing open standards. The open contact center can provide automated interactive communications with callers, can provide queue management for callers waiting to communicate with live agents, can provide skills based routing for assigning live agents to callers based upon skills of the live agents and skills needed by the callers, and can provide tooling for provisioning and monitoring the live agents. In one configuration, the contact center components can execute within a middleware solution, such as WEBSPHERE, that has IP Multimedia Subsystem capability. Additionally, the contact center components can be implemented as service oriented architecture (SOA) components that communicate over an enterprise service bus (ESB).

Claims

1. An open contact center comprising:

a plurality of contact center components conforming to open standard, wherein said contact center components intercommunicate with each other utilizing open standards, said contact center components together forming an open contact center;

said open contact center providing automated interactive communications with callers, providing queue management for callers waiting to communicate with live agents, providing skills based routing for assigning live agents to callers based upon skills of the live agents and skills needed by the callers, and providing tooling for provisioning and monitoring the live agents;

each of the contact center components are service oriented architecture (SOA) components, wherein the contact center components intercommunicate via an enterprise service bus (ESB), and wherein each of the contact center components execute independent of other ones of the contact center components within a middleware solution having Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) capabilities;

the contact center components include an agent desktop component, an agent authentication component, an agent monitoring component, an agent transfer component, an application integration component, a call queuing component, a collaboration integration component, a load balancing component, a reporting component, a skills based routing component, and a supervisor conferencing component; and

a set of vendor specific plug-ins each configured to communicate with a proprietary contact center component to permit the open contact center to utilize capabilities provided by the proprietary contact center component;

the contact center is configured to simultaneously utilize a plurality of different vendor specific plug-ins, wherein the different vendor specific plug-ins correspond to proprietary contact center components provided by different vendors.

2. The open contact center of claim 1, wherein said contact center components include at least seven components selected from a set of components consisting of an agent desktop component, an agent authentication component, an agent monitoring component, an agent transfer component, an application integration component, a call queuing component, a collaboration integration component, a load balancing component, a reporting component, a skills based routing component, and a supervisor conferencing component.

3. The open contact center of claim 1, wherein said contact center components include at least nine components selected from a set of components consisting of an agent desktop component, an agent authentication component, an agent monitoring component, an agent transfer component, an application integration component, a call queuing component a collaboration integration component, a load balancing component, a reporting component, a skills based routing component, and a supervisor conferencing component.

4. The open contact center of claim 1, wherein said contact center components include at least five components selected from a set of components consisting of an agent desktop component, an agent authentication component, an agent monitoring component, an agent transfer component, an application integration component, a call queuing component, a collaboration integration component, a load balancing component, a reporting component, a skills based routing component, and a supervisor conferencing component.

5. The open contact center of claim 1, further comprising:

an agent desktop comprising an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) browser and a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based phone each based upon open standards, wherein the agent desktop is configured to operate as an interface between the live agent and the open contact center.

6. The open contact center of claim 1, further comprising:

a composite services model server configured to maintain session and model information for communications between the live agents and the callers.

7. A contact center comprising:

an agent desktop comprising an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) browser and a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone each based upon open standards, wherein the agent desktop is configured to permit an agent to handle call center communications;

a portal server configured to provide an agent portal, through which an agent utilizing the agent desktop communicates, said agent portal including a plurality of agent portlets within which contact center information is presented;

an application server executing contact center applications configured to receive input for the contact center applications from the agent portlets and to present contact center output through the agent portlets;

a presence server configured to determine agent availability and configured to provide the application server with agent specific information including IP addresses for an agent'"'"'s Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) browser and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone as well as agent expertise information, wherein the portal server, the application server and the presence server conform to open standards; and

a set of application server plug-ins, each configured to communicate with at least one of a third party component and a proprietary contact center component to permit the contact center to utilize capabilities provided by the component associated with the plug-in, wherein legacy proprietary equipment is able to interoperate using vendor specific plug-ins with the open standards based equipment of the contact center to permit graceful migration from a legacy contact center equipment to the standards based contact center, and wherein value added software by third parties is able to extend functionality of the contact center through use of plug-ins.

8. The contact center of claim 7, wherein the presence server, the application server, and the portal server are together configured to permit incoming calls to be handled by dedicated live agents as well as independent knowledge brokers each operating from one of the agent desktops within which the agent or broker has logged, wherein caller transfers by the contact center are directed towards either one of the dedicated live agents or one of the independent knowledge brokers in a manner transparent to callers.

9. The contact center of claim 7, wherein the contact center provides automated interactive communications with callers, provides queue management for callers waiting to communicate with live agents, provides skills based routing for assigning live agents to callers based upon skills of the live agents and skills needed by the callers, and provides tooling for provisioning and monitoring the live agents.

10. The contact center of claim 7, wherein the software and hardware of the contact center is based upon open standards, which permit the contact center to operate without reliance on proprietary communication protocols, without reliance upon proprietary, vendorspecific contact center hardware, and without reliance upon vendor-specific contact center software.

11. The contact center of claim 7, wherein the portal server, the application server, and the presence server are part of a middleware solution having Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) capabilities.

12. The contact center of claim 7, wherein the portal server, the application server, and the presence server are implemented within a service oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure and wherein the contact center applications are SOA applications.

13. A call center system comprising:

at least one contact node comprising at least one of an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) browser and a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) telephone;

at least one agent node comprising an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) browser and a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone;

a middleware solution including a plurality of contact center components conforming to open standards that intercommunicate utilizing open standards, said contact center components together forming an open contact center, said open contact center providing automated interactive communications with callers, providing queue management for callers waiting to communicate with live agents, providing skills based routing for assigning live agents to callers based upon skills of the live agents and skills needed by the callers, and providing tooling for provisioning and monitoring the live agents, wherein said callers communicate with the contact center components via one of the contact nodes and said live agents communicate with the contact center components via one of the agent nodes, and wherein each contact node and each agent node communicate with the middleware solution over a network using standard communication protocols, wherein said middleware solution comprises;

a portal server configured to provide an agent portal, through which an agent utilizing the agent node communicates, said agent portal including a plurality of agent portlets within which contact center information is presented;

an application server executing contact center applications configured to receive input for the contact center applications from the agent portlets and to present contact center output through the agent portlets;

a presence server configured to determine agent availability and configured to provide the application server with agent specific information including Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for an agent'"'"'s Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) browser and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone as well as agent expertise information; and

a set of vendor specific plug-ins each configured to communicate with a proprietary contact center component to permit the open contact center to utilize capabilities provided by the proprietary contact center component.

14. The call center system of claim 13, further comprising:

at least one supervisor node comprising an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) browser and a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone each configured to communicate with the middleware solution over the network using standard communication protocols, wherein the contact center components comprise a supervisor conferencing component configured to permit an authorized supervisor using one of the supervisor nodes to conference into a real-time communication session between one of the contact nodes and one of the agent nodes.

15. The call center system of claim 13, wherein said contact center components include at least five components selected from a set of components consisting of an agent desktop component, an agent authentication component, an agent monitoring component, an agent transfer component, an application integration component, a call queuing component, a collaboration integration component, a load balancing component, a reporting component, a skills based routing component, and a supervisor conferencing component.