Estimation of expected value for remaining work time for contact center agents
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A call management system for interconnecting a customer who is using a communication device, with one of a plurality of customer agents;
- said interconnection thereby establishing a service call, said call management system comprising;
means for segmenting said call into a plurality of phases;
means for predicting a current phase of said call from said plurality of phases; and
,means for estimating time remaining on said call;
wherein said means for estimating comprises a means for classifying said call into one of a plurality of call classes and means for performing methods of automatic speech analysis upon the service call and evaluating the proportion of time the customer speaks relative to time the agent speaks and using the proportion of time the customer speaks relative to the time the agent speaks to estimate the time remaining on said call.
20 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
The present invention provides a more accurate estimate as to time for completion of a call by using estimated time durations of separate phases of the call and by determining what phase a call is currently on. An important feature of the present invention is the use of automated speech processing techniques to estimate where the customer and agent are in their conversation and to gauge the rate of progress of the call.
-
Citations
21 Claims
-
1. A call management system for interconnecting a customer who is using a communication device, with one of a plurality of customer agents;
- said interconnection thereby establishing a service call, said call management system comprising;
means for segmenting said call into a plurality of phases; means for predicting a current phase of said call from said plurality of phases; and
,means for estimating time remaining on said call; wherein said means for estimating comprises a means for classifying said call into one of a plurality of call classes and means for performing methods of automatic speech analysis upon the service call and evaluating the proportion of time the customer speaks relative to time the agent speaks and using the proportion of time the customer speaks relative to the time the agent speaks to estimate the time remaining on said call. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
- said interconnection thereby establishing a service call, said call management system comprising;
-
8. A method of operating a call management system for estimating the time remaining on a service call, wherein the call management system interconnects a customer who is using a communication device, with one of a plurality of customer agents;
- said interconnection thereby establishing said service call;
said method comprising the call management system;segmenting said call into a plurality of phases; predicting a current phase of the call from said plurality of phases; and
,estimating time remaining on said call using said predicted current phase, wherein said estimating step comprises steps of classifying said call into one of a plurality of call classes, performing methods of automatic speech analysis upon the service call, evaluating the proportion of time the customer speaks relative to time the agent speaks, and using the proportion of time the customer speaks relative to the time the agent speaks to estimate the time remaining on said call. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12)
- said interconnection thereby establishing said service call;
-
13. A method of operating a call management system for estimating the time remaining on a service call, wherein the call management system interconnects a customer who is using a communication device with one of a plurality of customer agents, the interconnection thereby establishing the service call, said method comprising the call management system:
-
defining a plurality of service calls phases; performing automated speech recognition on a conversation between the customer and one of the plurality of customer agents; determining the phase of the service call based on the outcome of said automated speech recognition step; and estimating the time remaining on the service call based on the phase of the call. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
-
Specification