Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Accounting
Reexamination Certificate
2001-03-05
2004-05-11
Meinecke-Díaz, Susanna (Department: 3623)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Accounting
C705S014270
Reexamination Certificate
active
06735574
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates generally to computer systems and, in particular, to a computer system for tracking employee productivity.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Various types of organizations (e.g., developers of computer programs and manufacturers of computer systems) provide telephonic customer support services. To use such customer support services, a customer places a call to a customer support center for the organization. When the call is received at the customer support center, the call is distributed to one of the available customer service representatives. Each customer service representative typically has a computer system through which the representative can access information needed to respond to a customer. These computer systems are typically personal computers that are connected through a network to a server computer system. The server computer system provides access to the information needed to respond to the customers. For example, manufacturers of personal computers typically provide technical support via telephone to their customers. When a technical support specialist of the manufacturer is routed a telephone call, the specialist assesses the needs of the customer and prepares and provides an appropriate response, such as how to repair the configuration file of the customer's computer system.
The cost of providing such a customer service center for technical support can be very high. In addition to the salaries of each of the technical support specialists, the manufacturer typically spends significant amounts on training the technical support specialists and on providing computer systems to aid the specialists in servicing the customers. Therefore, it is very important that these highly trained specialists operate as productively as possible. Unfortunately, it has been very difficult to assess the productivity of technical support specialists. In particular, technical support specialists may work on various tasks other than receiving incoming calls from customers. For example, in order to respond to a customer, the technical support specialist may need to spend some time researching the customer's problem. The specialist may need to present the customer's problem to an experienced systems programmer who can then help provide a solution to the problem. Also, the technical support specialist often needs to place a follow-up call to the customer to provide the response. In addition, technical support specialists may need to attend various meetings and classes when they would otherwise be available to receive incoming calls from customers. For example, a technical support specialist may need to attend a class on a new feature of a computer system that will soon be sold by the manufacturer.
Because the technical support specialists can spend their day performing a variety of tasks, it has been difficult to assess their productivity. Consequently, supervisors of the technical support specialists have in the past requested that each specialist provide a tracking of the time in which the technical support specialist was not available to respond to an incoming call. The technical support specialists would typically hand write a log of their time spent other than answering incoming calls and forward the log to the supervisor. The supervisor would then correlate the information in the logs and attempt to evaluate the productivity of the technical support specialist. Using such information, the supervisor can identify ways to improve the availability of specialists to receive incoming calls. For example, the supervisor may request that systems programmers provide prompt attention or that additional specialists be hired.
Unfortunately, such an informal technique for the tracking time of specialists has serious disadvantages. First, if specialists do not record their time in the logs contemporaneously with the activity, then the accuracy of the logs suffers. Second, different specialists may record different levels of detail. For example, one specialist may record that time was spent generally on research, while another specialist may record that time was spent reviewing manuals to respond to a configuration file problem, talking to a systems programmer, and placing a follow-up call to the customer. Third, because the logs are handwritten, the supervisor is likely not able to perform a meaningful analysis of the logs in a reasonable amount of time.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An embodiment of the present invention provides a method and system for tracking the productivity of representatives in a call center. The productivity tracking (“PT”) system comprises a PT client component and a PT server component. The PT client component is installed at each representatives' computer system. The PT client component provides data entry fields through which the representative can record productivity information that includes the start and end of periods of activity and exceptions to normal activity. Each exception indicates a type and a length. When the PT client component receives this productivity information, it forwards the information to a server computer that has the PT server component installed. The PT server component receives productivity information from several client computers and stores the information in a central database. To display productivity information to a representative, the PT client computer retrieves the information from the server computer. The PT system also facilitates the entry of exceptions in a way that increases the chances that representatives will record each exception contemporaneously with the exception. The PT system also enforces a uniform level of detail. The PT system facilitates analysis by providing the central database through which a supervisor can run various reports of productivity on individual representatives or on a group of representatives.
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