Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Operations research or analysis
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-03
2002-05-14
Hafiz, Tariq R. (Department: 2163)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Operations research or analysis
C705S002000, C705S002000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06389400
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to routing requests from customers to agents, and more specifically to routing requests from a customer to an agent best matched for that customer based on a model of the customer and models of the agents.
2. Discussion of Background Information
A business or company that provides services and/or products to clients or customers may provide their customers with customer service in the form of a customer service center that handles customer requests. Customer requests may comprise requesting new products or services, getting support for a product or service, asking questions about a product or service, etc. If a customer made a call to the service center with a request, the service center would route the call to an agent or other capability that would service the customer's request.
The ideal incoming call center would route incoming calls so that each call is handled to the complete satisfaction of the customer, and also supports the business performance objectives of the center. The routing of incoming calls is accomplished with full and complete knowledge of the functionality, technology, and customer and agent requirements.
While functionality and technology issues are well represented in the management of a call center, a full rich understanding of the behavioral characteristics of the customer population, agent population, and the customer/agent interactions are not well understood. Presently, incoming calls are routed on a random “first come, first served” basis. The characteristics of both the customer and agent are simplistic by assuming a single view of both populations. This single view approach limits management's ability to influence the center's performance because not all of the customer's or agent's behaviors are accounted for during call routing. Thus the implemented routing system may function well for a certain set of customers or agents, while not being well matched to other sets within the population. When overall performance is critical, these mismatches and resulting reduced performances can cost organizations time and money.
The common practice in the industry is to route incoming calls to an available agent. There are two variations of this “available agent” routing in current practice. One variation is to route incoming calls to an available agent who has been idle, or not handling a call, for the longest period of time. The second variation is to route incoming calls to an available agent that is randomly chosen among agents of whom are available to take a call (no consideration for how long each individual agent has been idle). The current practice represents and treats the customer call population with a single set of characteristics and behaviors, i.e. any agent can take any customer call.
Some call centers may split off incoming customer calls to a dedicated agent group when the customer has a specific language preference. Some call centers also split off customer calls that originate from residences separate from customer calls that originate from businesses. In addition, some call centers split customer calls where the customer wishes to place an order for a service separate from the customer calls where the customer wishes additional information on their bill or similar information. For call centers that do separate incoming calls based on some criteria, the result of the actual call routing to an agent is still a randomly based transaction. Whether a call center performs any preliminary routing or not, currently, none of the call centers route customer calls to agents using a performance optimizing calculation.
Presently, if agents are categorized, they are done so on an informal basis based primarily on the opinion and judgment of the local operating management of the call center. Even though these agents may be identified by category, calls are not routed dependent upon those categories. Another aspect of current practice is that the description of behavior is done anecdotally, not statistically. Quantitative performance results are not incorporated into the behavioral descriptions. Customer and agent models are generally not constructed, primarily because there is only one agent representation and both management and agents accept that single view.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to a method for intelligent optimized routing of requests from customers to agents based on behavioral models of the customers and the agents that substantially obviates one or more of the problems arising from the limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a system and methods that use customer and agent models for matching a customer with an optimal agent.
It a further object of the present invention to provide a system and methods for routing requests from customers to optimal agents that increases customer satisfaction.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system and methods for routing requests from customers to optimal agents that improves performance at a call center.
Accordingly, one aspect of the present invention is directed to a method for intelligent routing of requests from a customer to an agent that includes receiving a request from a customer, creating a behavioral model of the customer, creating behavioral models of at least two agents, matching the behavioral model of the customer with each of the behavioral models of the at least two agents, and routing the request from the customer to a best match agent of the at least two agents based on the matching.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the behavioral model of the customer is calculated from a detailed profile of the customer's needs, task objective, sales preferences, and expectations for satisfaction.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, the behavioral model of the at least two agents is calculated from a detailed profile of the at least two agents' sales strategies, customer service behaviors, and sales performance.
In a further aspect of the present invention, the matching includes performance optimization calculations.
The present invention also includes obtaining identifying information from the customer where the identifying information may include the customer's telephone number, e-mail, or account number.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the identifying information is obtained by a human operator, an automatic caller ID system, an interactive voice response (IVR) interface, e-mail, Internet, or other communications channel.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, the invention includes retrieving historical background information regarding the customer based on the identifying information.
In a further aspect of the present invention, the invention includes searching for historical background information regarding the customer's account based on the identifying information.
In the present invention, the customer's account information may include the customer's billing history, products and services currently being provided, or household information.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the invention includes obtaining information regarding the customer's current task objective and the customer's current expectations for satisfaction, the customer's current task objective and the customer's current expectations for satisfaction each including one or more attributes.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, the customer's expectations for satisfaction attributes including the customer's willingness to be up-sold additional products or services, the customer's preference for a lengthy or brief negotiation, or the customer's desire to have questions answered.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, the invention includes upgrading the historical background information based on t
Bushey Robert R.
Deelman Thomas
Mauney Jennifer Mitchell
Greenblum & Bernstein P.L.C.
Hafiz Tariq R.
Norman Marc
SBC Technology Resources Inc.
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