Multiplex communications – Diagnostic testing – Determination of communication parameters
Reexamination Certificate
1997-09-02
2001-02-13
Vincent, David R. (Department: 2732)
Multiplex communications
Diagnostic testing
Determination of communication parameters
C370S352000, C709S203000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06188673
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates to communications networks and to call centers.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Call centers that handle inbound calls have traditionally been managed in a reactive mode: call center supervisors staffed and released agents and moved agents between splits in response to peaks and valleys in call volumes as reflected in the lengths of queues of incoming calls waiting to be handled. This is undesirable, because the inherent delay in responding to changing call volumes and types causes the responses to lag behind the changing conditions. Therefore, proactive call-center management information systems have been developed which try to anticipate call volumes and types, and changes therein, and thereby try to eliminate the delay between changing conditions and responses thereto. An example of such a system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,185,780. Such proactive systems typically use historical data from previous days or other time periods to predict agent staffing and agent skill needs. However, it is difficult to anticipate short-term changes in call volumes and types accurately from such data e.g., intra-hour or even shorter fluctuations in calling volumes and types.
Recently, call centers have come into existence that are able to interact with users of the Internet. They usually work as follows. An Internet user uses a browser on his or her Internet terminal to contact a World-Wide Web page of a call-center customer on a Web server, in a conventional manner. The page may have a virtual button or some other software-based indicator by means of which the user may indicate a desire to speak with a representative of the customer. If the user makes use of the indicator, the user is prompted to enter his or her telephone number. This number is conveyed to the server, which in turn sends it to the customer's call center. The call center then uses the supplied telephone number to place a standard outbound call to the user's telephone. An illustrative example of such a call center is disclosed in “Rockwell Teams with Dialogic to Build Groupware Servers for Small Centers”,
Computer Telephony
, Vol. 4, Issue 4 (April 1996), p.112.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Applicants have realized that numbers of hits on the World-Wide Web page or pages (that is, the number of accesses to the Web page or pages) of a call center client serve as an indicator, or predictor, of the volume or type of calls that the call center will soon have to handle, and therefore these numbers can be used to anticipate call volumes and types and to react proactively to changing conditions at the call center before they occur.
Therefore, according to one aspect of the invention, in a communications system that comprises a server for a client-server data network (e.g., the Word-Wide Web) that includes the server and a plurality of clients of the server and wherein the server provides the clients with items of information (e.g., Web pages) requested by the clients, and that further comprises a call center for handling calls relating to the items of information received from the clients via a telephone network, the server is communicatively connected with the call center and the server responds to receipt of requests from clients for items of information by sending notifications of the requests to the call center, and the call center (e.g., an information management system thereof) responds to receipt of the notifications by storing the received notifications for use in predicting a volume of calls (and/or callback requests) that will soon need to be handled by the call center and staffing the call center in anticipation of the predicted volume of calls. Illustratively, this information can be used either manually or as input into an expert system to suggest to the call-center supervisor what staffing or assignment changes should be anticipated before the calls or callback requests actually arrive.
This information can also be used in conjunction with knowledge of information about the content of the Web pages to select agent skills that are most appropriate for the types of calls likely to be arriving. Accordingly, each notification preferably identifies the requested item of information, and the call center stores the identification generally for use in predicting types of calls to be handled by the call center and staffing agent splits of the call center in anticipation of the predicted types, and specifically for use in predicting agent skills needed to handle the predicted call volume and staffing the call center with agents having the predicted skills in anticipation of the predicted call volume.
By being able to anticipate calls before they occur, a supervisor (or an expert system working on his or her behalf) can make staffing changes in advance to better align the call center's agents to answer calls (or service the callback requests). Similarly, if the data show that the number of calls from the data network clients will be decreasing, agents can be moved to handle other calls within the call center. Since the data network clients must always have at least one page hit before engaging an agent or requesting a callback (and, more typically, they will browse through several pages on the Web site before making a call request), the page hits can be used as a preindication of call activity that will eventually arrive at the call center.
Call centers can, over time, record the ratio of page hits to call or callback requests and can apply this ratio to anticipate the calls that are likely to arrive in the future. Accordingly, the clients selectively indicate to the server requests for calls to the call center (e.g., by actuating a “call” virtual button associated with a received Web page). Preferably, the server responds to receipt of such requests by sending notifications thereof to the call center, and the call center responds to receipt of such notifications by storing the received notifications for use in predicting the volume of calls to be handled by the call center and staffing the call center in anticipation of the predicted call volume. Specifically, the received item-request notifications are used together with the call-request notifications to determine a historical ratio of item requests-to-calls, and this ratio is then used to predict from recent item-request notifications the volume of calls to be handled by the call center. This ratio can be applied to Web hits in real time and can create threshold alerts to a call center supervisor if the agent pool is insufficient to handle the anticipated call volume.
An automated version of this feature uses expert system technology. An expert system collects the appropriate data, applies the historical ratios, and suggests staffing changes within the call center that the supervisor can confirm. Or it can run in a fully-automated mode and simply execute the staffing changes that it predicts.
A server for a client-server data network communicates with clients over the data network to receive requests for items of information (e.g., page hits) from the clients and to send the requested items to the requesting clients. According to another aspect of the invention, this server further responds to the received requests by sending notifications of the requests (page hits) to a call center that handles calls relating to the requested items. The server preferably also receives requests for calls to the call center from the clients and effects the requested calls and further responds to the received call requests by sending notifications of the requests to the call center.
A call center for handles calls relating to items of information provided by a server to clients who request the items of information in a client-server data network. According to a further aspect of the invention, the call center further communicates with the server to receive therefrom notifications of requests (e.g., page hits) received by the server from the clients for items of information, and stores the received notifications for use in predicting a volume of
Bauer David L.
Christensen Tore L.
Avaya Technology Corp.
Vincent David R.
Volejnicek David
LandOfFree
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