Telephonic communications – With usage measurement – Call charge metering or monitoring
Patent
1998-03-18
2000-06-13
Kuntz, Curtis A.
Telephonic communications
With usage measurement
Call charge metering or monitoring
379 34, 379133, 379279, H04M 1500
Patent
active
060758481
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to call patterns in communications networks and particularly, but not exclusively, to methods and apparatus for determining call patterns in a communications network for particular call destinations.
Service providers who provide or sell a service by telephone over a communications network, for example insurance service providers, telephone information hotlines or premium rate call services, typically operate answering centres having a number of answering stations for answering calls directed to the service provider. Answering stations may comprise, for example, telephones having human operators for answering calls, or computer-based systems answering calls directly. Computer-based systems most commonly simply play pre-recorded information, however, in some cases, they do provide the facility to interact with a caller via, for example, codes which may be input by a caller using a telephone keypad or via speech recognition.
For service providers whose business relies heavily on telephone custom, it is important to optimise the number of answering stations in operation: too many answering stations are a waste of resources and too few answering stations can result in loss of calls and hence loss of business revenue.
To some extent, the number of answering stations required for an incoming call centre can be forecast by service providers using historic call record data made available by communications network operators. The type of historic call record data available varies, but typically might comprise an indication of the number of successful (effective) calls and the number of failed (ineffective) calls. From this type of call information, it is possible for a service provider to estimate future answering station requirements on the basis of how many calls are being lost.
Call record analysis is known, per se, for measuring call traffic handling performance in telecommunications networks. In "Redialling: a study of subscriber behaviour", C Noordegraph, Het PTT-Bedrijf, vol. 24, no. 1, December 1986 The Hague, historic call data, originating from 96 people from each of 24 designated exchange areas, was collected over a period of four weeks. An analysis of the call record data on the basis of called "destination" in terms of the terminating one hundred group, (because of suppression of the last two of the dialled digits in the process of making the call record information available for the analysis), was used to determine caller behaviour, and in particular the probability that a caller is likely to re-dial in the event of the first call being ineffective. The results lead to the conclusion that increased capacity for call traffic in the network would lead to increased revenue, given that some re-dials were due to congestion in the network and that not all callers were persistent enough to re-dial. The analysis is concerned solely with re-dialling behaviour and such matters as reply probabilities, and is not concerned with issues of traffic volumes.
In "Measurements of repeat call attempts in the international telephone service", by A. Lewis and G. Leonard, Proceedings of the tenth international teletraffic congress--session 2.4 paper 2, vol. 1, Jun. 9-15, 1983 Montreal, historic call record data was analysed for international calls routed through an international gateway. The data was, again, used to determine caller behaviour in the event a first call was unsuccessful.
In accordance with a first aspect, the present invention provides a method of indicating, for a call centre identified by a particular network number and connected to a communications network having a billing function including the generation and storage of call records, the shortfall in the number of answering stations at the call centre required to be active to meet a specified probability that a sequence, as herein defined, will be lost, the method comprising the steps of: number and making a copy of respective call records relating to call attempts delivered to said particular network number, each said copy c
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HET PTT-BEDRIJF, vol. 24, No. 1, Dec. 1886, Den Haag (NL), pp. 30-35, XP000563400 C. Noordegraaf: "Herhaalde Oproepen: Een Studie Naar Abonneegedrag" cited in the application 2; table 1.
Proc. Tenth International Teletraffic Congress- Session 2.4 Paper 2, vol. 1, Jun. 9-15, 1983, Montreal(CA), pp. 1-4, XP002021531 Lewis et al: "Measurements of Repeat Call Attempts in the Intercontinental Telephone Service" cited paragraph 3.
Bell System Technical Journal,vol. 59, No. 3, Mar. 1980, New York US, pp. 295-311, XP000560635 K.S.LIU: Direct Distance Dialing: Call Completion and Customer Retrial Behavior see page 297, left-hand column, line 17- line 38.
Tenth International Teletraffic Congress-Session 2.2 Paper 7, vol. 1, Jun. 9-15, 1983, Montreal (CA), pp. 1-6, XP002021532 Becker Simcha et al: "Killer Routes and Killer Numbers in Telephone Networks".
Lunn Timothy J
Thomas Ian P
British Telecommunications public limited company
Kuntz Curtis A.
Nguyen Duc
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