Dynamic management and redistribution of contact center media traffic

Abstract

A system that supports multiple contact centers includes a communications network that is coupled between a private network (e.g. MPLS network) and a remote computing environment (e.g. cloud environment). A server system in the remote computing environment monitors health of different network segments (e.g. bandwidth of the connection between the communications network and the remote computing environment, bandwidth of a link used by a tenant to access the private network, etc.). When it is determined that quality of service for voice conversations for one or more contact centers is at risk due to a health status parameter of a network segment reaching a threshold, an appropriate system reaction is triggered. The system reaction may be to offload future calls to a peer remote computing environment to service future calls. The system reaction may also be to cancel outbound campaigns, provide pre-determined “sorry” messages, and the like.

Description

BACKGROUND[0001]Public wide area networks like the Internet are operated by hundreds of Internet Service Providers, each responsible for a segment of the network. No single entity in this public environment is responsible for how packets are routed from beginning to end. Thus, packets traversing the Internet often encounter congestion, significant jitter, and even loss. For some communications more than others, such as, for example, voice over IP (VoIP) communications or other real time media communications, it is important to provide preferential delivery service to avoid the uncertainties of traversing the Internet. However, the public Internet generally does not provide end-to-end QoS guarantees desired for VoIP communications. It is typical to overcome the limitations of the public Internet with moving the Voice communications to private networks, such as MPLS, where Quality of service (QoS) guarantees help provide such preferential delivery service by ensuring sufficient bandwi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent describes a system that helps manage and distribute contact center media traffic in real-time. This helps to prevent delays and ensure that the system is always able to handle any sudden changes in demand or bandwidth saturation. Overall, this system helps to keep the contact center running smoothly and efficiently.

Problems solved by technology

Thus, packets traversing the Internet often encounter congestion, significant jitter, and even loss.

However, the public Internet generally does not provide end-to-end QoS guarantees desired for VoIP communications.

Unexpected call bursts may also affect call quality of existing and future calls.

Although such solutions may be acceptable to situations where a single contact center (referred to as a tenant) utilizes system resources and where such resources are predetermined and pre-allocated, it may not be acceptable in situations where multiple tenants are supported and resources are shared.

In addition, such existing solutions do not take into account the quality of established voice conversations in efforts to provide a particular level of quality for the established voice conversations.

Furthermore, existing solutions generally do not allow a buffer for gracious and gradual degradation of service.

For example, existing contact center systems may abruptly start refusing new conversations when a particular threshold is reached, which may result in negative end user experience and loss of customers for the contact center.

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