Contact Center Spatial Queuing in Virtual Environments
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Solution Overview
Problem
Contact centers face inefficiencies in managing customer interactions within virtual environments, such as online games and alternate worlds, due to limited information about customer location and queuing status, leading to suboptimal routing and user experience.
Innovation Solution
A method that integrates contact centers with virtual environments by receiving spatial information of inhabitants, creating and maintaining contact information, and using queuing systems to make decisions based on this information, allowing for sophisticated routing and interaction handling, including automated interactions to reduce wait times and providing virtual queue representations that allow users to influence their position.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If contact centers use traditional queuing systems without spatial information, then system complexity is low, but routing efficiency and user experience are suboptimal
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by receiving and storing spatial information about inhabitants in the virtual environment before queuing decisions are made. This advance preparation enables the queuing system to access location data when routing contacts, improving routing efficiency without adding complex real-time processing requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The contact center system is enhanced to serve multiple functions: it not only manages traditional contact queuing but also processes and utilizes spatial information from the virtual environment. This multi-functionality allows the same system to handle both conventional customer service tasks and location-based routing decisions.
2Adaptability or versatility
If spatial information is integrated into contact center queuing systems, then routing sophistication improves, but information processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the necessary spatial information (location coordinates and zone identifiers) from the virtual environment data stream, rather than processing all available information about inhabitants. This selective extraction reduces information processing load while still providing sufficient data for sophisticated routing decisions based on location.
3Loss of time
If automated interactions are implemented to reduce wait times, then user experience improves, but automation level increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements partial automation by providing automated interactions for routine contact center tasks while maintaining the option for human agent intervention. This approach reduces wait times for standardized queries through automation while preserving human oversight for complex issues, achieving time reduction without requiring complete system automation.
Data Source
AI summary
A contact center has an interface with a virtual environment implemented in a computer system. The operation of the contact center includes receiving, from the virtual environment, spatial information relating to the spatial position within the virtual environment of an inhabitant of the virtual environment, and queuing a contact relating to that inhabitant in a queuing system of the contact center. Queuing decisions are based, at least in part, on the spatial information of the inhabitant in the virtual environment.