Contact Service System for Accurate Agent Availability
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Solution Overview
Problem
Call centers face inaccuracies in reporting agent availability due to factors like holidays, time changes, and network outages, leading to frustration for users seeking contact with customer service agents.
Innovation Solution
A contact service system that communicates with a contact distribution system to provide real-time agent availability information, allowing users to request and establish contact with customer service agents through a network-based service, ensuring accurate and up-to-date availability data.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If predetermined hours of contact availability are used to report agent availability, then the system is simple to operate and maintain, but the availability information becomes outdated and inaccurate due to holidays, time changes, network outages, and staffing variations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic availability reporting by continuously monitoring actual agent availability status and updating the availability information in real-time, replacing static predetermined hours with dynamic data that adapts to changing conditions such as holidays, time changes, network outages, and staffing variations
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates feedback mechanisms where the contact distribution system monitors actual agent availability and feeds this information back to update the availability reporting, ensuring that the reported availability reflects current conditions rather than outdated predetermined schedules
2Reliability
If real-time agent availability monitoring is implemented, then accurate availability information is provided to users, but the system complexity and infrastructure requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a contact service as an intermediary layer between the contact distribution system and users, which handles the complexity of real-time availability monitoring and presents simplified, reliable availability information to users without requiring them to directly interact with the complex monitoring infrastructure
Data Source
AI summary
A user of a personal computing device may identify an item of interest displayed in a user interface provided by a network-based service and would like to obtain more information. The user may submit one or more electronic contact requests to a contact service in communication with a contact distribution system in order to obtain more information. The contact distribution system determines accurate, real-time availability of service agents and enables communications between the customer and an agent to be established in accordance with user contact information provided by the user.