International Business Machines Corporation

Dennis D Koski

Jeffrey Alan Schmidt

Todd A Mueller

Thomas Alan Shore

Gary R Brophy

Verlyn Mark Johnson

Doyle J McCoy

Adam D Braham

Charles Song Yop Moon

Approaches presented herein enable assignment of translated work to an agent in a support environment based on a confidence factor that measures accuracy of translation and an agent's language skill. Specifically, agent proficiencies in a set of natural languages are measured and scored. An incoming communication is translated into one or more natural languages and each language translation is assigned a translation score based on a confidence of translation. The skill score and translation score are utilized to calculate a confidence factor for each language. In one approach, the communication is assigned to an agent that has a confidence factor greater than a predetermined threshold confidence factor. In another approach, the communication is only assigned if a rule optimizing agent availability and risk of constrained resources is satisfied.

Language translation and work assignment optimization in a customer support environment

An approach to control workflow so that a relatively high priority work item can sometimes be automatically controlled by software to interrupt work being performed, by one or more resource unit(s), on a relatively lower priority work item. The analysis for deciding whether or not an interruption occurs depends upon interruptibility scalars (that is, interruptibility quotients and/or factors) and interruptibility threshold(s).

Dynamically altering selection of already-utilized resources

Approaches presented herein enable assignment of translated work to an agent in a customer support environment based on a confidence factor that measures accuracy of translation and an agent's language skill. Specifically, agent proficiencies in a set of natural languages are measured and scored. An incoming customer communication is translated into one or more natural languages and each language translation is assigned a translation score based on a confidence of translation. The skill score and translation score are utilized to calculate a confidence factor for each language. In one approach, the customer communication is assigned to an agent that has a confidence factor greater than a predetermined threshold confidence factor. In another approach, the communication is only assigned if a rule optimizing agent availability and risk of constrained resources is satisfied.

A case-based reasoning system includes a case database capable of storing a plurality of cases that each include one or more attributes. A view generator in the case-based reasoning system generates a view of the case database by representing each case within at least a selected subset of the plurality of cases within the case database with one or more uniform-length view tokens. An input parser in the case-based reasoning system provides a tokenized representation of an input incident that includes one or more input tokens. The case-based reasoning system further includes a search engine that compares the input tokens with the view tokens to identify one or more closely matching cases within the view. By searching the view rather than directly searching the case database, cases that closely match the input are efficiently identified.

Case-based reasoning system and method with a search engine that compares the input tokens with view tokens for matching cases within view

A framework for use with object-oriented programming systems provides a case-based reasoning (CBR) system shell that permits a framework user to develop a case base having case histories and generates a case-based reasoning system that receives user requests for query solutions and produces a query solution that can be incorporated into the case base. The framework includes a Session component that controls processing of the CBR system, a Control Flow component that manages the extension of the categories and classes of the OO framework, a Data Store component that stores persistent case structure definitions, case instances, and a change log, a Presentation component that manages the user interface to the CBR system user, and a Query Engine that evaluates a received query against the case base. The case definitions and case base descriptions comprise a set of object oriented classes that are organized into an inheritance hierarchy. Also disclosed is a case-based reasoning system that permits dynamic adjustment of property weights in either object oriented programming implementations or procedural programming implementations. This permits users to control which properties and weights are used and whether missing items should penalize case matching.

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Oronoco, MN, United States of America

Dennis D Koski