Noble Systems Corporation

Richard Holman

Karl H Koster

Chad Hitchcock

Marlon F Araujo

A call handler in a contact center is configured to temporarily derogate the skill level of one or more agents in a group having a common skill. During the time period of derogation, incoming calls will be routed to agents with the highest skill level, such that the normally lower skill level agents will be selected to receive calls. If there are more than one agent meeting this criteria, then the agent that has been waiting the longest to receive a call is selected. This allows the lower skill level agents to gain experience in handling calls and improving their call handling capabilities. After a set threshold, the derogation of the agents is terminated, and their skill level is restored to the pre-derogation level. In this manner the lower skill level agents are given limited opportunities for improvement by handling calls.

Limited derogation of contact center agent skill levels

Answering machine detection ('AMD') processes in a contact center are improved by obtaining and storing call pickup times regarding answered calls. The call pickup time is based on the time between detection of a signaling message indicating the call was offered to the remote interface and a signaling message indicating the call was answered. The value of the call pickup time may be useful to determine if an automatic voice messaging capability ('AVMC') or a live human answered the call. In other embodiments, the call pickup time is used to generate a call pickup time weighting factor that is used to supplement the analysis of the initial audio greeting after the call has been answered to determine whether an AVMC or live person answered the call. The analysis can be used to determine whether the AVMC is an answering machine or a voice mail service.

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Cumming, GA, United States of America

Richard Holman