TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention generally relates to queue management and, more particularly, relates to an automated queuing system.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In recent years, social media has become a powerful marketing and customer relations tool throughout the business world, changing the way that individuals and large organizations communicate. Customers may mention or promote companies in public social media postings, post messages on company social media pages, share their interests in particular companies with their friends via social media, check-in at a company location, or the like. Companies may respond to these posts, repost positive messages from a customer, contact a customer via a social media platform, or use the data from social media to advertise their company.

Social media allows a large organization to reach consumers in a directed manner, providing quality communications and responses, with improved reach, frequency, accessibility, usability, immediacy and permanence over traditional paper-based or TV/radio advertising. Corporate use of social media has powerful implications—it may strengthen customer relations, positively impact advertising and marketing efforts, provide market research, increase the company's customer base, and/or address customer concerns, among other benefits.

Despite the numerous business advantages involved with social media use, responding to volumes of posts on various social media platforms may utilize significant company resources. Some companies may utilize dedicated employees to review and respond to posts on social media platforms, which may allow for relatively quick response times, but also may be very resource intensive. Other companies may only sporadically check social media platforms for postings, thereby missing valuable customer relations opportunities. Still further companies may not utilize social media at all, which may save on resource utilization, but fails to capitalize on the benefits that social media may provide, such as marketing, customer base growth, and strengthening of customer relations.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In an example embodiment, an automated queue is provided including processing circuitry configured to receive one or more posts from a social media platform associated with a target entity, generate a case including the content of a post, enter the case in a virtual queue for agent review, in response to the case reaching the front of the virtual queue, causing the content to be displayed to an agent on a user interface, receive a response from the user interface, and cause the response to be posted to the social media platform.

