BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Art

The disclosure relates to queuing, specifically to the field of cloud-implemented automated callback systems.

Discussion of the State of the Art

Queues have been around for at least 185 years. With urbanization and population growth increasing the length of most queues by orders of magnitude in some situations. The design of the queue has changed ever-so-slightly, zig-zagging the line for example, but the basic queue remains relatively unchanged. That was up until virtual queuing came around in the form of paper tickets and more recently electronic pagers. However, these new modes require a queued person to remain within earshot of an announcement or within visual range of a monitor, in the case of paper tickets. In the case of pagers, a queued person is still limited in physical space by the range of the pager. Newer virtual queuing systems have been devised to use a person's mobile device, but still haven't really added much to queuing. These current solutions fail to efficiently facilitate or even address at all the complexity of multiple queues, punctuality concerns and no-shows, and simply does not take advantage of modern-day advantages such as “Big Data.”

What is needed is a system and method for virtual queuing that overcomes the limitations of the prior art as noted above by organizing and motivating multiple persons between multiple queues and taking full advantage of the breadth of data available to make predictions and organize queues.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly, the inventor has conceived and reduced to practice, a system and method for managing virtual queues. A cloud-based queue service manages a plurality of queues hosted by one or more entities. The queue service is in constant communication with the entities providing queue management, queue analysis, and queue recommendations. The queue service is likewise in direct communication with queued persons. Sending periodic updates while also motivating and incentivizing punctuality and minimizing wait times based on predictive analysis. The predictive analysis uses “Big Data” and other available data resources, for which the predictions assist in the balancing of persons across multiple queues for the same event or multiple persons across a sequence of queues for sequential events.

According to a first preferred embodiment, a system for enhanced virtual queuing is disclosed, comprising: a prediction module comprising at least a processor, a memory, and a first plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory and operating on the processor, wherein the first plurality of programming instructions, when operating on the processor, cause the processor to: receive a plurality of entity data relating to a queue, wherein the plurality of entity data comprises a simulation intent; store the plurality of data in an entity database, wherein each entity has a profile in the entity database that data is associated with; retrieve a plurality of 3rd party data relevant to the queue; send the pluralities of data to a machine learning model; compute a plurality of queue simulations based on queue theory and queue psychology using the pluralities of data, wherein the queue simulations are tasked with the simulation intent; analyze the queue simulations for the optimal simulation best matching the simulation intent; and output the optimal queue simulation parameters.

According to a second preferred embodiment, a method for enhanced virtual queuing is disclosed, comprising the steps of: receiving a plurality of entity data relating to a queue, wherein the plurality of entity data comprises a simulation intent; storing the plurality of data in an entity database, wherein each entity has a profile in the entity database that data is associated with; retrieving a plurality of 3rd party data relevant to the queue; sending the pluralities of data to a machine learning model; computing a plurality of queue simulations based on queue theory and queue psychology using the pluralities of data, wherein the queue simulations are tasked with the simulation intent; analyzing the queue simulations for the optimal simulation best matching the simulation intent; and outputting the optimal queue simulation parameters.

According to various aspects; wherein the plurality of entity data comprises explicit operating parameters, historical queue data, spatial data, and incentives data; wherein the plurality of 3rd party data comprises environment data, routing data, and detour data; wherein the simulation intent is the least distance a queued person must travel; wherein the simulation intent is the queue that occupies the least amount of space while maintaining at least 6 feet of separation between queued persons; wherein the simulation intent is the queue with least amount of cost to an entity; wherein the simulation intent is the queue with the least cost to the queued persons; wherein the simulation intent is the maximum wait time a queued person will wait without prematurely exiting a queue based on queue psychology; wherein the simulation intent is the maximum distance a queued person will travel without prematurely exiting a queue based on queue psychology; wherein the queue simulation parameters are a predicted wait time, a queue configuration, or a predicted wait time and a queue configuration.

