Customer contact centers provide an important interface for customers/partners of an organization to contact the organization. The contact can be for a request for a product or service, for trouble reporting, service request, etc. The contact mechanism in a conventional call center is via a telephone, but it could be via a number of other electronic channels, including email, online chat, etc.
The contact center consists of a number of human agents, each assigned to a telecommunication device, such as a phone or a computer for conducting email or Internet chat sessions, that is connected to a central switch. Using these devices, the agents generally provide sales, customer service or technical support to the customers or prospective customers of a contact center, or of a contact center's clients. Conventionally, a contact center operation includes a switch system that connects callers to agents. In an inbound contact center, these switches route inbound callers to a particular agent in a contact center or, if multiple contact centers are deployed, to a particular contact center for further routing. When a call is received at a contact center (which can be physically distributed, e.g., the agents may or may not be in a single physical location), if a call is not answered immediately, the switch will typically place the caller on hold and then route the caller to the next agent that becomes available. This is sometimes referred to as placing the caller in a call queue. In conventional methods of routing inbound callers to agents, high business value calls can be subjected to a long wait while the low business value calls are often answered more promptly, possibly causing dissatisfaction on the part of the high business value caller.
In many call centers, the agents answering calls are organized into a plurality of groups or teams, with each group having primary responsibility of the calls in one or more call queues. Different agent groups often have responsibility for different goals or functions of the call center, such as generating customer leads, closing sales with prospects and servicing existing customers. Routing an inbound caller to an appropriate group or team of the call center to address the needs of that caller can be a burdensome, time-consuming process.
There is a need for a system and method for identifying high business value inbound callers at a call center during a time period in which inbound callers are awaiting connection to an agent. Additionally, there is a need to improve traditional methods of routing callers, such as “round-robin” caller routing, to improve allocation of limited call center resources to high business value inbound callers. Further, there a need to improve traditional methods of routing callers to a group or team of agents appropriate to the caller's needs from a plurality of agent groups that implement different functions or goals of the call center.