Importance

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Abstract

Selection of a suitable call-center agent (106-108) to handle a call is based on which available suitable agent's handling of the call will tend to optimize call wait times. When a call needing a particular skill becomes available (200), all skills of agents in the agent queue (131-139) corresponding to the particular skill are determined (202, 204). The agent queues corresponding to the determined skills are checked (206) to determine which ones identify only one agent. For each available agent having the particular skill, the number of agent queues which identify this agent as their only agent is computed (208). The available agent having the lowest computed number is selected (210) to handle the call. This minimizes the number of skills that will be left without an available agent to handle subsequent calls, and thus tends to maximize the probability that a next call will also have a suitable agent already available and not have to wait for one to become available, thereby optimizing call wait times.

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First Claim