Importance

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Abstract

A call-center ACD switch and queuing method are modified either to respond to a call that overflows the call queue of its primary agent split by determining which backup split in which call center is the best backup split for the call, and enqueuing the call in the call queue of the best backup split, or to respond to an arriving call by determining, for those splits that could handle the call, the present values of a parameter that defines what is a best split for handling the call, determining from those present values which split is the best split for handling the call, and then enqueuing the call in the call queue of the best split. Any desirable criteria may be used to determine the best split or the best back-up split. A preferred criterion is queue waiting time: the best split or the best backup split is the one whose call queue offers the shortest in-queue waiting time. The waiting time may be either the real estimated waiting time (EWT), or the EWT weighted for other factors (WEWT). A programmable queuing control function directs the ACD switch to obtain, for each overflow call, the EWTs of its backup splits, to weight these EWTs in order to obtain the corresponding WEWTs, to compare the WEWTs with each other in order to find the backup split with the shortest WEWT (the best backup split), and then to enqueue the call in the queue of this best backup split.

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First Claim