Managing interactive communications campaigns with reduced customer-to-agent connection latency

摘要

A web-based hosted solution through which business entities create and manage communications campaigns is described. To reduce latency of customer-to-agent connections, the system implements an agent stay-on-line function by which a persistent telephony connection is established and maintained between the system infrastructure and an available agent. In this manner, the agent may handle multiple customers while avoiding an ACD hold queue. In addition, preferably a service-side hold queue also is established and maintained on the service-side of the infrastructure. This hold queue maintains calls that are waiting to be connected to available agents. It ensures that any customer abandons do not impair the connections being established and maintained to the agents.

主权项

1. Apparatus for managing interactive communications campaigns, comprising:
a processor; and computer memory holding computer program instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
establish a persistent connection to an agent device accessible to an agent;initiate outbound contacts to a plurality of customers;determine whether a first customer of the plurality of customers should be connected to the agent based on whether the first customer desires a connection with a contact center agent;connect the first customer to the agent over the persistent connection in response to a corresponding outbound contact to the first customer to establish a communication with the first customer;provide to the agent information about the first customer;determine whether the communication with the first customer has been terminated while maintaining the persistent connection with the agent device;determine whether the agent is prepared to receive a next communication; andin response to determining that the communication with the first customer has been terminated and that the agent is prepared to receive the next communication, transmit a signal to connect a second customer of the plurality of customers to the agent over the persistent connection.