ESTIMATION OF A WORK ITEM'S WAIT-TIME FROM THE PRESENT STAGES OF PROCESSING OF PRECEDING WORK ITEMS

摘要

To improve the prediction of wait times of calls (23) waiting to be processed, or to improve the prediction of completion times of calls that are presently being processed, in low-volume call centers (10) or splits/skills (21), additional data points are created-either manually or automatically-during the processing of each call that is presently being processed, for use in effecting wait-time estimates of the waiting calls. At each of the plurality of points in the processing of each of the plurality of calls, information about the call that is relevant to how long completion of the processing of the call is likely to take is obtained (200). This information is applied to historical information about previously-processed calls to estimate (202) how long completion of the processing of each of those calls is likely to take, i.e., how long it will be before the agents (25) who are processing those calls become available to handle the waiting calls. The estimated times are then used (210) as the predicted wait times of that plurality of the waiting calls. The technique is applicable to workflow management in general.