US 10,873,538 B2Granted

Automatic cloud capacity adjustment

AssigneeAvaya Inc.

InventorsValentine C. Matula, David Skiba, George Erhart

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Abstract

Allocation of resources utilized by a contact center remains a balancing act between the burden of having resources that are generally underutilized and underperforming due to resource constraints. Many contact centers support a variety of communication types (e.g., audio-video, audio, text, email, etc.) associated with a respective communication channel. Communications may be dynamically incentivized or allocated from one communication channel having greater resource demands to another communication channel having lesser resource demands. Additionally, the resources of the contact center may be shared by customers of clients utilizing the contact center. As a result, one customer having a spike in demand may have their, and/or another customer's, communications reallocated to the less demanding channel to manage contact center resource utilization.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A system, comprising:

a monitored resource of a set of resources, wherein each monitored resource of the set of resources is a physical component and further comprises at least one of an electronic computational component and electronic connectivity component and is utilized to provide a service to customers of a contact center;
a first subset of the set of the resources, including the monitored resource, providing a first communication channel for electronic communications in one of audio-video, telephone audio, voice-over-IP audio, text chat, email, and co-browse data;
a second subset of the set of resources, different from the first subset of the set of resources but including the monitored resource, providing a second communication channel for the electronic communications in a different one of audio-video, telephone audio, voice-over-IP audio, text chat, email, and co-browse data and wherein the electronic communications utilize the monitored resource to a lesser extent when conducted on the second communication channel as compared to the first communication channel;
providing the set of resources in a first configuration comprising a channel selection component providing a first channel selection option to enable customers of the contact center to initiate a future portion of the electronic communications via a selection of one of the first communication channel and second communication channel;
a resource monitor, within a device, monitoring utilization of the monitored resource and upon determining that the monitored resource is overutilized, causing the set of resources to be provided in a second configuration comprising the channel selection component providing a second channel selection option to provide at least one of hindering initiation of the future portion of the electronic communications via the first communication channel and incentivizing initiation of the future portion of the electronic communications via the second communication channel;
and
upon receiving the selection, initiating the future portion of the electronic communications via the selected one of the first communication channel and the second communication channel;
and
wherein hindering access to the first communication channel comprises disabling access to the first communication channel for the future portion of the electronic communications.

6 more elements

A method, comprising:

providing electronic communications between customer communication devices utilized by customers of a contact center and agent communication devices utilized by agents of the contact center, the electronic communications utilizing a set of resources, wherein each resource of the set of resources is a physical component and further comprises at least one of an electronic computational component and electronic connectivity component and comprises a first communication channel utilizing a first subset of the set of resources comprising a monitored resource and the first communication channel conveying one of audio-video, telephone audio, voice-over-IP audio, text chat, email, and co-browse data and a second communication channel utilizing a second subset of the set of resources different from the first subset of the set of resources and wherein the second communication channel conveys a different one of audio-video, telephone audio, voice-over-IP audio, text chat, email, and co-browse data and wherein the electronic communications utilize the monitored resource to a lesser extent when conducted on the second communications channel as compared to the first communication channel;
monitoring utilization of the monitored resource;
determining that the monitored resource is overutilized;
providing the set of resources in a first configuration further comprising providing a first channel selection option to enable customers of the contact center to initiate a future portion of the electronic communications via a selection of one of the first communication channel and second communication channel;
in response to the determination that the monitored resource is overutilized, providing the set of resources in a second configuration further comprising a second channel section option, comprising at least one of hindering initiation of the future portion of the electronic communications via the first communication channel and incentivizing initiation of the future portion of the electronic communications via the second communication channel, to incentivize the future portion of the electronic communications to utilize the second communications channel;
and
upon receiving a selection of the first communication channel and the second communication channel, initiating the future portion of the electronic communications via the selected one of the first communication channel and the second communication channel;
and
wherein hindering access to the first communications channel comprises disabling access to the first communication channel for the future portion of the electronic communications.

6 more elements

A system comprising:

means for monitoring utilization of a monitored resource of a set of resources of a contact center, wherein each monitored resource of the set of resources is a physical component and further comprises at least one of an electronic computational component and electronic connectivity component and the monitored resource is one resource of a set of resources utilized in providing a service to customers of the contact center during electronic communications between customer communication devices utilized by customers of the contact center and agent communication devices utilized by agents of the contact center and the monitored resource is one of a first subset of the set of resources providing a first communication channel providing a first communication type, the first communication channel conveying one of audio-video, telephone audio, voice-over-IP audio, text chat, email, and co-browse data;
means for determining that the monitored resource is overutilized;
means to provide the set of resources in a first configuration comprising means to provide a first channel selection option to enable customers of the contact center to initiate a future portion of the electronic communications via a selection of one of the first communication channel and second communication channel;
in response to the determination that the monitored resource is overutilized, means to provide the set of resources in a second configuration comprising a second channel section option comprising at least one of hindering initiation of the future portion of the electronic communications via the first communication channel or incentivizing initiation of the future portion of the electronic communications via the second communication channel and thereby incentivize a future portion of the electronic communications to utilize a second communication channel utilizing a second subset of the set of resources different from the first subset of the set of resources, the second communication channel conveying a different one of audio-video, telephone audio, voice-over-IP audio, text chat, email, and co-browse data;
and
upon receiving the selection of one of the first communication channel and second communication channel, means to initiate the future portion of the electronic communications via the selected one of the first communication channel and the second communication channel;
and
wherein hindering access to the first communication channel comprises disabling access to the first communication channel for the future portion of the electronic communications.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 14/704,071Filed 5 May 2015
Published: US 2016/0330131 A110 Nov 2016
Granted: 22 Dec 2020
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification14 codes

H04L 41/0896
Configuration management of networks or network elements: bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities
H04L 41/0897
Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities: by horizontal or vertical scaling of resources, or by…
H04L 47/762
Using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation requested by the user or requested by the network in response to changing network…:…
H04L 47/83
Admission control; Resource allocation: based on usage prediction

Family

US 2016/0330131 A1Pre-grant publication · published 10 Nov 2016
US 10,873,538 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.

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