Distribution of calls among automatic call distributors of a single large customer
AssigneeAT&T Bell Laboratories
InventorsDaniel C. Kerrigan, Mary R. Otto
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
This invention relates to apparatus and methods for sharing traffic among a plurality of ACD sites serving a customer. Each ACD site has a main queue for storing incoming calls to that ACD, and a group of overflow queues for storing calls rerouted from one of the other ACD sites. Before rerouting a call to an alternate site, the overflow queue for that site is checked; if it has an excessive number of entries, calls will not be rerouted to that alternate site.
Claims18
A method of serving calls to a customer having a plurality of call distributor (CD) serving centers, comprising the steps of:
- receiving a call in one center of said serving centers;
- testing whether delay for serving said call in said one center is expected to exceed a first threshold;
- responsive to determining that said first threshold is expected to be exceeded, determining whether an excessive number of calls have been rerouted to said one center, said excessive number indicating inability to handle additional calls without unacceptable delay in said alternate center;
- and from an alternate center;
- and
- if an excessive number of calls has not been rerouted to said one center from said alternate center, rerouting said call to said alternate center;
- wherein overflow calls are automatically rerouted to an alternate center which is not likely to be overloaded without requiring any call routing control messages, reflecting a level of busyness of a serving center, to be transmitted among said plurality of serving centers.
A call distributor (CD) connectable to at least one other CD, comprising:
- queue means for storing calls overflowed into said CD from said at least one other CD and for identifying a CD from which a call has been overflowed;
- means for estimating whether expected delay in serving an incoming call exceeds a threshold;
- means responsive to estimating delay exceeding said threshold for examining said queue means to identify one of said at least one other CD which has overflowed relatively few calls to said CD, said relatively few calls indicating the identified CD is not overloaded;
- and
- means responsive to said examining means for rerouting said call to the identified CD;
- wherein overflow calls are automatically rerouted to one of said at least one other CD which is not likely to be overloaded without requiring any call routing control messages, reflecting a level of busyness of said CD, to be transmitted among said CD and said at least one other CD.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.