Working-time-based routing for customer support

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11830010-B2
Application number	US-202016737845-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 8, 2020
Priority date	Jan 8, 2020
Publication date	Nov 28, 2023
Grant date	Nov 28, 2023

Abstract

Techniques performed by a data processing system for matching a customer service ambassador (CSA) with a customer include receiving a service request for technical assistance from the customer, analyzing estimated working hours information for the customer and estimated working hours information for each of the plurality of CSAs to produce a compatibility score for each CSA, the compatibility score for a respective one of the CSAs providing an indication of how closely the working hours of the customer and of the respective one of the CSAs align, reordering an available CSA queue identifying the plurality of CSAs based on the compatibility scores of each of the CSAs, and selecting a CSA from the queue to provide technical assistance to the customer.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A data processing system comprising:
a processor; and
a computer-readable medium storing executable instructions for causing the processor to perform operations comprising:
receiving, via a network connection, a first signal comprising a service request for technical assistance from a customer, the service request including a customer identifier associated with the customer;
operating a customer data pipeline to determine estimated working hours information for the customer by configuring the customer data pipeline with the processor to perform:
querying usage logs for a plurality of software products to which the customer has access, the usage logs including timestamps indicating when a plurality of users licensed to access the plurality of software products performed one or more actions using the plurality of software products;
normalizing the timestamps in the usage logs relative to a first time zone to generate normalized usage data; and
analyzing the normalized usage data to generate and provide to the processor the estimated working hours of the customer relative to the first time zone based on the normalized usage data;

operating a customer service ambassadors (CSAs) pipeline to produce estimated working hours for a plurality of CSAs by analyzing task records from a CSA information datastore, each task record including an identifier of the CSA that performed a task and timestamp indicating when the CSA performed the task, including normalizing the timestamp associated with each of the task record relative to the first time zone;
accessing, from a memory of the data processing system, information comprising a queue identifying a subset of the plurality of CSAs that are currently available to provide technical assistance to the customer and identifying estimated working hours information for each of the plurality of CSAs based on output of the CSA pipeline;
analyzing the estimated working hours for the customer and the estimated working hours information for each of the plurality of CSAs to produce a compatibility score for each CSA, the compatibility score for a respective one of the CSAs providing an indication of how closely the working hours of the customer and of the respective one of the plurality of CSAs align;
reordering the queue identifying the plurality of CSAs based on the compatibility scores of each of the CSAs;
selecting a CSA from the queue to provide technical assistance to the customer; and
sending, via the network connection, a second signal to a computing device of the CSA that includes an identification of the customer and the service request.

2. The data processing system of claim 1 , wherein, to analyze the estimated working hours information for the customer and the estimated working hours information for each of the plurality of CSAs to produce a compatibility score for each CSA, the executable instructions further comprise instructions configured to cause the processor to perform operations including:
determining a compatibility score for a respective one of the subset of the plurality of CSAs by comparing the estimated working hours for the CSA with the estimated working hours for the customer.

3. The data processing system of claim 2 , wherein to determine the compatibility score for a respective one of the CSAs, the executable instructions further comprise instruction configured to cause the processor to perform operations including:
determining the compatibility score as

SCI
=

200
⁢

∑

i
=
0

23

x
i

⁢

y
i

x
i

+

y
i

,

wherein SCI represents the compatibility score, x i represents a number of documented CSA activities for a particular hour of a day, and y i represents a number of documented customer activities for a particular hour of the day, and x i and y i are normalized such that sums of x i are equal to 1 and sums of y i are each equal to 1.

4. The data processing system of claim 1 , wherein, to reorder the queue identifying the subset of the plurality of CSAs based on the compatibility scores of each of the CSAs, the executable instructions further comprise instructions configured to cause the processor to perform operations including:
splitting the queue into a high compatibility queue and a low compatibility queue; and
placing CSAs from the queue into the high compatibility queue responsive to a compatibility score associated with each of the respective CSAs being at least a predetermined threshold compatibility score.

5. The data processing system of claim 4 , further comprising instructions configured to cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
placing CSAs from the queue into the low compatibility queue responsive to a compatibility score associated with each of the respective CSAs being less than the predetermined threshold compatibility score.

6. The data processing system of claim 5 , wherein, to reorder the queue of available CSAs, the executable instructions further comprise instructions configured to cause the processor to perform operations including:
placing CSAs having a score indicative of a new CSA into the high compatibility queue.

7. The data processing system of claim 4 , wherein, to select the CSA to provide technical assistance to the customer, the executable instructions further comprise instructions configured to cause the processor to perform operations including:
appending the low compatibility queue on an end of the high compatibility queue to produce a reordered queue; and
selecting the CSA from the reordered queue.

8. The data processing system of claim 1 , wherein, to access the estimated working hours information for the CSAs, the executable instructions further comprise instructions configured to cause the processor to perform operations including:
selecting task records from a CSA information data store, the task records indicating an action taken by a CSA, a time at which the action was taken, and an identifier of the CSA that performed the action; and
analyzing the task records to determine how many actions were taken by each CSA for each hour.

9. A method performed by a data processing system for matching a customer service ambassador (CSA) with a customer, the data processing system comprising a processor and memory storing programing for the processor, the method comprising:
receiving by the processor, via a network connection, a first signal comprising a service request for technical assistance from the customer, the servic

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Callewaert Francois
• Wu Cheng
• Avila Dean
• Manchanda Sumit
• Masroor Hussain Syed

Classifications

• G06Q30/016 Primary

  After-sales · CPC title

• G06Q10/06316

  Sequencing of tasks or work · CPC title

• G06Q10/1091

  Recording time for administrative or management purposes · CPC title

• G06Q10/00 Primary

  Administration; Management · CPC title