Aspects of systems and methods for maintaining and operating agent nodes are provided. In some embodiments, calls, contacts, and other work units may be routed to individual customer service agents via a centralized queue based on a variety of factors. Some embodiments may provide market-based call pricing and customer service agent compensation.

Technologies for scaling call center support staff include one or more local agent computing devices of a call center that includes an interaction management computing device communicatively coupled to one or more customer computing devices and one or more remote agent computing devices. The interaction management computing device is configured to receive inbound service calls and insert them into a respective service queue. The interaction management computing device is additionally configured to determine whether a service queue response threshold associated with the service queue has been violated as a function of each service call having been inserted into the service queue, identify, in response to a determination that the service queue response threshold associated with the service queue has been violated, one or more remote agents from a queue of available remote agents, and add the identified one or more remote agents to an agent pool associated with the service queue. Additional embodiments are described herein.

A redundant Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) call center system has two data centers each having a first and a second SIP server cooperating as a first SIP-server high availability (HA) pair, a set of SW applications executable at each data center, and a plurality of agent stations each comprising a SIP telephone and a computerized appliance executing a desktop application at each agent station. The HA pairs operate as SIP server peers, the agent SIP phones are configured to maintain simultaneous registration with both SIP server peers, and Agent Desktop applications log in to only one SIP server peer, wherein the SIP Server peers collaborate to deliver calls to individual agent SIP phones via the SIP server peer where the agent is logged in, and wherein, upon failure of either data center agent's desktop applications log in to the other data center, allowing the associated agent to continue working.

A base station capable of communicating with a user equipment (UE) includes a transceiver configured to transmit Channel State Information-Reference Signal (CSI-RS) according to a CSI-RS configuration comprising a number of antenna ports, and downlink signals containing the CSI-RS configuration and a precoding-matrix-construction configuration for precoding matrix indicator (PMI) reporting on physical downlink shared channels (PDSCH), the precoding-matrix-construction configuration comprising a first and second sampling factors, O.sub.1 and O.sub.2, and a first and second numbers, N.sub.1 and N.sub.2, receive, from the UE, uplink signals containing a precoding matrix indicator (PMI) derived using the CSI-RS according to the precoding-matrix-construction configuration, a controller configured to convert the PMI to one of predetermined precoding matrices. Other embodiments including UEs and methods are disclosed.

An apparatus includes a data storage device that stores remote agent quality assurance code and communication session code. Further, the apparatus includes a data capture device that captures data associated with a remote agent positioned in proximity to the data capture device. In addition, a processor receives a request from an agent routing platform for a service provided by the remote agent through a communication session between the remote agent and a user requesting the service. The processor executes the remote agent quality assurance code to determine that at least a portion of the captured data is non-compliant with the one or more quality assurance policies provided by the agent routing platform. Further, the processor executes the remote agent quality assurance code to provide one or more indicia of non-compliance.

Aspects of systems and methods for maintaining and operating agent nodes are provided. In some embodiments, calls, contacts, and other work units may be routed to individual customer service agents via a centralized queue based on a variety of factors. Some embodiments may provide market-based call pricing and customer service agent compensation.

A method for handling contact center teleservices in voice and/or data through a plurality of mobile devices, such as smartphones, is disclosed. The invention is directed to a novel concept named “Event” in which any interaction between a customer and a call center platform via voice or data is uniquely identified. This concept introduces a functionality into the Cloud-Implemented Intelligent ACD making it able to identify each call or contact with a “tag” that is later used to manage all possible future interactions between the customers and the agents by linking them under the Agent Mobile Platform, while adding the capability to maintain open the communication originally established between a customer and an agent in the case of any communication interruption, either involuntary or voluntary, thus making the C-I IACD able to route the contact once the communication is reestablished or when the customer calls the contact center platform back again. This method enables the customer to be attended by one and the same agent for as many times as the business rules permit, until the customer closes the opened tag.

A remote assistance controller serves as an intermediary between a user requesting remote assistance and a remote assistor. A remote assistance policy determines what the remote assistor can see or not see on the requestor's computer system, and may additionally determine allowed or disallowed actions by the remote assistor. The remote assistance policy may be defined by the requesting user, or can be a default policy for the remote assistance controller. The remote assistance controller generates views for the requestor and for the remote assistor. When the remote assistor requests an operation on the requestor's computer system, the remote assistance controller checks the remote assistance policy to determine whether the remote assistor is allowed to perform the requested operation. When the requested operation is allowed according to the remote assistance policy, the remote assistance controller allows the requested operation, and refreshes the views for the requestor and the remote assistor.

In an example embodiment, a solution is provided that decouples an IVR component from a voice media server, which allows the voice media server to be geographically placed in a location most beneficial to keep digital voice file transmission to a minimum (thus saving bandwidth), while allowing the IVR component to be geographically located anywhere without negatively impacting the bandwidth usage. An additional benefit is that by decoupling the IVR component from the voice media server, the IVR component can be implemented in a way that lets it work with multiple redundant voice media servers simultaneously, allowing one of the voice media servers to become unavailable without impacting service.

Contact centers often encounter situations where a group of customers have a common issue to be addressed. Connecting each customer to an agent for one-on-one communication may be effective, but it is resource intensive both in terms of networking and computer requirements and the time an agent spends repeating the same information. By performing an initial assessment of customers' issues, a common issue may be discovered that a common issue exists that can be handled in a group lecture pod, wherein a number of customer connect to interact with an agent and optionally to each other. Provided confidential information is not required, and any other required consent given, customers may be connected to the group lecture pod for more immediate resolution of a common issue and not have to stay in queue to wait for an agent to become available for a one-on-one interaction.