Patent ID: 9553990
Date: 2017-01-24
CPC Classifications: H04M

Claim:
1. A method for facilitating collaboration in a contact center, the method comprising: initiating a session between a customer contact and a customer service agent in response to a request from a customer, wherein the customer service agent is selected from a plurality of customer service agents based on incident information related to the request from the customer and skills information for each of the plurality of customer service agents; conducting the session between the customer contact and the customer service agent; receiving from the customer service agent, while conducting the session between the customer contact and the customer service agent, a request to collaborate with a subject matter expert; in response to receiving the request to collaborate with a subject matter expert, determining current incident information for the session including product/category information between the customer contact and the customer service agent; accessing a subject matter expert definition database in which a plurality of subject matter expert definitions are expressed as a product/category combination in a multi-level hierarchy; selecting from the subject matter expert definition database a plurality of subject matter experts based on the current incident information and a location of each of the subject matter experts in the multi-level hierarchy; and recommending to the customer service agent the plurality of subject matter experts.