Patent ID: 8036372

Claim:
A method for reallocating a preferred request in a specific queue to a generic queue, comprising: monitoring said specific queue to determine if a service level target will be satisfied, wherein said specific queue is one of a plurality of queues, each of said specific queues having an assigned service level target and associated with a specific resource, wherein said service level target is a predicted wait time; dynamically reallocating said preferred request to a generic queue if said service level target will not be satisfied wherein said generic queue is handled by any resource in a group of resources by reassigning said request to a queue having one or more capable resources to process said preferred request; identifying the capable resources by matching agents having a capability set corresponding to the specific resource, the capability set defined by skills possessed by a particular agent for responding to the preferred request; determining the capability set of agents and assigning the agent to one or more queues, each assigned queue associated to the resource corresponding to the determined capability set, wherein the specific queue and the generic queue each have service level targets, each the specific queue and the generic queue corresponding to a set of agent skills possessed by the agent assigned to the queue, reassigning occurring when a service level status indicative of meeting the service level target is more likely for the generic queue and both the specific queue and the generic queue are associated with the resource for responding to the preferred request; and identifying the queues with the service level status indicative of the greatest need, and if multiple queues have a service level status that indicates the greatest need, prioritizing the assignment of the preferred requests to local resources by selecting a local service class and if no said local service class is available, selecting a remote service class.