Patent ID: 8804939

Claim:
A call center staffing optimization method, comprising: projecting a first number of calls that a call center will receive in a first time interval and a second number of calls that the call center will receive in a second time interval using a processor, wherein the processor projects the first number of calls and the second number of calls using historical data of previous calls that is stored in a storage device; determining a first expected capability of a first subset of a plurality of agents using the processor, wherein the first subset are scheduled during the first time interval and the processor determines the first expected capability by retrieving historical data that is stored in the storage device and includes an average number of calls completed by each of the first subset, and adjusting the average number of calls completed by each of the first subset with periods of time when a phone queue for each of the first subset was empty; determining that the first expected capability does not exceed the first number of calls that the call center is projected to receive in the first time interval using the processor; determining a second expected capability of a second subset of the plurality of agents using the processor, wherein the second subset are scheduled during the second time interval and the processor determines the second expected capability by retrieving historical data that is stored in the storage device and includes an average number of calls completed by each of the second subset, and adjusting the average number of calls completed by each of the second subset with periods of time when a phone queue for each of the second subset was empty; determining that the second expected capability exceeds the second number of calls that the call center will receive in the second time interval using the processor; and verifying that at least one first agent from the plurality of agents in the second subset has a scheduled auxiliary phone state during the first time interval, a scheduled inbound phone queue state during the second time interval, and at least one flex preference that permits rescheduling the at least one first agent from the second time interval to the first time interval and, in response, transferring the at least one first agent of the plurality of agents from the second subset to the first subset using the processor, wherein the at least one first agent the plurality of agents transferred from the second subset to the first subset is associated with historical data of the average number of calls completed such that the first expected capability will exceed the first number of calls that the call center will receive in the first time interval and the second expected capability will exceed the second number of calls that the call center will receive in the second time interval.