Patent ID: 7773740

Claim:
A method of assigning a plurality of pending calls within a contact center to a plurality of agents at least some of which are human agents, such method comprising the steps of: providing an offer for each of the plurality of pending calls to at least some of the human agents who are available to handle calls prior to assignment of the pending calls to an agent, said offers being presented on a respective terminal of each of the at least some agents where the offer and a description of each of the plurality of pending calls is presented within a separate window on the terminal and allowing the available human agents to separately bid on handling each of the pending calls and where each of the plurality of pending calls is classified as to media type, the description of each of the plurality of pending calls including call associated information, and non-call associated contextual information of the pending call; determining an agent average number of calls handled per time period for each media type for each agent of the plurality of agents; receiving bids within the contact center to handle the pending calls from the at least some of the available human agents; and the contact center assigning at least some of the pending calls to a human agent of the plurality of agents with a highest relative received bid.