Patent ID: 8199895

Claim:
A method of transferring contacts among a plurality of automatic contact distributors of an automatic contact distribution system comprising: collecting information from a contact through an interactive voice response unit of an originating broker automatic contact distributor of the automatic contact distribution system; incorporating the collected information into a SIP message; forking the SIP message from the broker automatic contact distributor to a plurality of other automatic contact distributors of the automatic contact distribution system each respective other automatic contact distributor processing the collected information in the SIP message, calculating a metric characterizing a relative availability of the respective contact distributor to handle the contact, and sending a SIP return message incorporating the respective metric to the originating broker automatic contact distributor; incorporating an availability metric for the originating broker automatic contact distributor with the respective metrics of the other contact distributors into a SIP OK message and sending the SIP OK message to another SIP entity; and transferring the contact from the originating broker automatic contact distributor to one of the plurality of automatic contact distributors controlled by the other SIP entity.