Patent ID: 8126133

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of automatically routing a telephone call to an agent, comprising: identifying a campaign involving servicing of telephone calls; creating a plurality of pools of agents for servicing the telephone calls, wherein each said pool has one or more associated characteristics common to each agent assigned to said pool; ranking the agents in the plurality of pools including: assigning a new agent to a group of agents from the plurality of pools, said group including lower performing agents; reserving a specified percentage of calls to be routed to said group; distributing the specified percentage of calls to be routed to said group among agents in said group using an equal distribution scheme; and ranking the new agent based on the new agent's success in handling calls routed to the new agent; receiving a first telephone call directed to a destination telephone number associated with the campaign; identifying a first pool of ranked agents in said plurality of pools having an associated characteristic expected to correlate with successful servicing of telephone calls for the campaign; automatically selecting a most-qualified available ranked agent within said first identified pool; and automatically routing the first telephone call to the most-qualified available ranked agent.