Methods and apparatus for work management and routing

Abstract

Methods and apparatus for service-level based and/or skills-based assignment of a work item to one (or more) of a plurality of resources based on fitness, for example, of skills required by the former to those provided by the latter. Assignment takes into account the level of stress on the work item and/or resources, such that the number of resources fit for assignment varies as the level of stress varies. Systems according to the invention can be used, by way of example, to route a call or other request made by a customer to a service center. The requirements for processing the call (determined, for example, by an incoming call operator) are matched against the skill sets of available customer service agents, taking call and/or resource stress levels into account.

In view of these and other modifications, what we claim is: 
     
         1 . A method of assigning a work item to one or more resources from a set of plural resources, the method including the steps of
 evaluating a fitness of one or more skills any of required or desired (collectively for the claims that follow, “required”) by the work item with one or more skills provided by each of the plural resources, where the evaluation is a function of
 (a) a similarity between the one or more skills required by the work item and the one or more skills provided by each resource, and 
 (b) a stress factor, where the stress factor is a measure of stress on any of
 (i) one or more work items, 
 (ii) one or more resources, and 
 
   assigning the work item to a resource having at least a selected fitness, wherein the resources having at least the selected fitness varies as the stress factor varies.   
     
     
         2 - 59 . (canceled)