cross-media queuing

Cross-media queuing is a call center technology that enables all incoming queries to be received and routed in the same way, whether a query comes in the form of a phone call, e-mail message, instant message, Web site submission, fax or interactive voice response (IVR) message.

According to a white paper by Intel, a cross-media queuing application needs five components:

• A queue engine to act as a central coordination point. The queue engine negotiates all interactions with customers based upon business rules configured by a systems manager.
• Media interaction modules to accept incoming customer queries from media channels and send the queries to agent applications as directed by the queue engine.
• Agent application modules to enable automatic management of customer queries as they arrive at the desktops call center agents. The modules could be modified or built by system developers to be integrated into specific desktop applications.
• Configuration and administration modules that system administrators can use to establish business rules for routing media configure and manage queuing features.
• A statistics and reporting module that records and reports upon the flow of communication as well as system performance.