Revolutionizing DEFINITY® call centers in the 1990s

The award-winning AT&T DEFINITY® G3 Expert Agent Selection (EAS) feature has fundamentally changed the way in which call centers provide services for a variety of business applications. The skills-matching concept of EAS simplifies the problem of meeting incoming caller needs with trained call center agents. The Logical Agent part of EAS provides call center agents with an incentive for advancement while also providing newfound flexibility in how they perform their jobs. Both these EAS innovations are patented, with the skills-matching patent winning the 1995 AT&T Patent Recognition Award. This paper describes how EAS improves the efficiency of call centers, and it discusses the implementation approach used to realize this important new call center feature.