Reduce Unanswered Calls in the Call Center

    Callers are very sensitive to any amount of dead air when calling a call center.  Call center software must not leave the caller listening to nothing while look-ups are done on caller phone numbers.  Customers may hang-up even when presented with a few seconds of silence, latency is unacceptable. There is an easy way to avoid this problem.  This solution immediately reduced unanswered calls by 5-10% when deployed at SelectQuote Insurance Services.
    I say it's easy, but perhaps it bears repeating.  Because many times when I call and get an Interactive Voice Response system, either the IVR has no idea who I am, even though I'm in the company's database, or I do get dead air while it looks me up.  The simple way to avoid this is to do look-ups concurrently with the welcome message.

Communication and the Programmer

    In many cases, technical solutions alone will not get the job done.  A good example from my past experience was a case where are sales agents were not able to answer even half of incoming advertising calls during peak season.  This was the case at SelectQuote when I took over the call center programming.
    I've covered an interesting part of my technical implementation elsewhere, but this project would not have succeeded on technical merits alone.  This serves as a good example of why a good programmer needs to be able to talk to the other areas of the organization in their language, and make suggestions, not just fill requests.
    It appeared many agents were sort of cherry picking the calls during high volume. Now this could easily be come a volatile situation, if looked at only from a technical perspective. After all, agents are the ones making money for the organization.

Big Data

    Big Data is here in a big way.  Increasingly, companies are wishing to utilize the massive amounts of data stored on web users today.  For example, think how much data is stored in the Facebook Open Graph.  Another example would be the structure of the web itself, which is important to companies like search engines. 
    One of the best signs that Big Data is entering the mainstream is the number of tools growing around the popular NoSQL data platform Hadoop.  Vendors of Business Intelligence products and open source projects like Apache Hive are seeking to put a SQL or standard reporting interface on top of the underlying data cluster.  Once we have the SQL interface it's easy to imagine using tools like Hibernate to put another layer of indirection on top of that data.
    So, in the very near future we may have the average developer performing operations on data stored on large clusters of machinery using plain old objects to access the underlying store.  We all know abstractions sometimes leak, however.  What may separate the master programmer from the competent journeyman is the ability to understand what's going on underneath all this abstraction.

Call Spikes and Mechanical Engineering

Modeling a call spike as damped motion

    I am a mechanical engineer by formal education, and this sometimes allows me to look at problems in software from a different perspective.  A good example is the treatment of call spikes within a call center. Queuing theory is fairly well developed, but many of its formulas, such as Erlang-C, assume a steady state.  In a sales call center steady-state often does not exist; the call volume is dominated by spikes which occur when commercials air.
   Call spikes present a special problem.  Any overflow treatment can easily come too late, if this treatment is based on the number of calls in queue.  This is because there will be a large number of calls already at the IVR receiving the welcome message by the time and the queue reaches the trigger length.  Therefore it is desirable to throttle the rate incoming calls are accepted before hitting the absolute queue limits for the call center.

SelectQuote Insurance Feeling the Effects

     Perhaps the most important measure of this blog's success is change within SelectQuote Insurance.  I overheard threats to harm my two-year-old, apparently for financial gain.  It is difficult to measure how much their attitudes have changed since then, but the following signs, which occurred since the blog started, offer hope:

1. Manager involved is no longer with SelectQuote.
2. Jong Lee, the beneficiary of the plot, no longer is committing code for SelectQuote.
3. SelectQuote registered the plural form of my domain, and began posting there.  It is costing them time and money to combat me.
4. Dirty and desperate actions, e.g., fake accounts in my name, were rooted out and are backfiring.

Libertarianism and Snake Handling

    As a Libertarian, I feel the government should not regulate consensual acts.  Usually, this means I'm speaking out in favor of legalizing vice.  I'd like to mix things up and speak about legalizing what is arguably a virtue.  Mark 16: 17-18, in every translation I've come across, gives Jesus as saying that picking up snakes and drinking deadly poison without harm is a sign of those that believe.
    A small minority of Christians take this literally and test their faith with deadly vipers and strychnine.  Except in West Virginia, their religious practice is outlawed.  Coming from the life insurance industry, people can risk their lives in all sorts of ways - alcohol, tobacco, aviation, bungee jumping, and even scuba diving (the underwriters are not found of that one).  If an adult wants to handle a snake, is the government right to outlaw their religion?  Or from a more left leaning cannabis-is-natural perspective - rattlesnakes are natural, too.
    I do not handle snakes, and I'm not recommending that everyone does so. These people don't die that often, considering they go to church twice a week and handle rattlers, copperheads, and cottonmouths.  Some drink poison, too.  Consider that one fellow near Jolo has been bitten 168 times, and does not seek medical attention.  I don't think their explanation should be dismissed out of hand.  Have a look at this video from the BBC...

    Now, I know some of you feel these people detract from other Christians.  I'd like you to consider something: 
    Not long after 9/11, I saw performance art by a reverend (Leyba) in the Church of Satan. He was protesting the Patriot Act, which I also disagreed with.  He was spouting off about being a terrorist, getting cut up, and eventually attempted to sodomize himself with a crucifix dildo as a metaphor for taking your kids to church.

Clearly not sodomy, (or serpent handling)

    It's not like his points went over my head, they went well under my feet.  I was not alone in my assessment.  One thing I have to say about him, at least I walked away knowing I didn't agree.  He's pretty straight-up about it.  Even so, is sodomy really an apt metaphor for taking kids to church?  The serpent handlers make their point in a rather hardcore way, but I'd suggest to you that the other team is offensive, mainly because they like to be.
    A little Googling will reveal that Leyba is pretty much a critic's darling.  The reviews often come down to pointing out how shocking and hardcore he is.  Yes, here in Babylon the Great, we do have a well-liked Satanist doing some shocking things.  I'd like to point out, that over in Appalachia, there are some Christians being hardcore as well.  Leyba's popularity with the critics suggests that doing something out of the ordinary gains converts.  Well, to me handling venomous snakes week after week is more incredible than blood, urine, feces, and sodomy - which all are present in Leyba's work.     
    Many would deride these Extreme Worshipers of God, and suggest they are uneducated relics of a bygone era.  Well, I'd like to point out, with the notable exception of the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus (Paul the Apostle), many early Christian leaders did not have a great deal of formal education.  While it is true that Paul did write much of the New Testament, the others did much work for the Lord as well, through the strength of their convictions and their work on the ground.  So, I like to suggest that other Christians should tolerate the Signs Following (serpent handling) movement, and recognize that they perhaps are an answer to some of the tactics used by those opposed to God.
    We're talking about trying to kill a little girl, for money.  While they hide it better than Leyba, they also achieve their objective by acting totally beyond the pale.  Like the Satanists, their means completely overshadow whatever ends they hope to achieve. 
    What I'm saying is there are many things in the world to be offended by, pick your battles.  The Signs Followers should be free to practice their uncompromising interpretation of the Word of God.