Multimedia automatic call distribution system

Claim 1

An automatic call distribution system for routing customer inquiries to one or more service agents, comprising: a plurality of agent terminals, coupled to a computer network; an automatic call distribution server, coupled to said computer network, that receives inquiries in a variety of media forms, determines when an agent terminal is available, and routes the multimedia inquiries to an available agent terminal; a gateway that receives telephonic inquiries on a public switched telephone network; and a gatekeeper coupled to the gateway for directing the telephonic inquiries from the gateway to said automatic call distribution server; a music/video server capable of providing music/video and announcements, coupled to the computer network, to which an inquiry can be routed by the automatic call distribution server when no agent terminals are available; a firewall server and Internet server coupled to the computer network that receives inquiries in a variety of media forms on an Internet Protocol network and routes said inquiries to the automatic call distribution server, that in turn routes the inquiries to an available agent terminal as determined by said automatic call distribution server; an e-mail server that receives e-mail messages from a customer that are routed by the automatic call distribution server to an available agent terminal; a web server that receives web requests, including a customer name and call back number from the Internet, the automatic call distribution server routing the web request to an available agent terminal; and a gateway coupled to the plurality of agent terminals and the automatic call distribution server, the CTI gateway monitoring the status of the plurality of agent terminals and informing the automatic call distribution server when an agent terminal is available.