Should you use demographics in contact center agent routing?

resolve the customer issue and additionally have specific personal attributes to appeal to specific customers.

An example would be a customer who is a 65-year-old male from the Midwest who is calling customer service with an issue regarding the use of a product. Initially, the call will be presented to a product specialist who can assist in explaining how to use the product to the customer (skill-based routing).  Within that group of specialists, the call would then be routed to agents who have the most success working with 65-year-old males from the Midwest (demographic-based routing).

This strategy can provide both an opportunity to satisfy a customer’s needs and a “wow” experience. 

Current contact center technology can provide the basic infrastructure, using a variety of routing rules, to support this strategy. 

Demographic-based routing is a strategy with great potential, but there are a number of practical challenges that exist including the following:

• Correlating key customer data demographics with agent attributes that lead to success
• Determining tradeoffs, such as a customer waiting in queue longer to be routed to agents with specific attributes
• Prioritizing routing rules based on both agent skills and customer demographics
• Calculating and justifying the benefit of a demographic-based routing strategy

Demographic-based routing may have a place in the contact center, but at the end of the day, the most critical success factor will be whether the agent resolved the customer’s issue.