Patent ID: 8913736

Claim:
A method to assign a contact to one of a set of undifferentiated agents, comprising: describing substantially each undifferentiated agent by use of at least one agent attribute to produce a set of agent attribute values; describing a contact by use of at least one contact attribute to produce a set of contact attribute values; relating the set of agent attribute values to the set of contact attribute values to produce at least one preferred agent; determining an expected wait time for substantially each of the at least one preferred agent, to produce an expected wait time for a next preferred agent to become available; retrieving, by a processor from a computer-readable memory storage, historical information for the contact; determining a quantifiable wait tolerance for the contact by use of the historical information; if the expected wait time for the next preferred agent to become available is less than the wait tolerance, then wait to assign the contact to the at least one preferred agent; and if the expected wait time for the at least one preferred agent is not less than the wait tolerance, then assign the contact to an undifferentiated agent.