US Patent 9871927 Complexity aware call-steering strategy in heterogeneous human/machine call-center environments

A method for routing calls suited to use in a call center includes receiving a call from a customer, extracting features from an utterance of the call, and, based on the extracted features, predicting a class and a complexity of a dialog to be conducted between the customer and an agent. With a routing model, a routing strategy is generated for steering the call to one of a plurality of types of agent (such as to a human or a virtual agent), based on the predicted class and complexity of the dialog and a cost assigned to the type of agent. A first of the plurality of types of agent is assigned a higher cost than a second of the types of agent. The routing strategy is output.