US Patent 9654640 Expert based customer service

In a crowd sourcing approach, responses to customer service inquiries are provided by providing the inquiries to an independent group of experts. These experts are typically able to resolve the inquiry before the inquiries are routed to a traditional contact center. The customer service inquiries are routed to specific experts based on matches between identified subject matter of the inquiries and expertise of the experts. In some embodiments, more than one expert can contribute to the resolution of an inquiry.