# Routing Kustomer Voice calls by customer attribute

> You can route inbound Kustomer Voice conversations based on customer data such as tier VIP status region or lifetime value by combining  Assistant Rules  

Source: https://help.kustomer.com/en_us/routing-kustomer-voice-calls-by-customer-attribute-HkHCZF71zg

Last updated: 2026-05-14T17:24:39.862Z

You can route inbound Kustomer Voice conversations based on customer data, such as tier, VIP status, region, or lifetime value, by combining **Assistant Rules**, a **Voice Assistant / IVR**, **Transfer to agent** steps, **voice-enabled queues**, and **routing or skill configuration**.

Use this article to decide where each part of the routing logic should live: the assistant rule that starts the Voice Assistant, the IVR that captures caller intent, the queue that receives the conversation, and the routing configuration that offers the work item to eligible agents.

Routing behavior can vary based on your Voice Assistant setup, use case, and routing configuration. Always validate end-to-end flows in a test environment before making changes to production Voice Assistants or Voice Assistant Rules.

## In this article

*   [How Voice routing fits together](#how)
*   [Before you start](#before)
*   [Pattern: Use different Voice Assistants by customer segment](#customer-segment)
*   [Pattern: Use one IVR and route after transfer](#ivr-route)
*   [Pattern: Combine Assistant Rules and queue-level routing](#combine-rules-routing)
*   [Callers without a matched Customer record](#no-match)
*   [Fallback and no-input behavior](#fallback)
*   [Limitations and considerations](#limitations)

## How Voice routing fits together

Kustomer Voice routing is usually a layered flow:

1.  **Assistant Rules** evaluate inbound session and customer criteria and determine which assistant should start. For Voice, the assistant rule should target the **Voice** channel and select the appropriate **Voice Assistant** and start dialog.
2.  The **Voice Assistant / IVR** plays prompts, collects customer input, branches through the configured flow, and uses **Transfer to agent** when the caller should leave the IVR and enter routing.
3.  The **Transfer to agent** step sends the conversation to a **voice-enabled queue**. The queue must be configured to accept Voice conversations.
4.  **Routing, queue configuration, and skills** determine which eligible agents can receive the Voice work item.

A good design gives each layer one clear responsibility:

*   Use **Assistant Rules** to choose the right Voice Assistant for a broad audience.
*   Use the **Voice Assistant / IVR** to collect caller intent.
*   Use **Transfer to agent** to place the conversation into the correct voice-enabled queue.
*   Use **routing and skills** to determine agent eligibility and assignment.

## Before you start

Before building customer-attribute routing for Voice, confirm the following:

*   The attribute you want routing based on exists in Kustomer and is populated consistently. Use **Customer attributes** from the Customer record, such as `vipStatus`, `tier`, or `region`.
*   The target queue is configured as a **voice-enabled queue**.
*   Create a voice assistant to [play prompts](https://linear.app/kustomer/document/revised-33d055e8c5f4#create-a-voice-assistant-cad392d3) and accept customer input during each configuration path. 

You should also have a default path for unidentified callers and callers who do not match any high-priority rule.

## Pattern: Use different Voice Assistants by customer segment

Use this pattern when different customer segments need different greetings, menus, business logic, or escalation paths.

For example:

*   VIP customers hear a shorter IVR and transfer to a priority support queue.
*   Enterprise customers hear enterprise-specific menu options.
*   Trial customers hear a sales-assisted flow.
*   Customers in different regions hear localized prompts or route to regional queues.

### Create a voice assistant

You need a voice assistant you can use with voice interactions.

1.  In the left navigation, click **Settings**  
    ![](https://uploads.linear.app/5cb5da62-b74f-4af5-95a2-327d7871bce0/6d6ac387-8113-4e2a-996f-42a9aa762e34/80fab9cc-55a8-4088-9c1d-f2e7a5b2a685).
2.  From the Settings page, locate **Kustomer IQ** and click **Customer Assist**.
3.  Click + **Add Assistant.** This tutorial will walk through creating an assistant. 
4.  Click **Create from scratch**. Select the **Lite** assistant. **Lite** assistants can:
    1.  Collects the customer's phone number and performs a lookup to check for a matching customer record.
    2.  Perform specific agent or voice queue transfers, which add callers to specific queues or connect them to specific human reps.
    3.  Route conversations based on dialog flow via IVR routing through Kustomer Voice.
5.  Select the **Voice** channel, then click **Continue**. 
6.  Enter a name for the assistant. 
7.  Decide if you want to turn on the inactive customer reminder, then click **Add Assistant** to complete setup.

### Route segments to different voice assistants

With an assistant made, you're ready to create a rule that handles routing. 

1.  Go to **Customer Assist > Rules**.
2.  Click **Voice** and then create an **Assistant Rule**. If you are doing more than one segment, you will need one rule per segment. 
3.  Define rule settings:
    1.  Select **Voice** as the channel.
    2.  Select the **Phone** number you want to use for this rule. 
    3.  Select the **Assistant** and the **Starting Dialog** that should run when the rule matches.
4.  Add criteria using the relevant **Customer**or supported custom data fields.
    1.  Criteria matches based on ANY/ALL logic. 
    2.  You can combine ANY and ALL. 
    3.  See [Using Matches All and Matches Any in Filters](https://kustomer.kustomer.help/en_us/using-matches-all-and-matches-any-in-filters-HkZ7kmAbg).
5.  In that Voice Assistant, configure the IVR flow and [add a **Transfer to agent** step](https://help.kustomer.com/en_us/set-up-voice-assistant-rJNZl9DUp#interactions) that sends the conversation to the correct voice-enabled queue, or follows configured routing rules.
6.  If using multiple rules, order them from most specific to most general.
7.  Save and test each segment with a caller that matches the expected Customer data.

**Note:** Once a phone number is provisioned, it is live and available for testing purposes. 

Example rule patterns:

*   `Customer.vipStatus` is `true` → start the VIP Voice Assistant.
*   `Customer.tier` is `Enterprise` → start the Enterprise Voice Assistant.
*   `Customer.region` is `EMEA` → start the EMEA Voice Assistant.

This approach keeps segment-specific prompts and menus out of a single overloaded IVR.

## Pattern: Use one IVR and route after transfer

Use this pattern when callers should hear the same IVR, but downstream handling differs by customer data, queue, skill, or team.

For example, every caller hears:

> Thanks for calling Acme Support.  
> Press 1 for order support.  
> Press 2 for returns.  
> Press 3 for sales.

After the caller selects an option, the Voice Assistant transfers the conversation to a queue. From there, routing configuration and skills determine which agents are eligible to receive the call.

### To use a single Voice assistant, and segment calls by queue

1.  Create one **Voice Assistant**. The IVR prompts created here will be heard by all customers calling in. 
2.  For each IVR branch that should route to a team of reps, add a **Transfer to agent** step.
3.  Select a **voice-enabled queue** for the transfer.
4.  Use customer or conversation attributes in a **Conditional branch** as queue-rule criteria when you need additional segmentation during the IVR pathing. The IVR checks for these attributes during this branch, and either matches according to whether ANY or ALL match. 
5.  Test each IVR option with customers who represent each routing scenario.

Use this pattern when the caller experience is mostly the same, but rep assignment should differ.

## Pattern: Combine Assistant Rules and queue-level routing

For more complex Voice implementations, combine both approaches:

1.  Use **Assistant Rules** to select a baseline Voice Assistant for a broad segment, such as VIP, Enterprise, SMB, or region.
2.  Use the **Voice Assistant / IVR** to collect intent, such as billing, returns, order status, or sales.
3.  Use **Transfer to agent** to send the conversation to the correct voice-enabled queue.
4.  Use routing configuration, queue settings, and skills to refine agent eligibility.

Skills are assigned to human reps. Skills can be configured as _preferred_ or _required_, depending on your routing setup. Required skills restrict assignment to reps who have that skill; non-required skills may allow fallback to other eligible available reps.

A timeout (which is configurable) will also reroute a conversation if that timeout threshold is met, but this option is off by default.

Document which attributes are evaluated at each layer. For example:

Layer

Example responsibility

Assistant Rule

Determine whether the caller receives the VIP, Enterprise, or default Voice Assistant

Voice Assistant / IVR

Ask the caller why they are calling

Transfer to agent

Send the conversation to the correct voice-enabled queue

Routing and skills

Offer the [work item](https://help.kustomer.com/en_us/work-item-attributes-HkfhPjXdq) to the correct available rep or team.

This prevents duplicate or conflicting routing logic across assistant rules, IVR branches, and queue configuration.

## Callers without a matched Customer record

Rules that depend on Customer attributes generally cannot match those attributes when Kustomer cannot identify the caller as a caller with matching attributes. If the caller isn't added to a company, doesn't exist yet in Kustomer, or has no VIP tier assigned to it, that caller becomes unmatched. 

Plan a default experience for unmatched callers:

*   A default Voice Assistant.
*   A general support IVR path.
*   A fallback voice-enabled queue.

Put the most specific Assistant Rules above broader unmatched caller rules, so high-priority callers match the correct rule first.

## Fallback and no-input behavior

Configure fallback paths for callers who do not provide valid input. When using the **Collect customer input** dialog option in your assistant, select your intended behavior. You can create dialogs specifically for this option, such as "we're sorry, we were unable to find your order ID by that number". 

When creating your IVR assistant:

*   Use Collect customer input, then configure the **No Customer input** option. 
*   Select a prompt to send the customer to next. Options include:
    *   Select **None** from **No customer input**, which will inform the caller their prompt was invalid and ask them to re-enter. This repeats until the threshold is met. Once this threshold (of 3 repeats) is met, the user will be either sent to voicemail or transferred to a separate rep. 
    *   Adding a new dialog, where you can use any of the branch options available in the IVR, such as a new **Play prompt** with additional **Collect customer input** prompts, etc.
    *   Sending the customer back to the initial (or another existing) prompt in this IVR branch sequence. 

Depending on your Voice Assistant configuration, fallback behavior may include:

*   Repeating the prompt.
*   Sending the caller to a general support queue.
*   Offering voicemail.

Avoid IVR paths that can loop indefinitely. After repeated invalid or missing input, use **No customer input** to transfer the caller to a fallback queue or another supported fallback outcome.

**Note:** Toggle **Inactive customer reminder** to on. This option prevents customers from looping through your IVR system when entering incorrect prompts or remaining idle on the phone. 

## Limitations and considerations

Before going live, plan for these constraints:

*   **Voice queues must support Voice conversations.** Do not route a Voice transfer to a queue that is not voice-enabled.
*   **Customer-attribute matching requires a matched Customer record.** If the caller is unidentified, Customer-based rules may not match.
*   **Deep conditional IVR logic can become hard to maintain.** If many customer segments need different journeys, use multiple Voice Assistants or queue-based segmentation instead of building one large IVR.
*   **Mid-call assistant switching is not the standard design pattern.** Design the call path so the selected Voice Assistant can complete the caller journey or transfer to an agent.
*   **Edition and feature availability may vary.** Confirm that your Kustomer Voice edition and enabled features support the routing pattern before documenting or promising it externally.

##