Contact ratios by gender – anyone have any information?

[cclegg06]

WeÂ’re trying to figure out if call center contacts are equally distributed among men and women. Does anyone have any information on the ratio of male vs. female callers? Would you say itÂ’s 50/50, 40/60, 25/75?

If you know of a source we could investigate, that would be helpful also.

Thanks!

[Michcall]

If you are talking about what % of callers into a call center are male vs. female, that would really depend on the product/service/company the caller is interested in. I don't think you can ask this question in generalities.

In my experience, I've seen both extremes plus the middle ground. I worked in the auto retail sector where calls were fairly evenly distributed between males and females when it came to shopping for vehicles or getting help with service. In the support of PC equipment/components male callers were more prevalent. In mailorder order entry, callers were more frequently female.

I'm sure there are studies out there that discuss communication channel preferences based on gender, but asking individual call centers will not get you the overall view you are looking for. Try Purdue University and Dr. Jon Anton. He may have some stats related to this issue.

[cclegg06]

We conducted a general market study where we asked, “Did you contact a company for help?” We captured over 800 responses from across all industries and 25.4% of our respondents were male, 74.6% were female. We were questioning whether or not we should weight the results by gender. And If yes, should we use US Census data as the base for weighting or some other figure.

We found some sources in the call center hardware sales industry who said the 25/75 split was fairly close to what their clients stated was the norm. Therefore we decided not to weight the data.

What do you think? Was this a mistake or should we let the chips fall where they may seeing that it varies by industry so greatly. If you were judging the merit of a report, would you believe it of lesser value because women respondents outweighed men 3 to 1?

On a side note, there is little to no difference between men and women when it comes to their opinion about a call experience (tested with Chi-Square). Therefore, even if we did weight the results, there would be no impact to the studies findings or conclusions.

Thanks again for the feedback. I welcome anyoneÂ’s opinion on the matter.

BTW: you can read about the report at:
http://www.portlandresearch.com/newweb/report.htm

WeÂ’re not due to release it until later in the week so if anyone has any thoughts, we could still integrate them into the final product.

Thanks again.

[VADIR]

I think that should let the chips fall where they may based on variance by industry.

I think it would be worth noting as a limitation to the study and a possible driver for future studies.