Can users be given the choice between a man and a woman when seeking product support/services? [closed]

Question

Can users be given the choice between a man and a woman when seeking product support/services? I would like to ensure that such a UX feature can be provided without the product being thought of in a sexist way.

Men and women are both capable of providing the user with an equal support/service experience. But I sometimes might prefer speaking with a woman, and other times prefer speaking with a man when it involves getting product support or theoretically any type of service.

This is not a sexist preference, but rather a social one - as you'll see, both in the subject of the question and the following two examples, service quality is precisely the same, regardless of the gender chosen.

A simple example:

Just think of choosing between a male and female voice on your GPS; a commonly accepted UX feature. Perhaps when the GPS has been programmed with a list of personality options, that will come into the scope of the user's decision.

Or rather, for a more accurate example, involving human services:

Imagine I own an online styling advice app. Users can get fashion advice from professional stylists at any time. I might match women with women, because women might feel more understood by female designers, even though both our male and female designers receive identical training. Or perhaps certain women might feel more understood or comfortable with a male designer's advice. Perhaps I would give them a choice.

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The reason I ask is because I have not yet seen this done in the context of human product support / services and would like to confirm the appropriateness of this UX decision with other enthusiasts before implementing it into a product.

Answer 1

What’s next, though? “I’d like to speak to a woman or a gay man. A straight guy with professional training would also be okay. And please no out-sourced call center in India.”

I believe the most important thing in handling support is that the customer trusts in the experience of the service person. Sex or gender is relevant sometimes, e.g. in a pregnancy forum or a domestic abuse hotline, but usually it is not.

Nevertheless, users may feel more comfortable to communicate with certain personas, but they’ll not necessarily have to match their own bio. That’s the reason for the infamous Indian call center agents who have to pose as Murkins. It’s also a point to consider when designing avatars and user names for moderators and administrators in a chat room or forum etc., and voices in speech synthesis.

It’s usually not sensible to ask directly for a certain attribute the person at the other end should have. In some cases you could instead offer a selection of (possibly fake) names or avatars for the customer to contact.

Answer 2

I'm not going to accept my own answer here, but would be interested to see how its received.

After contemplating Crissov's helpful answer, I really like the idea of providing the user with a selection of cartooned (but similar) avatars of the service / support agents that are available. If the avatars do a fair job of capturing the representative's persona, that's all the user needs to select the personality that he decides he'd prefer to speak with at the moment.

Rather than presenting the selection as gender profiles, friendly avatars for service agents offers a simple, harmless approach at meeting the user's preference.

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These avatars could be presented in a number of ways (note that the avatar should be less realistic and more cartooned to avoid attractiveness being taken into account):

"There are 5 support agents ready to assist you, select any agent to begin a chat session."

or

"This agent is ready to assist you, are you ready to begin?" and you're given the option to skip (after which you'll have to wait longer) or begin.

If you skip, great, the person waiting behind you is happy. You're happy to wait until an agent pops up that seems like a good fit for you right now. Or maybe you're busy with the kids and need to wait another minute or so. The support agent is happy to get a customer who preferred to speak with him/her.

If you're like many people and don't care which representative you speak with, the process doesn't really bother you. On the bright side, you chose to speak with the representative, and even if that choice was only a subconscious one, it was still a choice, and people seem to enjoy having the freedom to choose.

In the end, everyone is happy. That sounds like great UX to me.

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What about product support / services over the phone?

I think the same principle applies here, except with the service agent's voice.

"I'm Sandy, if you're ready to begin, say 'Begin'. If not, say 'Wait', and another agent will assist you momentarily."

Answer 3

Would gender play as big a factor as wanting to speak with a "helpful", however a customer will define this, representative?

Why do we need to know the gender?

It might be better to display the name/username of the agent so the customer knows they're actually connecting to a person on the other end. Knowing their name also makes it easier to reach out to them again in the future. It'll build better customer relationships if you allow customer to select the same support person. They might remember your last support issue and be able to assist you more effectively this time around.

Of course this is only true if you have a small enough group of support reps that a customer can effectively request a specific rep and they call in often enough to warrant building a good relationship.