8. A system for assigning work in a customer support environment, comprising: a memory medium comprising program instructions; a bus coupled to the memory medium; and a processor, for executing the program instructions, coupled to a confidence factor management engine via the bus that when executing the program instructions causes the system to: receive a customer communication in a first language; detect a shortage of agents having the first language as a primary language; translate, in response to the shortage of agents, the customer communication into a second language; calculate a translation score based on a confidence in the translation, the confidence in the translation being based on a technical content of the customer communication; obtain a set of agents, each agent in the set of agents being a person that has a language proficiency in at least one of the first language or the second language and has a language proficiency score associated with the language proficiency, the language proficiency score being based on a measure of an ability of each agent to communicate in the first language or the second language and a technical skill set of each agent associated with a technical area of the customer communication, and each of the first language and second language being natural languages; calculate, for each agent, an associated confidence factor by combining the language proficiency score for the agent and the translation score; generate a threshold confidence factor curve comprising a first curve, having a first rate of decrease over a first wait time period of the customer communication, and a second curve, having a second rate of decrease over a second, subsequent wait time of the customer communication, the second rate of decrease being greater than the first rate of decrease and the threshold confidence factor curve being based on a priority of the customer communication; and assign, at a time, the customer communication to one of the set of agents to respond to the customer communication in a selected language based on the associated confidence factor being greater than the threshold confidence factor curve at the time.
8. A system for assigning work in a customer support environment, comprising: a memory medium comprising program instructions; a bus coupled to the memory medium; and a processor, for executing the program instructions, coupled to a confidence factor management engine via the bus that when executing the program instructions causes the system to: receive a customer communication in a first language; detect a shortage of agents having the first language as a primary language; translate, in response to the shortage of agents, the customer communication into a second language; calculate a translation score based on a confidence in the translation, the confidence in the translation being based on a technical content of the customer communication; obtain a set of agents, each agent in the set of agents being a person that has a language proficiency in at least one of the first language or the second language and has a language proficiency score associated with the language proficiency, the language proficiency score being based on a measure of an ability of each agent to communicate in the first language or the second language and a technical skill set of each agent associated with a technical area of the customer communication, and each of the first language and second language being natural languages; calculate, for each agent, an associated confidence factor by combining the language proficiency score for the agent and the translation score; generate a threshold confidence factor curve comprising a first curve, having a first rate of decrease over a first wait time period of the customer communication, and a second curve, having a second rate of decrease over a second, subsequent wait time of the customer communication, the second rate of decrease being greater than the first rate of decrease and the threshold confidence factor curve being based on a priority of the customer communication; and assign, at a time, the customer communication to one of the set of agents to respond to the customer communication in a selected language based on the associated confidence factor being greater than the threshold confidence factor curve at the time. 13. The system of claim 8 , wherein the proficiency score is based on one or more of: a skill set, a language set, a user-defined constraint, and a physical or logical location of the agent relative to the customer.