Symbol-based communication routing

A computer-implemented method of efficiently and correctly routing electronic communications between a first party and a second party in a distributed computing system that includes a plurality of servers, the computer-implemented method comprising:

• receiving, at the distributed computing system and from a computing device of a first party via a computer network, an indication that an electronic communication is to be sent from the first party to a second party, wherein the computing device of the first party is remote from the distributed computing system, and wherein the computer network includes the Internet;
• for the electronic communication from the first party to the second party, generating, by the distributed computing system, a code that encodes an index into data stored on a data storage device, wherein data stored at the index on the data storage device specifies a communication routing between the first party and the second party;
• embedding, by the distributed computing system, the code into the electronic communication, wherein embedding the code into the electronic communication includes adding the code to a hidden Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) field of the electronic communication;
• causing, by the distributed computing system, the electronic communication with the embedded code to be routed to a computing device of the second party via the computer network, wherein the computing device of the second party is remote from the distributed computing system;
• receiving, at the distributed computing system and from the computing device of the second party via the computer network, a response to the electronic communication, wherein the response to the electronic communication includes the code that encodes the index into the data stored on the data storage device;
• decoding, by the distributed computing system, the code included in the response to the electronic communication to determine the index into the data stored on the data storage device;
• querying, by the distributed computing system, the data stored on the data storage device based on the determined index to retrieve the data stored at the index on the data storage device;
• analyzing, by the distributed computing system, the data stored at the index on the data storage device to determine the communication routing;
• and
• causing, by the distributed computing system, the response to the electronic communication to be routed to the computing device of the first party based on the communication routing, at least by
• analyzing the data stored at the index on the data storage device to determine a preferred format of the response,
• identifying that the response is in a first format, different than the preferred format, and
• converting the response from the first format into a converted response in the preferred format.