Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)

Author: CCa2z

Date: 12th November 2004

Automatic Call Distributors (ACDs) have been around for a long time now, however, they still remain the basic building block in all call centres today. An ACD has two crucial roles, routing and reporting. The routing part delivers your customer calls (or contacts) to the most appropriate agent in a timely manner, while the reporting part provides detailed statistical information for supervisors and management. This creates an opportunity for a basic feedback loop to optimise service levels against staffing levels. The early ACD systems revolutionised the way companies interacted with their customers, giving birth to the customer service revolution that is still maturing today.

ACDs have come a long way since the early 80's when they were big, expensive, proprietary boxes that only large organisations could afford. Today, most ACDs are software based residing on PBXs or stand-alone servers. This has opened the market for competition with many new vendors providing software-only solutions and so reducing both set up costs and the cost of ownership. With the advent of IP telephony, call centre software is available to a distributed workforce across many locations. This is reversing the trend to centralise agents into large centres, allowing companies to disperse their agents and address skill shortages in local areas.

Using ACD's to Improve Customer Service

ACDs are not restricted to formal, dedicated call centres, big or small. They are found in many organisations and many departments aiming to improve customer service to internal 'customers' as well as external customers and suppliers. This drive to improve communication and efficiency requires sophisticated routing software that can identify the reason for the call, or better still who the caller is, and route them to the correct person or department.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to balance customer service levels with operational costs. Management Information Systems (MIS) are key to the success of a call centre or customer service strategy by providing metrics in many areas of the call centre. These will include customer experience measurements such as call answer times and call abandon rates as well as agent performance stats including calls answered, agent talk times and off call time.

Routing - a Key Differentiator

A key differentiator with ACD vendor products is the ability to route calls more effectively. The minimum requirement today is 'Skills Based Routing' software, which matches a caller's 'needs' (identified by dialled number, CLI, IVR digits or speech recognition) to an agent's 'skills' (identified by skill association and competency level). More advanced call centres are using sophisticated algorithms such as service level routing, which use predictive software to ensure an acceptable service level is provided to all call types rather than just the high profile customers. Other applications can hold a call for a few extra seconds in order to get the 'best' agent for the caller.

Selecting the Right ACD

Selecting the right ACD for your organisation is crucial to the overall success of the call centre, key areas to consider are as follows:

  • Reliability and security - your call centre is the 'voice' of your organisation and as such is a mission critical asset. Care should be taken to ensure that the chosen ACD provides telephony grade 'five nines' resilience. It should also be adequately protected against viruses and denial of service attacks.
  • Flexibility - every call centre requires a unique set of routing plans tailored to the business objectives of the organisation. Without adequate flexibility your routing plans will be limited by the ACD vendor's interpretation of how an ACD should route calls. Remember, Skills Based Routing is a must in today's call centre.
  • Reporting - all ACD vendors will provide statistics on calls handled and agent performance and the difference between them is often difficult to spot. Unfortunately the devil is in the detail here but minimum requirements should include Graphical Reports, Custom Reporting, Drill Down facilities and Visual thresholds. (Sabio)

Share this
email this page to a friend print this page