Easy Guide On Usage Of ACD in Contact Centers

Automatic Call Distribution is an essential feature of contact center software. It is responsible for queue management and responsibly distributing all incoming calls to relevant agents. If you are in the customer support industry, then you already might have heard about ACD. In fact, the most common question that our sales team keeps getting asked is how an ACD works. So, we decided to put together a blog on it.

Content:

1. How Does ACD Work In A Contact Center?

2. Various Types Of ACD In A Contact Center

ACD Software is a type of call routing, that is based on preset factors. When a customer calls, the IVR Solution first collects the customer’s information and intent. Then it routes the customer based on the gathered information, to the relevantly skilled agent. For example, if I am calling Uber in regard to a payment refund, the ACD will route me to an agent who deals with these issues every day. Let’s discuss these in more technical terms.

How Does ACD Work In A Contact Center?
The Automatic Call Distribution System is set up in three steps. Each step contributes to routing the customer to the correct agents, separating this feature from a standard PBX setup. The three steps involved are:

• Gathering Caller Intent
• Call Queuing
• Call Routing

As the name suggests, first the customer’s information is gathered, then the customer call is entered into the queue and finally the call is routed to the available agent.

Gathering Caller Intent:
As a customer of any brand, we have heard these words “Please press 1 for product-related issues. Please press 2 for the billing-related issues.” This is the IVR Solutions collecting relevant information about the customer. Smart IVR can recognize the phone number and run it across the database to identify the customer and their preferred language. In other cases, customers are asked to verify their information either by typing in their number or account id.

Once this is done, the IVR Calling System will ask what is the customer’s request and which internal department it concern. With this data, the ACD for Contact Center will come into play to route the call to the most capable agent.

Call Queuing:
In a typical business hour, call volume is obviously going to be high. In such cases, the callers are added to a queue. It is possible that two or more customers need help with refunds at the same time. In this case, based on the number of agents available, the ACD will place the caller in a queue.

This caller will have to wait in the queue and it depends on:

• Waiting time
• Customer query type
• Agent status
• Agent performance

Sometimes Automatic Call Distribution is configured to prioritize VIP customers. All these micro-adjustments of the campaign are possible to create the ideal queue for your contact center. Over 60% of customers say they’re not willing to wait on hold for even one minute.

There is additional functionality of call deflection that can always be added for contact centers with high call volume, or for peak hours. In that case the call can get disconnected and the caller can be now be connected over SMS or WhatsApp.

Call Routing:
The most important step of the ACD Software structure is call routing. This is where the magic happens. The automatic call distributor function can now be used to route the calls to your agents based on preference. At the routing end, you can assign agents as per your internal parameters. For example, if a supervisor wants to reduce incoming calls for a fresher, then most calls will be routed to experienced employees only by providing weightage to the skills. Or more calls can be routed to agents who have less average handling time and so on. The call routing policy can be set by the supervisor and agents can be assigned weightage based of skill level.

Various Types Of ACD In Call Center
The calls can be distributed as per the supervisor’s preference. In fact, there are some popular types of distribution modules that are used. These types of call distributors are often focused on enhancing agent productivity, or supporting any specific campaign.

Round-Robin Distribution:
We are pretty familiar with the round-robin format. Similarly, the Contact Center Agents are put in numerical order and the calls are distributed accordingly. The calls keep getting assigned one by one. Once the last agent has received the call, the next caller is again routed to the first agent. This goes in a cycle and is also called Rotary call distributor.

Simultaneous call distributor:
This is a ring-all method, where the agenda is to reduce customers’ waiting time. The ACD Software will ring all the agents’ phones simultaneously until one of them responds. When an agent responds, immediately the second call on queue is sent to the remaining available agents.

Talk-time-based call distributor:
This model is aimed at a fair distribution of workload amongst agents, while also boosting their productivity. The agent with the lowest amount of talk time will be given the next call. This is done to ensure that every agent is equally productive.

Skill-Based Routing:
If you remember the IVR Calling System asking about your language preference, then you have been in the queue of skill-based routing. Based on your inputs, the automatic call distributor will determine your needs and route you to the most suitable agent.

The agents are preemptively scored in regard to several factors such as language choice, language proficiency, response time, expertise, and average call handling time. The ACD, before routing, will prioritize agents whose scores will match the needs of the customer.

Every contact center manager can do an internal study and figure out which skills are important for the brand. Based on those, prioritize the relevant factors and score your agents accordingly. This allows the customer to reach the most capable agent that can help them. ACD System manages all the important reports of the contact center software right from call detail reports, login logout reports to queue reports, and many more. Truly, it is the heart of the contact center software platform.

Conclusion:

ACD for Contact Center are essential for a jam-packed contact center environment. Routing customers to the relevant department saves on talk-time credits and other resources. Hence, it is advised to learn in-depth about how ACDs work. How they can be integrated with multiple contact center tools like voicemails, call back features, CTI or Helpdesk CRM. For more information on ACDs, schedule a call back with our experts.