Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) systems are widely used in telephony applications to efficiently route calls among a number of contact agents. ACD systems can be thought of as the telephone switchboard operators of yesteryear who were in charge of answering every call and connecting callers with their desired call recipients.
In the past, ACD systems consisted of hardware devices that interacted with analog switches and phone lines to efficiently route callers of 411 and 911 systems. ACD systems these days are part of advanced hosted call center software solutions like Telax ACD.
The use of ACD systems in modern contact centers has become an intrinsic part of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) business process. Advances in technology have customers nowadays expecting maximum efficiency from contact centers. Each communication that takes place between the customer and the provider of goods or services is vital to the CRM process. Thanks to ACD systems, business managers can easily boost the efficiency of their contact center processes, thereby improving the customer experience.
Telax acd, for example, is part of a low-cost hosted software solution for contact centers that harnesses the power of cloud computing. With this ACD system, a call center manager can input a variety of parameters that will influence how calls are routed. These variable parameters are analyzed by an ACD algorithm that determines who is the best agent available to take a call. As calls are routed by the ACD, the system constantly monitors certain factors such as idle time, shrinkage and after-call work before routing the next call.
For busy contact centers that are focused on keeping both average call and hold times low, ACD systems are the perfect solution. A simple Interactive Voice Response (IVR) procedure can gather enough information from the caller to immediately route the call to the appropriate agent. But not all calls have to be answered by an IVR; thanks to predictive dialing technology, ACD systems can properly route calls by looking at the caller ID information or the number dialed. For example, customers who need to be helped in different languages can be given a separate phone number, and the ACD system will route their calls when an agent who is skilled in that language is available. Or, more intuitively, an agent can make a note of the customer’s language preference in the CRM system and the ACD feature can “magically” route the call the next time that customer calls.
ACD systems also help call center managers in their decision-making process with powerful measurement features for time accounting. ACD reporting provides useful benchmarks such as average handle time, after call work, break time, and others to provide a realistic view of agents’ performance.