What is Automated Call Distribution?

Automated Call Distribution (ACD) is most commonly used for the technological solution that answers calls. But it also filters them and routes them to certain agents based on a pre-set of distribution rules. Doing this, the customer experience improves. Automated Call Distribution makes sure call systems won’t be overloading and that callers don’t end up in a continuous loop. Automated Call Distribution is also useful for handling inbound calls after business hours and to generate automated responses for FAQs. 

ACD typically uses a programmatically set of rules. These are based on multiple factors like time of day or amount of call traffic. But also on origin of the telephone number, same language, right skill-set, and more. Important queries go to their agent of choice. Others will be sent to overflow call centers, a voicemail or call back request. 

Other types of Automated Call Distribution are for example

-fixed (calls immediately routed to a group of agents)
-round-robin (callers routed in a loop to distribute evenly among agents)
-least-active (callers routed to the least active agent), and
-weighted distribution (calls routed to each agent, based on their own weight) 

Furthermore, CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) is able to link a company’s telecom to its CRM software. This allows for syncing and recognizing incoming calls in combination with ANI (Automatic Number Identification). This way, a company is able to immediately recognize calls from high priority customers and send them to their assigned account manager right away.