ACD System Features | Call Center Telephone System

Here are some of the system features you may find on an ACD:

Routing

Inbound Call Routing

The heart of any inbound Call Center operation is Inbound Call Routing. There are two phases of inbound call routing: routing to a group, and then routing to a specific agent within a group. Inbound Call Routing uses intelligent programming to recognize and accommodate Call Center traffic and agent performance. The system may have the flexibility to:

• Anticipate changing traffic and performance patterns, respond to unanticipated changes in traffic or agent performance and play announcements at any point.

• Route callers to voice processing devices such as IVRs, Fax Servers or Voice Mail equipment, always providing the caller the option to return to his place in queue.

• Recognize priority callers.

• Advise callers of the number of callers ahead of them or anticipated time before they will be answered.

• Put a pause in inbound routing until some predefined event occurs or some period of time passes. Queue calls to multiple groups simultaneously, including groups at remote centers and agents at home.

• Permit supervisor, administrator or management to make changes as needed.

• Most Call Centers try to distribute calls evenly among all agents within a group. However, there are instances where some agents are better prepared than others. For example, when new agents are added to a more experienced group, management wants the better-qualified agents to handle more calls than the new agents. Several different schemes can be used for selecting an agent within a group:

  1. Top down/bottom up

  2. Longest idle

  3. Agent priority (based on experience or skill set)

  4. A combination of longest idle and agent priority

  5. Performance Parameters & Thresholds

Skills Based Routing

In some incoming call centers, instead of routing the callers to the agent who has been idle the longest, routing is affected by the agent skills required to handle the call. Callers can be sent to the agent best qualified to help them, according to a set of predefined parameters. The caller's needs can be determined by what number he called, what number he is calling from or what option he selected from an automated announcement menu presented to him before being sent to an agent. If a caller waits too long for a specifically skilled agent to be available, the system may be programmed to send him to a less qualified person, rather than waiting indefinitely. Skills based routing is routinely used in Help Desk Call centers where callers are looking for help with the operation of software programs. The ACD attempts to route the caller to the agent most skilled in the program with which they need help.

Overflow

Overflow is a feature that recognizes when agents in one group are backlogged, then reroutes calls to another group that may have fewer calls waiting. In the best implementations, the call volume/performance analysis is done automatically and continually in real time, freeing supervisors and management personnel from minute-by-minute monitoring of each groups call volume.

Night Service

The majority of Call Centers, including those that work a 24-hour day, notice a significant difference in traffic between normal office hours and the night shift. If the center is open at all, it may rely more on automated response systems and will have fewer agents in place to handle calls. Predefined inbound call routing schemes must be modified to accommodate the late hours environment.

An intelligent Call Center system shifts to a night service inbound routing scheme based on time of day. Individual supervisors may also invoke night service manually. When invoked, calls may be routed to another inbound routing scheme, to an answering device, another location or callers may just hear ringing.

Deflection

The cost of calls to an 800 number mounts rapidly as callers wait for an agent to answer. To decrease the cost of callers waiting in queue for an answer, deflection decreases hold times by having callers reach a busy signal or by routing the calls to another destination. This happens when the system recognizes that a management-defined threshold has been reached. Deflection is typically based on the number of calls in queue. A more effective parameter offered by some systems is "time in queue." In this case, a caller receives a busy signal when the longest call in queue has been in queue over "x" minutes or seconds as defined by management.

Interflow

This provides automatic transparent traffic rerouting based on predefined times/days or traffic thresholds. This is useful for multi-site Call Center networks where call volumes and hold times may be high in one location while there is idle time at another location. Or a business may span several time zones and management may want to avoid overtime in one zone by routing calls to another location. Interflow helps Call Centers attain optimum agent productivity while controlling toll costs.