| Telecom Technical Abstracts |
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THE JOB OF AN ACD
(Automatic Call Distributor)
Reprinted from TELECONNECT
April 1997 |
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| In fact, an ACD has several jobs: |
| 1. It
monitors the status of agents and agent-stations in real-time, keeping
track of who's logged in, logged out, on break, etc. At a more fine-grained
level, it maintains a real-time picture of agent activity: who's
waiting for a call, on a call, how much time they've spent on the current
call, on average, etc. Finally, it maintains a feedback loop that
lets agents report status at call-completion... |
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| 2. It
manages inbound trunk connections and hold-queues, sending calls to agents
as they become available, or routing calls to specific agents or groups
in terms of rules, thresholds, caller input/history, or other schemes. |
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| 3. It
points up anomalies of agent performance, unexpected traffic situations,
minor and major disasters in such a way that managers can redirect traffic,
change staffing, or begin other crisis-management procedures. |
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| 4. It
maintains an overall staff schedule and individual agent records, an historical
database, and reporting features that can be used to plan appropriate staffing. |
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5. It
facilitates communication between agents and managers and integrates
with hardware, software, and systems that improve call
center performance:
readerboards or person-to-person messaging systems, back-end
transaction-
processing and wrap-up systems, PC-based agent stations,
help desk support systems, training systems, call recording gear, outbound
predictive dialers, IVR,
web servers, and other adjuncts.
All
this, and it rings telephones, too! Most
ACDs provide a full set of
general-purpose phone system features, in addition to
call center-specific capabilities...
 ...not to
mention all those smiles!
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