ACD – Automatic Call Distribution, or automatic redistribution of calls, is applied in one form or another in every modern contact center.Let us consider the work of this automatic system at different stages of processing calls in the contact center, from the receipt of the call in the switchboard of the contact center to its forwarding to professionals (agents of the contact center).
Let's imagine that the customer calls the contact center with a specific question. Before routing his call to a specific agent, ACD will try to determine the nature of the customer's query in order to specifically route the call to a professional who has the necessary expertise in the relevant field.
Several methods are available for classifying customer inquiries: The first of them consists in displaying several phone numbers on the website or in a commercial, each of them being assigned to a specific subject area. For example, phone number 1 stands for the sales department, number 2 - for the service, number 3 - serves the orders already placed, and so on. Some companies use ten or more of such numbers.
Another method of classifying calls is to offer the customer in a voice dialog system (the so-called IVR). Here the customer decides which area is interesting for him. The system names several topics and suggests the customer to select the topic he wants by pressing the keys from 1 to 9. In the past, additional IVR were often built in, i.e. after the first language menu, a second one turned on, where the topic is further divided into subtopics, and so on. Such complicated schemes are rarely used today, as they can confuse the customer, annoy him and increase the error rate. One of the reasons is that very often the customer does not find himself in the proposed answers.
At this stage, mostly IVR are used, which provide no more than 4 - 5 variants to choose from and are located only on one level. So far we have discussed the automatic categorization of customer calls. In parallel, large companies offering different types of services also use manual categorization, which is performed by the agent of the first level of service. The agent who listens to the customer is able to determine exactly to which group of professionals the specific call should be forwarded.
Another way of classification, actually the most modern one, is to let a robot with artificial intelligence conduct the dialogue with the customer. The implementation of this method is quite expensive, not only because of the high price of the software used, but also because the robot must be adjusted to the grammatical and lexical peculiarities of the specific language and subject area, and must also learn, based on examples, the real requests and the service categories corresponding to them.
It may sound surprising to many that the robot, after instruction, in dialog with the customer, during which it simply listens to the question and perhaps asks one or two additional questions, is able to determine the subject of the inquiry more precisely than the customer himself. That is why the introduction of such systems pays off very quickly, despite the initial considerable expenses and the high effort. The reason is the time saved by the agents. They do not waste time clarifying the customer's concerns due to incorrect initial categorization and forward the call to the right group of professionals more quickly. Automatic categorization of requests using a voice bot with AI is one of the most efficient and promising areas of artificial intelligence use today.
It is no secret that if you have called a company with well-organized customer care at least once and left your contact details (e.g. name and mobile number), the next call will be recognized by the ACD system right away. In order to make a decision on how to organize your care, the system will assign a certain priority to your request, depending on the subject and the history of contacts with you.
For example, when you call a bank, your identity is established based on your phone number. The bank's CRM system will instantly identify you as a VIP customer, and the ACD system will organize your care in such a way that you won't have to deal with the IVR at all. The system will try to connect you directly with one of the best qualified professionals as quickly as it can. Or if you want to report plumbing damage and select damage as the reason for the call, you won't have to wait long to get an appropriate professional on the line either.
The interaction of the categorization of requests and the consideration of priorities that some customers enjoy can lead to a rather complicated logic of the ACD system's actions, given the actual situation of the contact center's workload.
The ACD system automatically prioritizes and categorizes based on the following factors:
how to proceed with the processing of a customer request, thus the ACD system optimizes the workflow of a contact center.
The system of waiting lines is a key mechanism of ACD. It allows to bring the random flow of customer requests in line with the existing processing capabilities, i.e. with the number of specialists in the contact center who have the necessary qualifications.
The queuing principle is a key mechanism of ACD. It is used to organize the random flow of customer requests and bring it into line with the existing processing capabilities, i.e. the number of specialists in the contact center who have the necessary qualifications.
The logic underlying the system's processing of the queues can be very complicated and take into account several factors. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the professionals are divided into groups that have no intersections and each of them deals with a specific topic or, as we say, has a specific qualification. Each professional in the group has his own individual level of qualification, which is taken into account by the system when distributing calls.
You can compare any queue with the queue in front of a counter in the bank, where certain operations are done: Crediting, account management, deposit management, etc. The difference is that in our case it is not one specialist but a whole group of specialists who intervene in the processing according to a certain order, and therefore the queue progresses relatively quickly.
Most ACD systems today are able to provide a forecast of the customer's waiting time and inform them of this. Based on this information, the customer decides for himself whether it is worthwhile for him to wait further, whether he wants to call later or requests a callback.
Final step in the mission of ACD - transferring the call to the agent.
When it's your call's turn to be served, ACD decides who to route your call to based on information about available professionals (their qualifications and workload).
At the same time, the agent's monitor displays all the information about you that ACD has collected while you were on hold. Apart from the name and subject of the call, there could be the status of your current orders, the status of your loans (if it is about a bank) or the status of your Internet contract if they are calling your Internet provider. In other words, everything that concerns your business relations with the company.
Forwarding all this information to the agent is one of the most important functions of the ACD, because this is precisely what allows minimizing the time spent by both the customer and the contact center agent, and resolving the customer's problems quickly.
AomnCD plays a special role in the realization of the Omnichannel work regime. The module unifies the operating rules of all channels, including telephone, e-mail, SMS and various chats. Messages from all channels are handled in the ACD according to a unified scheme, with the exception of specific functions for concrete channels.
For example, for the voice channel at the IVR level, voice messages are played and the customer can communicate his response by pressing a specific button. In the case of a voice bot with AI, he can also announce his answer. For the text channel, the situation is similar, except that the first response to a customer message usually comes from a chatbot, which can exchange questions and answers with the customer multiple times (to identify him and his topic).
The means for building the logic of communication with customers at the IVR level are universal in omnichannel systems. The logic of distribution of requests to agents in such systems is practically independent of the channel.
The settings of the ACD allow the agents to work both separately with the channels, i.e. some agents serve only phone calls while others are engaged only in textual communication, and in the mixed regime, where the agent handles voice messages and chat messages in any order one after the other. The settings of this logic in each concrete case depend on the preferences in the contact center and on the skills and competences of its agents.
It is important to remember that ACD is only a tool. No matter how perfect it may be and what powerful graphical means for projecting logic it may possess, organizing the work of ACD in the contact center requires the hands of a master to achieve the set goals.
Operated by an experienced technologist, ACD allows to adjust the distribution of calls in order to reduce the average handling time (AHT), the customer satisfaction is thus increased by a lower waiting time.
There are many ways to do this in ACD. These include building a more accurate classifier of calls reflecting the list of issues in the subject area, broad application of the mechanism of callbacks, organizing the service of queues by overlapping groups of professionals so as not to allow uneven development of queues, and many other means.
A more even distribution of workload between agents has a positive impact on their relationship with their work, increases their loyalty (and also increases the quality of customer service).
The study of the best practices in the work organization of the contact centers can help to make the appropriate logistic decisions for the work of the ACD. On the other hand, all contact centers have their specific and the ideal work parameters can be selected only after an analysis with the means of reporting the influence of the different factors on the quality of the result. For each contact center it is necessary to carry out independent studies in order to concretely determine the appropriate settings and algorithms in each case.
ACD realizes an important, though not the only stage in the processing of customer requests. After the call is assigned to an agent, its processing begins, first within the framework of a conversation between the specialist and the customer, followed by the mail processing stage. The agent enters into the dialog box the information received from the customer, which he could not enter during the conversation.
The following three tasks - to achieve high technical and economic indicators in the work of the contact center, to ensure a high level of customer service and to organize comfortable working conditions for agents - can be solved only with the help of a whole set of means for the organization and automation of call handling, which come into play at all stages of the call flow. Contact us and we will help you to find your way in all details of organization of this process and will also recommend you effective tools for its realization.
