An automatic call distributor (ACD), is a tool commonly used in the telephony industry. ACD systems are commonly found in any office that handles a large volume of inbound calls. The primary purpose of an automatic call distributor is to route incoming calls to contact center agents or employees with specific skills.
The ACD system utilizes a rule-based routing strategy, based on a set of instructions that dictates how inbound calls are handled and directed. These rules are often simply based on guiding a caller to any agent as fast as possible, but multiple variables may be added, all with the end goal of connecting the customer is with a qualified agent as quickly as possible. Matching and routing literally thousands of calls to the correct agent is a difficult task, and is often done in concert with an interactive voice response (IVR) system to better determine the customer needs.
While its original intent was to route incoming phone calls, today’s ACDs are increasingly sophisticated omnichannel routing engines, capable of routing customer inquiries that are received via email, messaging, web chat, social media and other digital channels.
ACDs commonly rely on a skills-based routing engine that intelligently routes digital and voice interactions to the right agents.An intelligent routing engine matches customer requests to agents based on skills, customer data, real-time contact center performance, customer sentiment and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered behavioral profiles.It consolidates routing across inbound and outbound, digital and voice, agent assisted and self-service channels.The ACD ensures every interaction is routed to the best available agent in the least amount of time.
Today, most automatic call distribution (ACD) systems are capable of:
NICE CXone has an industry leading automatic call distributor (ACD) that facilitates features such as:
