When your customers contact you, they expect a quick resolution or answer. They don’t expect to be passed from channel to channel, agent to agent, without an end or resolution in sight. With an AI-driven automatic call distribution (ACD), you can engage with customers anytime – from any channel – using the routing method that works best for each specific customer interaction.

Let’s look at ACD call centre software — how it has evolved, how it works, and the main benefits you can expect for your customers, your teams and your business outcomes.

The Evolution of ACD Technology

ACD is a routing system that manages incoming calls, distributing them to the appropriate call centre agent. Calls can be routed based on specific criteria, such as the call’s purpose, the skills needed to address it or agent distribution.

At its most basic application, ACD directs customers to agents based on availability, increasing efficiency and reducing customer wait times. This traditional first-in, first-out (FIFO) approach is suitable for many small- and mid-sized businesses, since it has low complexity and provides a wide range of applications. But as business and customer expectations shift, ACD routing has evolved.

To meet today’s customer and business needs, ACD routing in modern call centres takes advantage of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud. And it supports multiple digital channels. This has allowed contact centres to operate efficiently and cost-effectively while keeping routing and administration simple.

ACD Versus IVR

ACD and IVR (interactive voice response) are different — but not mutually exclusive — technologies used in call centres. While ACD routes incoming calls based on predefined rules, IVR is the automated system that interacts with customers through voice or touch-tone input. IVR provides information or routing based on customer responses.

IVR can be used to enhance your ACD call centre by:

  • Drilling down on what your customer wants.
  • Potentially resolving issues without the need for agent interaction.
  • Providing information needed to take a diagnostic look at contact centre performance.
  • The two call centre technologies can be integrated seamlessly to improve customer experience.

How ACD Systems Work

ACD uses data to organise callers in a queue, prioritise certain callers and route them to specific agents based on rules you’ve defined, such as the agent’s skills or availability.

Modern ACD systems offer multiple routing methods based on your needs. When developing your ACD routing strategy, you must ask yourself the following questions:

  • Why are we implementing ACD?
  • How does this align with our customer experience goals?
  • How will we define agent availability?
  • How are agents trained to handle the transition to ACD routing and its effect on workflows?
  • How do we measure success?

There are several popular routing methods, each offering different benefits.

Basic ACD routing: Basic ACD routing distributes incoming interactions among agents based on a predefined set of rules or a simple algorithm, such as round robin or longest-idle agent.

Priority-based routing: Interactions are routed based on a rank or priority level that’s assigned to the customer or issue type. Higher-priority customers or issues are routed to available agents first.

Time-of-day routing: This method incorporates the time of day or day of the week to route interactions to different groups of agents based on their availability and working hours.

Percentage-based routing: Incoming interactions can be routed among different agent groups or departments based on a predefined percentage allocation. With percentage-based routing, each group receives a certain number of interactions.

Multichannel routing: Customers expect availability across channels; this routing method also directs email, SMS, chat and social media interactions to available agents based on specified rules.

Skills-based routing: Skills-based routing takes ACD to the next level, improving resolution rates by connecting customers with the most qualified agents and improving customer satisfaction. It optimises contact centre efficiency by ensuring agents handle interactions that best match their abilities. This can also improve employee engagement and overall job satisfaction.

Customisable Routing Methods

The Genesys Cloud™ platform offers several routing methods: standard, bullseye routing, predictive routing, preferred agent routing and conditional group routing. Watch the video below to learn more.

Standard routing is the most straightforward approach and can be based on agent skills, priority, time-of-day, percentage, or mapped across multiple channels, including email, SMS or chat.

Bullseye routing takes things further. It routes interactions to a targeted sub-queue of agents with specific skills, and if no agents are available, it relaxes the requested skills, based on the queue configuration, to expand the pool of agents.

Predictive routing uses machine learning and historical contact centre data to match up the best available agents while optimising chosen KPIs.

Preferred agent routing routes to select agents first based on characteristics you determine, such as skill level, responsibility or existing customer relationships.

Finally, conditional group routing allows you to share groups of agents between different queues based on a combination of KPIs and agent availability.

Whatever routing method you select as part of your call centre routing strategy, it’s important to balance segmenting your queues based on inquiry type and simplicity. Over-segmenting queues based on inquiry types can cause queue numbers and agent skill requirements to become unmanageable. It can lead to underutilised agents, increased complexity and could diminish your ability to get a big-picture operational view.

Strategic Benefits of ACD Software

Customers expect to reach the brands they love through whatever channel — or channels — they prefer. And it’s no longer enough to react to customer inquiries. Customers value fast response time more than any other factor in customer interactions, followed closely by having their issues resolved on the first interaction.

ACD routing allows companies to enhance the customer experience through reduced wait times. By distributing interactions optimally — matching the best available agent to an interaction — intelligent ACD also reduces average handle time and costs and can improve resolution rates. When customers connect with the most suitable agent, their issues are resolved more quickly and accurately.

And that can improve the employee experience, too. Agents see their expertise recognised, which boosts confidence, job satisfaction and, ultimately, productivity. That creates a virtuous cycle for customer experience success.

Intelligent ACD software enhances more than just the soft side of the call centre business. Streamlining routing processes and factoring in employee availability and workload optimises operational efficiency, helping the call centre make the most of its resources and better achieve its goals and KPIs.

Gone are the days of customers navigating a sea of seemingly endless IVR prompts. ACD puts the relationship with the customer on solid ground by getting customers to the right agents at the right time.

Book a demo today to see how ACD routing can help revolutionise your contact centre, enhance customer satisfaction, improve agent productivity and optimise operational efficiencies.