The automatic call distribution allows you to manage the skills of your agents. This means that calls will be distributed to the extension (phone, group …) that best matches  the expectations of the caller.

What are the interests ?

It is important, for a company, to do not lose calls and to welcome as soon as possible – and in the best conditions – its interlocutors. Customers or prospects expect to be put in touch with a qualified and available person as soon as possible. With the ACD feature, calls are routed to optimize telephone services according to rules previously established.

By automating the distribution of calls, the caller is directed to an agent selected on its availability and its productivity. By assigning “skills” for each device agents, calls are not lost or misdirected. The ACD function is essential to route incoming calls intelligently.

This system will allow you to:

• manage working time of your agents, that is to say, working time of your employees (the speaker is directly routed to the right person. This avoids wasted time to redirect a caller)
• balance the use of telephone lines (people in charge to answer to calls are sharing the task). The waiting time is reduced, just as the risk of losing a call.
• handle your overflow of calls (if the agent is too busy to answer the call, a second pre-selected agent can receive the call in his place).

How does it work?

You need to organize your staff into groups. For example, agents who are associated to the same functional or organizational entity will be part of the same group. However, people belonging to a group may have individual and specific skills. So, an agent may be part of multiple groups.

For example: Mr. Smith is an IT technician, specialist of Microsoft. He speaks Spanish. It may be part of three groups: the group of computer technicians, the group of responsible of Microsoft products and also the group of Spanish speakers.

Then you need to qualify incoming calls. Indeed, to know how to route calls, several methods can be established. Calls qualification can be based on:

• the caller’s number (a number from a particular region, from a foreign country…)
• called number (composed by the caller, the number can be dedicated to a service, a product or a particular place)
• a choice made from the keyboard of the caller (customer’s code, for example), or by voice recognition (words pronounced by the caller).

By taking into account the respective skills of agents in your company:

• a call from an English speaking country will be automatically transferred to an English speaking agent …
• a caller who wants to join the sales department will be automatically transferred to an agent of this sector …

The skill level of an agent is used to select the most appropriate agent when the call is distributed. Without having this list of skills of your teams, calls will be distributed to the agent who has been “free” for a long time or according to a “cyclic order” predefined.