ACD and IVR work in conjunction with some key features between them. IVR is a tool that customer interacts with, while ACD is a backend program used by the call center that route calls to agents. Both these technologies provide an excellent customer experience by providing quick customer response. With IVR, customers are enabled to express their calling reason meanwhile the ACD takes customer information and routes the call to the best agent within the relevant department.

ACD works in three steps:

Caller Identification: An IVR is used to determine the caller’s intent and for information or identification as the first step in ACD. Companies can find out a customer’s location and native language via caller ID systems.

Call Queuing: A call queue is organized, with callers placed on a waiting list, based on the agents’ availability. The ACD will use the routing algorithm to take the volume of traffic, the time of day, queue wait times, and the department received to direct calls accordingly

Call Distribution: With the knowledge obtained in the earlier processes, call centers enable the ACD to direct the caller to an agent who is best suited to address their concern. Common distribution strategies include simultaneous distribution, time-based routing, and agent talk time.

There are different types of ACD and each type has its pros and cons because some are effective for speed while others enhance agent proficiency. So, you can choose a routing strategy according to your business needs.

Time-based call distribution: Your agents’ availabilities are taken into account with the time-based distribution. Only available agents will receive alerts from the ACD, and if none are willing to take the call, it will be sent directly to voicemail. This is the best option if your call center wants not to accept calls outside of business hours.

Skill-based Routing: Skill-based routing directs calls to the agents based on their skill. Complex customer issues are assigned to an experienced agent for better problem-solving.

Talk-time call distribution: Talk-time distribution aims to evenly distribute workload across your agents. In this type, the ACD chooses the agent who has had the least amount of talk time and assigns them the next ticket in line. This ensures that each agent has worked an equal amount of time.

Rotary call distribution: It is a common distribution type for centers where agents have equal workloads and all take turns in answering. For example, call 1 is taken by agent 1, call 2 is taken by agent 2, and so on.

Fixed-order call distribution: In this type of distribution, calls are initially distributed only to the first agent in the list. Calls are only sent to the subsequent agent if the prior one is unavailable. If you have agents who are more seasoned and can handle problems more quickly than others, this is a smart option.

An automatic call distributor serves as a gatekeeper to agent queues, context, and routing messages that empower agents to work more efficiently. Agents can deal with multiple queries at once, speeding up response time. So, customers get a quick response and resolve issues faster which increases productivity and grow ROI.