System information

CHAPTER 13
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
Queues
An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly
queue of one.
—George Mikes
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), or call queuing, provides a way for a PBX to queue
up incoming calls from a group of users: it aggregates multiple calls into a holding
pattern and assigns each call a rank that determines the order in which that call should
be delivered to an available agent (typically, first in first out). When an agent becomes
available, the highest-ranked caller in the queue is delivered to that agent, and everyone
else moves up a rank.
If you have ever called an organization and heard “all of our representatives are busy,”
you have experienced ACD. The advantage of ACD to the callers is that they don’t have
to keep dialing back in an attempt to reach someone, and the advantages to the organ-
izations are that they are able to better service their customers and to temporarily handle
situations where there are more callers than there are agents.
*
There are two types of call centers: inbound and outbound. ACD refers
to the technology that handles inbound call centers, whereas the term
Predictive Dialer refers to the technology that handles outbound call
centers. In this book we will primarily focus on inbound calling.
* It is a common misconception that a queue can allow you to handle more calls. This is not strictly true, in
that your callers will still want to speak to a live person, and they will only be willing to wait for so long. In
other words, if you are short-staffed, your queue could end up being nothing more than an obstacle to your
callers. The ideal queue is invisible to the callers, since their calls get answered immediately without them
having to hold.
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