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Avaya UCaaS
Avaya UCaaS
Avaya UCaaS (formerly Avaya Aura Contact Center) is a cloud-based and on-premise call center solution that caters to all businesses across various industries. The solution allows users to offer personalized interactions to regular...Read more about Avaya UCaaS
3CLogic
3CLogic
3CLogic is a leading cloud contact center platform modernizing enterprise communications for employees and customers. Built on AWS, the solution provides advanced and scalable speech-enabled offerings for leading CRMs, including S...Read more about 3CLogic
AireContact
AireContact
AireContact is a cloud-based contact center solution that provides call center interaction and management tools for multiple channels of communication. The product caters to businesses of all sizes and allows users to create campa...Read more about AireContact
Bright Pattern
Bright Pattern
Bright Pattern is a cloud-based contact center software solution which helps businesses manage multichannel service including inbound and outbound voice, email, chat, and social media. Bright Pattern scales from 5 to 10,000 concur...Read more about Bright Pattern
DialedIn CCaaS
DialedIn CCaaS
DialedIn (formerly ChaseData) offers cloud-based, standalone call center functionality with customer service and support built into the solution. It’s designed for outbound, inbound and blended call center teams. Dialing capabil...Read more about DialedIn CCaaS
Nextiva Contact Center
Nextiva Contact Center
Create more powerful customer experiences while reducing cost and complexity so you can grow your customer relationships, empower your agents, and delight your customers. Serve customers where they are and when they want with tr...Read more about Nextiva Contact Center
Talkdesk
Talkdesk
Talkdesk is a cloud-based call center solution that helps businesses improve customer satisfaction while simultaneously reducing customer support costs. It uses interactive voice response (IVR), automatic call distribution (ACD) a...Read more about Talkdesk
VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft is a cloud-based sales management solution that combines features for CRM, lead management and telemarketing which helps sales teams in businesses manage their daily operations. VanillaSoft uses a queue-based sorting...Read more about VanillaSoft
bxp software
bxp software
bxp software is a cloud-based customer management solution made up of four separate modules that can be utilized individually or combined to create a multi-functional solution. These modules include contact center management, cust...Read more about bxp software
crmConnect
crmConnect
crmConnect is a cloud-based customer relationship management platform suite that includes tools to manage sales automation, field service, customer support, social CRM, call center and channel management. With crmConnect, c...Read more about crmConnect
Five9
Five9
Five9 is an all-in-one cloud contact center solution for inbound, outbound, blended and omnichannel contact centers world-wide. Powered by Practical AI, Five9 enables agents to provide customer experiences across phone, emai...Read more about Five9
NICE CXone
NICE CXone
Organizations around the world are striving to deliver the ultimate customer experience, strengthen brand value, and boost efficiency. NICE CXone empowers brands to achieve these objectives on one interaction-centric platform with...Read more about NICE CXone
Dynamics 365
Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based CRM ecosystem for small, medium and enterprise organizations, with a focus on Sales, Field Service, Customer Service complete with strong integrations with Microsoft’s other Office 365 offer...Read more about Dynamics 365
OptifiNow
OptifiNow
Elevate your business with OptifiNow—the all-in-one CRM built for mortgage lending. Tailored for retail, consumer direct, wholesale, and correspondent channels, our platform boasts robust LOS integrations, integrated email/SMS mar...Read more about OptifiNow
PIMS Dialer
PIMS Dialer
The PIMS Dialer is flexible, scalable, and secure. It’s a cloud-based application, and the servers are housed in a state-of-the-art facility that’s operated around the clock, delivering extremely reliable uptime. Companies can cus...Read more about PIMS Dialer
MiContact Center Business
MiContact Center Business
Mitel MiContact Center is a hybrid contact center solution that caters to businesses across various industries such as hospitality, healthcare, government, education and service providers. The solution can be accessed via web brow...Read more about MiContact Center Business
Cisco Unified Contact Center Express
Cisco Unified Contact Center Express
Cisco Unified Contact Center Express software is designed for midsize and large companies. This software provides a combination of multichannel contact management, intelligent routing and network-to-desktop CTI (Computer Telephony...Read more about Cisco Unified Contact Center Express
Genesys Cloud CX
Genesys Cloud CX
Genesys Cloud CX™ cloud contact center software transforms your customer experience. It connects data across teams, tools, interactions so you have actionable insights to address customers problems with ease on any channel, at any...Read more about Genesys Cloud CX
Vonage Contact Center
Vonage Contact Center
Vonage Contact Center for Salesforce is #1 for Salesforce AppExchange user reviews, with a 4.9/5 Salesforce AppExchange rating. The solution delivers unmatched Salesforce integration into routing, reporting, and the user experienc...Read more about Vonage Contact Center
Ring.io
Ring.io
Ringio is a cloud-based call center management solution that features a CRM dialer, call routing, analytics and more. It’s used by sales teams in many industries such as healthcare, media, non-profit and banking. The system c...Read more about Ring.io
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Buyers Guide
Last Updated: March 16, 2023Most callers don’t like being placed in a queue, but consider the alternative: to simply let them wait indefinitely on hold. Most of us can guess what the outcome of that strategy will be.
Moreover, if the call is placed to one of your business’s main numbers rather than an employee’s dedicated number, how will you ensure that the call on hold is answered by one of your available employees?
Automatic call distribution is a capability both of integrated call center suites and standard business phone systems that solves these problems by enabling call queueing and rules for routing calls from the queue to your employees.
We’ll answer the following questions you might have about automatic call distribution:
What is an Automatic Call Distribution System?
Which Kinds of Systems Offer ACD?
Common Functionality of Automatic Call Distribution Software
What is an Automatic Call Distribution System?
Essentially, a phone system or call center system with ACD capabilities parks incoming calls in a "call queue" and then routes them to call center agents or employees as they become available.
This ensures that calls get answered in the order that they come in, minimizing the time that callers wait on hold.
Moreover, because calls are routed to available personnel instead of being blindly routed to a line regardless of whether someone is there to answer, ACD ensures that your business answers far more calls.
Which Kinds of Systems Offer ACD?
Without ACD, you don’t have the option of call queueing—all callers will have to wait on hold. Because of this, ACD is used in nearly any business with a main company number or a toll-free number answered by multiple employees.
ACD is included in nearly all business phone systems, except for the most basic and stripped-down small business offerings on the market.
Call centers, in which large groups of agents spend long shifts answering inbound calls, have specialized ACD requirements. Thus, call center suites offer far more advanced ACD capabilities than most business phone systems, particularly when it comes to call routing.
Let’s take a look now at some of the specific features of advanced ACD systems.
Common Functionality of Automatic Call Distribution Software
A queue dashboard in 8x8 tracks metrics for calls in various queues (highlighted in red)
The core functionality of an advanced ACD system is to route calls based on pre-defined rules, whereas simpler ACD systems merely route the caller who’s waited the longest to the first available employee.
One common form of ACD used in call centers. With skills-based routing in place, call center agents are first assigned to groups based on skills (e.g., a sales team, a billing support team, a technical support team etc.). When a caller selects that they need “sales” or “support” in the system’s menu, the call is then routed to the right team, instead of just being sent to the first available agent in any team.
How ACD Directs Incoming Calls
Even more advanced systems are capable of routing calls based on algorithms that factor in historical data collected by the call center system. For instance, calls can be routed to the best-performing agents (as determined by historical metrics), or to the agent who’s been waiting the longest between calls if multiple agents are available.
Factors used to route calls can include:
The number the caller dialed
Caller selections within the company’s interactive voice response (IVR) system
Caller profile data stored in the company’s CRM or call center system
Agent skills
Agent idle time
Agent performance metrics
Caller ID data
Geographical information
Time of day or day of week
Call center ACD systems also offer advanced options when it comes to reporting and queueing, such as:
Usage data capture | Allows users to gather data such as the number of incoming and outgoing calls, average time on call, average wait time and more. This information can be analyzed for reporting and used to populate agent scorecards. |
Virtual queueing | Allows callers to avoid waiting on hold by entering their numbers to receive a callback when it’s their turn. This reduces customer frustration and wait times. |
Differentiated call queues | ACD software users can create multiple call queues and have the ability to transfer callers between them. For example, a company may create one queue for support and one for sales, then transfer callers based on the purpose of their calls. |
Virtual queueing, also known as callback, offers a dramatically improved waiting experience for callers, as we explain in our report on the subject. However, it’s still far from being a universally included feature in ACD modules, so make sure to mention it in your Request for Information (RFI).
What Type of Buyer Are You?
At the very least, most businesses are going to need basic ACD. Thankfully, the ability to create call queues is a nearly universal feature in business phone systems.
The need for an advanced ACD system depends on a company’s volume of calls and whether those calls need to be routed in a specific way. Almost all buyers of advanced ACD solutions are call centers.
Here are some specific recommendations about the kinds of ACD capabilities that different businesses will need:
• Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees needing to place calls in queues can simply use a small business phone system. Small business systems generally offer ACD or at least “hunt groups,” i.e. the capability to group lines together so that multiple lines ring at once for a single inbound call.
Very small call centers can get by with basic hunt groups rather than advanced ACD by using a “round-robin” approach. In this routing scheme, calls are delivered sequentially to different employees. For instance, once employee A’s line rings, the next call is sent to employee B, then C etc.
Alternatively, some small call centers send calls to all agents at once, on the assumption that competition over who gets to answer is a motivating factor.
• Call centers fielding a high volume of calls should implement an ACD system to manage a queue and distribute calls based on time-on-hold, caller data, agent skills and more.
• Outbound and inbound call centers with an IVR should use an ACD to route calls. Outbound campaigns utilizing IVR menus require that you have ACD in place in order to properly route calls based on recipients’ IVR selections.
• Complex sales and support teams that need calls to be routed to various departments should use an ACD’s skills-based routing capabilities.
Virtually all of the call center systems listed on Software Advice offer an ACD system, in addition to the standard business phone systems we list. Explore our product profiles to find the solution that works best for your needs.