Find the best Automatic Call Distribution Software
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CallTools offers an advanced predictive dialer and inbound call center management solution that streamlines and optimizes call center operations. With list management tools that include list scrubbing, recycling, and export capabilities, CallTools enables ...Read more about CallTools
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CloudAgent is a cloud-based call center solution that enables businesses to engage and interact with customers via multiple channels including voice, chat, email, SMS messages and social media platforms. Professionals can utilize the preview dialer to view...Read more about CloudAgent
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Readymode is a cloud-based outbound customer engagement platform for call centers and sales teams. Our all-in-one platform empowers businesses to engage smarter, connect more, and grow their revenue. Along with an industry-leading predictive dialer, our ou...Read more about Readymode
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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, email, chat, mobile, social an...Read more about Five9
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CallShaper is a cloud-based call center management solution suitable for small to midsize businesses. Key features include lead management, real-time reporting, agent monitoring and tablet support. CallShaper enables users to create click-to-call form...Read more about CallShaper
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Zendesk is a cloud-based help desk management solution offering customizable tools to build customer service portal, knowledge base and online communities. The solution offers a customizable front-end portal, live chat features and integration with applica...Read more about Zendesk Suite
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Convoso’s all-in-one contact center platform generates and converts leads faster using multiple communication channels. The cloud-based solution offers multiple dialing modes (predictive/power/preview) along with two-way texting, outbound emailing, smart v...Read more about Convoso
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Dialpad is an AI-enabled customer communications platform that includes a phone system, video conferencing, cloud contact center and virtual contact center. The platform is designed for businesses of all sizes and industries such as retail, insurance, tech...Read more about Dialpad
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TCN is a cloud-based call center solution that caters to various industry verticals, including health care, automotive, and business process outsourcing (BPO). TCN is available for multiple channels such as inbound, outbound, blended, email, and mobile SMS...Read more about TCN
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JustCall is the All-in-One Business Communication Platform. Effortlessly connect with prospects and customers via voice, SMS, email, and WhatsApp. Automate tasks and streamline workflows with 100+ integrations and AI assistance, fostering steady business g...Read more about JustCall
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DialedIn is a cloud-based Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution designed to optimize outbound, inbound, and blended call center operations for businesses of every size and in every industry. Developed with customer feedback at its core, DialedIn is ...Read more about DialedIn CCaaS
Ringover is the no.1 business phone system that gives you unlimited calls to 110 countries, video conferencing, SMS and group messaging, call recording, call whispering and more features focused on improving your teams productivity. No expertise needed. In...Read more about Ringover
Phonexa is an enterprise-grade tracking software for performance, affiliate and partner marketing. The Phonexa Suite is the underlying tech that carries through the consumer lead and call lifecycle, helping performance marketing teams drive ROI for brands ...Read more about Phonexa
XCALLY is an on-premise and cloud-based contact center solution that handles multiple channels including voice, chat, SMS, email, fax and others. It caters to inbound, outbound and blended call centers of all sizes. Primary features are contact management,...Read more about XCALLY
VICIdial is an open-source, cloud-based contact center solution suitable for small to large call centers in a variety of industries. Key features include inbound and outbound calls, call routing, email integration, online chat and call recording. VICI...Read more about VICIdial
Primo Dialler is a cloud-based call center solution that offers a predictive dialer, integrated voice response (IVR) and reporting functionalities. The solution caters to industry segments such as insurance, debt collection, energy and telemarketing. ...Read more about Primo Dialler
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 concurrent agents and provides c...Read more about Bright Pattern
Calabrio ONE is a workforce performance software that helps contact centers work smarter, faster, and better. The true-cloud platform integrates workforce optimization, agent engagement, and business intelligence into one suite. Key features include call r...Read more about Calabrio ONE
AVOXI Genius is a cloud-based call center solution that helps small to large enterprises streamline customer service operations and manage business communications. It comes with a centralized dashboard, which enables users to track inbound calls and monito...Read more about AVOXI
Ricochet360 is a cloud-based, integrated call center, customer relationship management and marketing automation solution. Designed for small to large businesses, it comes with a progressive dialer for users to automate processes such as engaging with prosp...Read more about Ricochet360
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 is a lead optimization platform built for fast-respon...Read more about VanillaSoft
UJET is a cloud-based call center application that integrates with customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. It offers both voice and chat channels for customers to reach their support agents. Users can connect with agents via the application, onli...Read more about UJET
CallTrackingMetrics is a cloud-based call tracking and contact center solution for businesses and agencies that helps with tracking campaigns, reaching new audiences through integrated text marketing and online forms and using intelligent analytics to moni...Read more about CallTrackingMetrics
wolkvox is the most innovative, reliable, easy to use and fast to deploy all-in-one cloud contact center solution on the market. With wolkvox you are offering employees and customers a platform to connect and manage voice, chat, SMS, email, social media a...Read more about wolkvox
ZIWO is a cloud-based call center workforce management solution that helps streamline customer interactions via virtual phone numbers, call tracking, call masking and more. It offers a variety of features such as key performance indicators (KPIs), online s...Read more about ZIWO
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Buyers Guide
This detailed guide will help you find and buy the right automatic call distribution systems software for you and your business.
Last Updated on January 27, 2025Most 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.