A customer calling into a company wants to know that they will reach the intended target as quickly as possible. The only problem is, if that company does not have a proper way to get the caller to that party, the overall experience could be less than optimal. In the call center environment, the sheer number of calls dictates that a powerful system must be in place to manage the routing of those calls: enter the automatic call distribution.

Using Automatic Call Distribution in Your Call Center

Call centers have a number of different measures that are considered in overall performance. Some of these measures have to do with agent downtime; others focus on total handle time or the amount of time it takes from the receipt of the call to the end of the call.

To reduce this amount of time, the automatic call distribution tool will ensure the caller reaches the right party in a set amount of time. With this process in place, it ensures customers are not waiting too long and that agents do not have too much idle time – which only costs you money.

The Benefits of Automatic Call Distribution

One of the benefits of the automatic call distribution platform is that it offers a service level management element. In other words, call center managers can define and build into the solutions the expectations of the center. For instance, perhaps the call center manager wants the automatic call distribution solution to ensure 85 percent of the calls are answered within 20 seconds.

If the amount of traffic exceeds the level at which the automatic call distribution system can continue to meet this parameter, the call center manager has the opportunity to make necessary changes to handle the higher volume.

How Does Automatic Call Distribution Work?

There is little mystery to the way the automatic call distributor works, although very few actually pay attention to it since it is working “behind the scenes”. For the call center manager, however, you know that the system is detecting the number of call center representatives that are logged into the system and taking calls.

The automatic call distribution solution also knows how many agents are talking and how many are idle so they can take a waiting call. Interestingly, when there are too few agents to handle the anticipated volume or too many agents sitting idle due to a lower call volume, the automatic call distributor is often blamed, yet the problem is a resource pattern issue.

For instance, your call center supervisors may report that the automatic call distribution system is recording too many calls in the queue and customers are having to wait too long to get to someone who can help them. What is actually happening is the automatic call distributor has been set according to industry standards – or what your call center is used to – and customers have simply gotten more impatient.

What ends up happening is callers will hang up and then call back in the hopes they can move directly to an available agent instead of waiting in the queue. You can blame this on the available mobile content and capabilities consumers now have access to that makes them want real-time information without ever having to wait. They don’t understand that when they hang up, they lose their place in the queue and have to start over.

The automatic call distribution system that can capture the number of people hanging up and calling back would help you to better understand their expectations and habits so you can adjust your systems and processes accordingly.