Essential Guide to Telecommunications, The, Third Edition

ACDs—Specialized Equipment to Handle Large Volumes of Calls

Automatic call distributors (ACDs) are used to manage call traffic and create call center reports. Their most important functions are to save money on call centers' largest expense, agents, and to provide management reports on call volume and agent performance. Departments that use ACDs typically have more calls than people to handle them. Having a machine rather than an operator transfer calls saves about 20 seconds per call. Another saving with ACDs is the consolidation of multiple small groups of agents into fewer large groups as indicated in Figure 2.10.

Figure 2.10. An Automatic Call Distributor with three groups of agents. If one group of agents is busy, the ACD can send calls ...