AUTOMATIC CALL DISTRIBUTOR (ACD)
What is an ACD?
An ACD is a service available to any University department. A department generally asks for one to be set up when it wants incoming calls to go to a single/main number and be distributed among a number of staff because the volume is too large to be handled effectively by one person. This single/main number is the one you will see published in the phone book. It is not assigned to a particular telephone. When someone calls this single/main number, the ACD routes the call to one of a group of working telephone extensions that have been assigned to the ACD group.
Why would I want to use an ACD?
If your department receives more phone calls throughout the day than one person can answer, then an ACD will help you handle those calls in a more efficient manner. In order to determine staffing, a department will generally look at their call volume and determine how many people it will take to answer calls with an acceptable wait time. During busy times when an agent is not immediately available, an ACD can queue calls, provide a recorded announcement, forward the call to someone designated to handle call overflow, offer a voice mail option, or give the caller a busy signal. A department determines what options a caller will be offered when the ACD is initially set up.
If one person can usually handle the phone calls your department receives, but you are aware that every so often people call and get a busy signal, then an ACD may be more than you need. You can set up your phones so that if the person that would usually receive the call is busy, then the call is forwarded to a specified number, and if that number is busy, then the call is forwarded to another specified number, etc. If all phones are busy, then the call can be forwarded to VoiceMail.
How does an ACD work?
An ACD is really one component of an automated call processing system. It works in conjunction with the PhoneMail system to route incoming calls to staff whose job it is to answer the calls. If you have ever called a Medical Center Clinic, you probably heard, "If you are calling for an appointment, press 1, if you are calling for a prescription refill, press 2, etc." These options are provided by the PhoneMail system. When you press 1 for an appointment, the call is forwarded to an ACD. When you press 2, it is forwarded to a voice mailbox, etc. In this example, the ACD consists of staff who are responsible for scheduling appointments. They each have individual phone extensions but the caller does not know what they are. The caller uses only the main number.
The number of people in an ACD group is determined by the department when the ACD is set up. At some future time, a department may decide that there are too many or too few people in the group and adjust the number. If a department decides that one person can handle the scheduling calls, if other calls are sent to voice mailboxes, then an ACD is not necessary. A Department can just take advantage of the PhoneMail System and not set up an ACD.
An ACD forwards incoming calls to the staff member who has been waiting (idle) the longest. When all the extensions are busy, the ACD handles the call according to instructions in a "routing table" specified by the department. For example, the department might decide that if all agents are busy, it wants the caller to hear a recorded message and placed in a queue ("All agents are busy. Calls are answered in the order they are received."), or it may decide that a caller should be given the option of being put in a queue or leaving a voice mail message. There's a lot more to routine tables than this, but now you have an idea of how they fit in.
It can be confusing, because you often hear the term ACD used as an all-inclusive term for all the components that make up automated call processing. In general, the distinction doesn't matter, so don't worry about it. |
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