Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) traditionally describes the capability of an add-on module to a normal phone system to optimally manage and route incoming calls. These telephone systems receive a large volume of calls every day. The demands placed on the level of sophistication required in an ACD for queue management and call routing has continually increased over the last decade. With increase in online marketing and global trading, remote office workforce are playing a greater role in the marketing, sales, customer service and support of goods and services sold. ACD and contact centers are a vital part of this infrastructure.
Within an ACD, queues are abstractions meant to hold, order and re-sequence customer contacts based on call workflow requirements of the business. Nowadays, unified communication systems handle voice, e-mail and chat within the queue work-flow albeit with some differences. Queues are meant to hold calls that are tagged together and offer the ability to service calls based on the time of arrival. In skills based routing, agents handle calls from queues for which they have the required skills. More complex business requirements might necessitate handling some of these calls out of turn or based on triggers. Some cases might require the ACD to transparently reveal all the calls in all the queues with their associated tags. This allows the development of more complex triggers and call work flow requiring extreme flexibility from the ACD. Such mission critical ACD requirements might place extra demands on the telephone system with requirements for transfer and conferencing capabilities for ACD calls.
Asterisk is a next generation PBX that offers a solid platform for VoIP and TDM telephony. To build a flexible and powerful call flow for Asterisk, you will require to supplement it with an ACD. A standard ACD should offer Skills Based Routing, Queue Prioritization, Real-time Supervisor Dashboard, Real-time Queue Stats, detailed CDR with real and historical Agent and Queue Productivity Reports. More advanced ACD systems will offer greater flexibility and control over queue management and call handling through a powerful API for CTI integration. The level of sophistication of the business call workflow will dictate the capabilities required from the ACD.