Possibly the most essential component of a call center, the ACD is designed to quickly and effectively distribute calls to the right people based on call volume and experience level. There was once a time when the ACD was an on premise appliance that cost thousands to purchase and maintain. Those days are well behind us.
Today call centers in the market for new dialer utilities have the option to choose hosted services that are better equipped to handle call volume than their physical counterparts. Hosted skill based routing functionality can direct calls, emails, web chats and voice mail messages (interactions) to the right agent every time.
Contactual’s (News - Alert) patented ACD routing with service level optimization aligns contact priority to specific service level agreements and matches priority with appropriately experienced agents. This enables the system to automatically set the appropriate service levels for each type of incoming communication. Plus with the tools provided to them managers can quickly change distribution to stay in line with current staff levels or call volumes.
Hosted solutions offer a number of advantages over the premise based alternatives. As Contactual’s Vice President of Worldwide Sales & Marketing Wendell Black points out, “hosted solutions reduce total cost of ownership, while increasing service levels and flexibility. With this software, you can empower the call center manager or the supervisors, giving them the ability to make changes that can affect customers immediately.”
The ability to react to call volumes and effectively direct calls means that managers have more resources in fulfilling optimal customer satisfaction levels. Hosted ACDs offer call centers a much more intuitive platform to conduct their business through.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
Chris DiMarco is a Web Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page. Follow him on Twitter (News - Alert) @cpdimarco.
Edited by Stefanie Mosca