The Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) is the contact center solution designed for queuing and automatic distribution of the calls between contact center agents.
ACD concept and the contact center solution are based on the following building blocks:
To monitor ACD processes on the QX1000, Epygi provides a Statistics Monitoring and Reporting (SMR) application, running on MS Windows PC. SMR doesn't require the 3PCC license (see Features page) to be installed on the QX1000. It displays the current status and statistics on Agent Groups and Agents, builds the statistical reports and sends notifications and alerts to ACD supervisor/administrator. For more details and requests for this applications, contact Epygi sales division (www.epygi.com).
Agent
Agent is the call center user answering the customers' calls and reachable via QX1000 due to ACD. To receive the calls, agent needs to be logged into some Agent Group (AG). Agent is characterized by the agent ID, password, skills' levels and termination phone number. Agent can be logged into several agent groups at the same time and receive the calls distributed by those agent groups. For easy login/logout to all groups where the agent is subscribed, agent should use the *83 Feature Code from the handset.
ACD allows the system administrator to define the set of skills adequate to call center profile and grade the professional capabilities of each agent according to each defined skill. The skill grading range starts from 0 and goes up to 10; with 0 meaning the absence of that specific skill and 10 meaning the highest level.
The termination phone number defines the phone assigned to agent. In other words, the calls on some termination number assigned to agent should be answered by that agent. The agent may have only one termination number and changing that number will result in answering the calls to that agent in different location.
Agents are being managed from Agents table of ACD Management.
Agent Group
Agent Group (AG) is actually a QX1000 extension with enhanced capabilities. The type of that extension in QX1000 configuration is ACD Group (see ACD Group Extension Settings). Except for regular attributes intrinsic to extension (like extension number, SIP user name, etc.), it is characterized also by the collection of agents included into that group, call queue and the call distribution mechanism. These agent group specific parameters of extension are being configured from ACD Group Settings or ACD Agents Table.
Call Queue of Agent Group
Agent Group receives the calls from customers via means existing currently on QX1000. For example, it may receive the direct call through ITSP on SIP number (DID number) assigned to AG, receive a call through ACD's IVR on AG's extension number, external call through Call Routing Table on QX1000, etc.
Arrived call is being added to the end of the AG queue if there are no available (online) agents to answer the call immediately. For connecting to the agents always the call at the top of the queue is being selected. The call queue settings are configured from the ACD Group Settings page.
Each agent can have of the following states: online, offline, away, busy or DND (Do not Disturb) (for details see ACD Agents Table page). If the same agent is logged into different agent groups, he/she may have different states in different groups except for DND status. If the agent has DND state in some group then his state will be the same for all other groups.
The state of the agent can be updated either by administrator from the ACD Agents Table page (with the exception of "DND" and "busy" states) or by agent from the handset (except for "busy" state). The agent, for changing the state to "online", "offline", "away" from the handset needs to call the predefined Auto Attendant (see Attendant Extension Settings) and on attendant's prompt enter the agent ID, password and the status code. The state changes from "online" to "busy" or vice versa automatically when the agent starts or finishes conversation.
Calculation of Composite Skill Grade
Usually, before the call arrives to the agent group, it is first answered by ACD specific IVR. The main function of IVR is follows: via short questions to calling customer determine the set of skills required from the agent for best serving the customer. On IVR's questions, the customer answers by phone keystrokes (DTMF digits), each keystroke corresponding to some required skill. After finishing the quiz, IVR routs the call to AG along with information about the required skills set.
To calculate the agent's composite skill grade, AG sums up the grades of those skills of the agent that are included into the required skill set received from IVR. The grades of the non required skills are not considered.
The composite skill grade of AG is the sum of composite grades of the online agents of that group.
Interactive Voice Response system
ACD IVR is a custom Auto Attendant (see Attendant Extension Settings) configured on QX1000 with VoXML script and voice prompts designed for quizzing the customers, determining the set of required skills as described above and routing the call to the agent group having the maximum current value of the composite skill grade for required set. Since the general skill set is configured by ACD administrator and is application specific (call center specific), the VoXML script and voice prompts of IVR should be built taking into account the skill set configured by administrator.
ACD IVR is needed mainly in case if there are Agent Groups that are configured to do skills based call distribution between agents. In such circumstances the IVR is quizzing the calling customer to determine the set of required skills and when handing over the call to ACD module it passes the set of skills required by calling customer. Having that set the ACD module calculated the composite skill grade of each AG in the system and sends the call to AG having the highest value of composite skill grade. The call in AG is handled according to call distribution type configured with that AG.
For example, if the call distribution type of AG is "skills based" then AG will try to connect the call to the agent having the highest composite skill grade and if it is not answered within timeout the AG will try to connect to the next agent with the highest grade, etc. If the call distribution type is something else then AG will distribute the calls according to that distribution type don't taking into account the skill grades of the agents.
In case if the call is received on agent group bypassing ACD's IVR and the skills based call distribution is selected for that agent group, the agent group will consider the full set of skills when making decision on which agent to make a call first. In other words, since there is no required set of skills received from IVR, then the agent group will consider the full set of skills summing up all skill grades of agent. To simplest way to build the VoXML script for IVR is using the text of the Epygi's sample VoXML script modify that and customize for your application. The IVR voice prompts should be recorded and uploaded as usual.