ACD Contact Center Software: Painless Customer Service

In the past, customers calling a service line suffered through long hold times, wondering if and when they’d ever speak to an agent.

This frustrating reality created many tense, angry customers who unloaded their problems onto unsuspecting agents trying to do their best.

The customer wasn’t satisfied, forcing agents and managers to go above and beyond to make the customer’s suffering worth it.

Fortunately, we no longer live in those dark days – and we now have Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) contact center software to thank for rescuing us.

Today we will explain how ACD contact center software easily and efficiently enhances customer service and more.

The Perfect Scenario: The Best Agent Is Always Available

An ACD system delivers incredible results for customers and call centers in many ways.

ACD’s ability to route incoming calls to the best agent available based on skillset, availability and customer need is super valuable to any high-performing call center.

It does this by working hand-in-hand with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.

Picture a call coming in. A call reaches the IVR system and discovers the caller’s exact needs through the customer’s choices in the easy-to-follow options. This gets turned into data.

Once the system knows the nature of the call, it communicates with the ACD system, which routes the call. It can then choose the right department and best-fit agent. The agent can now take care of the caller’s needs most efficiently.

ACD systems also provide the option of routing calls based on time-of-day, volume, location, and customer importance (think VIP call lists.)

This superior arrangement increases one key call center metric: the First Call Resolution (FCR) rate. Maintaining a high FCR is, without a doubt, a key component of enhancing the customer experience.

But that’s not all ACD can do…

The ACD Contact Center Software Feature That Makes Customers Happy

Routing customers to the right agents who can solve their needs quickly is a great way to make them happy.

But what’s even better?

Helping customers find the information they need in just minutes, with just a few dial pad clicks or answers to voice prompts.

This is a smart call center manager’s primary goal when using an IVR system, as we touched on before.

Since many customer requests are related to billing information, basic technical support, or other FAQs, an IVR, paired with an ACD, saves customers and agents tons of time and hassle.

Customers no longer need to wait and wait on hold just to find out their account balance or some other mundane information. In just a few quick responses to IVR prompts, then they can hang up and go about their day.

That’s not only great for customers, but it’s great for call center managers – agents are more available to handle time-sensitive customer calls.

ACD: Making Hold Times a Thing of the Past

ACD systems offer call centers a breakthrough feature that instantly upgrades the customer experience: queued call back.

Everyone is busy and has a lot to do.  They don’t have time to wait on hold.

Now, customers can choose to have an agent call them back as soon as they finish serving other customers.

ACD contact center software holds their place in line while they continue with their day. Then, when the agent is free, it reconnects them to the customer to give them their undivided time and attention.

That means less aggravation for the customer and a better experience for the representative on the other end!

ACD: Enhanced Customer Experience Meets Unparalleled Regulatory Compliance

ACD not only helps call center managers to deliver the best customer experience.  It also enables managers and agents to maintain regulatory compliance 24/7.

The only problem is that managers need to know about all the changing regulations to program ACD contact center software with the correct rules.

That’s getting harder to do every day.

Congress continues to strengthen the Telephone Consumer Protection Act…

And state attorneys general recently teamed up with major telecom companies to prevent and crack down on robocalls.

Luckily, here at TCN, we have every call center manager’s back, even with all the new changes.  One of the ways we do that is through our recently released the Complete Guide and Checklist to TCPA for Call Centers.

Get it right here, and don’t risk taking any TCPA knowledge for granted.