ACD Planning

Planning the implementation of the ACD feature ensures maximum performance for your application. Consider the following when designing a plan:

Staffing Levels

To ensure optimum use of personnel and system resources, use historical calling patterns to determine staffing levels for the agents. Most ACD installations set staffing at levels that ensure the average number of callers equals or exceeds the number of agents. During peak periods when all agents are busy, callers are placed in a queue to wait for the first available agent.

Call Information

Since the most critical element of an ACD system is the timely handling of incoming calls, the communications manager must first consider the level of traffic that the system will be receiving and determine the types of calls and any trunking information that could influence the importance of the call. For example, long distance charges can be kept to a minimum by assigning these calls to high priority paths. The following questions serve as examples of those areas to be addressed when categorizing the ACD callers:

• Are service departments involved?

• What traffic is anticipated for each department?

• What priority is given to service calls?

• Do any service departments require a customer complaint area?

• Is there local service only, or is service also offered to out-of-town clients?

• Will there be revenue generating calls? Unless the company holds a monopoly on service, these callers should be highlighted for priority paths. Are there general information calls?

• Will agents receive long distance calls collect?

• Does the company offer INWATS, Foreign Exchange, or other specialized trunking?

ACD Resources

The resource maximums for the ACD feature are listed in the following table. Traditional ACD agents and hot desk ACD agents require an ACD license to log into an ACD session.

ACD licenses are dynamically allocated to agents. When an agent logs in, the system gives the agent an ACD Active Agent License from the available pool. After the agent logs out, the license is returned to the pool. A license is required by an agent only for the duration of the login session.

A Call Wait Item (last column in the following table) refers to a queued call. Calls begin to queue when all idle agents are busy or otherwise unavailable. The queued call count includes agents and paths. So in a networked ACD configuration with four remote agent groups and one path to an agent controller (for example), it is possible to have a call queued to the path and all four agent groups .This will consume five wait items: one on the path controller and four on the agent controller (one for each agent group).

The ACD resource maximums are shown in the following table, for various options and the various controllers.

Maximum Number of ACD Agents on a Standalone System

The maximum number of ACD agents supported on a single controller (paths and agents on the same controller) is listed in the following table.

NOTES

1. ACD operation is usually considered separately from normal IP and TDM usage (ACD lines do not have significant interaction with normal lines). The total system traffic is the sum of both normal and ACD traffic. Up to 350 traditional ACD users can be programmed in every system, but because of resource limitations the number of IP ACD agents should be limited to the practical limits shown above. The maximum number shown may not be usable without additional DSP resources, because of the increased traffic on ACD lines and trunks.

2. The total number of Agent Skill Groups includes ACD groups for which the system is the primary element, ACD groups for which the system is the secondary element, and ACD Express groups. This effectively reduces the maximum number of ACD groups that are available.

Maximum Number of ACD Agents on a System using Clustered ACD

In a clustered environment, you can increase the number of supported IP agents by programming the paths on trunking gateways and by programming the agents on agent controllers. Calls are distributed between the controllers by Networked ACD. In this type of configuration, each agent controller can support up to the following number of agents:

The maximum number of active agents within a cluster consisting of a queueing gateway and agent controllers:

• 350 on the agent controller

• if the agent controller is an MXe III expanded:  250 agents

Note that hot desk ACD agents are supported only on IP phones. See ACD Scalability for more information.

Agent Skill Grouping

Using the collected caller information, begin grouping the agents. Use the following questions and comments as a guide:

• Are any agents capable of handling various types of calls? For example, will any agents be common to more than one service department?

• What type of calls will this group specialize in? List the types of calls this group could handle as an overflow point.

• Which groups will require a wrap up time?

Use the Agent Skill Group Planner Sheet to plan the distribution of work load among agent skill groups. After doing the initial sizing to determine the number of agent skill groups required to handle the calls, use this planner to assign the parameters to each group. This information is used later during the programming of the system.

Call Routing

Use the Path Planner Sheet along with the agent skill group planner when laying out the routing for incoming ACD calls. The planner identifies all major elements that must be addressed while setting up the system.

Recorded Announcements

Recorded announcements are a valuable tool in the ACD feature. The following suggestions can help you gain the most from the recordings:

• Supply a company introduction to the caller. "Thank you for calling .....", followed by reassurance that the first available agent will answer the call.

• Consider the advertising potential while the caller is waiting for service. Use the recorded announcements to promote new products, specials, or services.

• Refer to the list of callers as a guide when defining the RADs. As out of town callers would be frustrated by local promotions, tailor your recorded message to the caller's needs.

• Is there any information the agent will require from the caller? Recordings can be used to eliminate time wasted with an agent if callers have prior notice of any information they should have ready, such as account numbers, credit cards, or postal codes.

• ACD Overview

• Networked ACD

• ACD Programming

• ACD Real Time Events Records

• ACD Telephone Feature Operations

• ACD Terminology