What is an ACD?
An ACD is a service available to any University department. A department generally asks for one to be set up when it wants incoming calls to go to a single/main number and be distributed among a number of staff because the volume is too large to be handled effectively by one person. This single/main number is the one you will see published in the phone book. It is not assigned to a particular telephone. When someone calls this single/main number, the ACD routes the call to one of a group of working telephone extensions that have been assigned to the ACD group.
Why would I want to use an ACD?
If your department receives more phone calls throughout the day than one person can answer, then an ACD will help you handle those calls in a more efficient manner. In order to determine staffing, a department will generally look at their call volume and determine how many people it will take to answer calls with an acceptable wait time. During busy times when an agent is not immediately available, an ACD can queue calls, provide a recorded announcement, forward the call to someone designated to handle call overflow, offer a voice mail option, or give the caller a busy signal. A department determines what options a caller will be offered when the ACD is initially set up.
If one person can usually handle the phone calls your department receives, but you are aware that every so often people call and get a busy signal, then an ACD may be more than you need. You can set up your phones so that if the person that would usually receive the call is busy, then the call is forwarded to a specified number, and if that number is busy, then the call is forwarded to another specified number, etc. If all phones are busy, then the call can be forwarded to VoiceMail.
How does an ACD work?
An ACD is really one component of an automated call processing system. It works in conjunction with the PhoneMail system to route incoming calls to staff whose job it is to answer the calls. If you have ever called a Medical Center Clinic, you probably heard, "If you are calling for an appointment, press 1, if you are calling for a prescription refill, press 2, etc." These options are provided by the PhoneMail system. When you press 1 for an appointment, the call is forwarded to an ACD. When you press 2, it is forwarded to a voice mailbox, etc. In this example, the ACD consists of staff who are responsible for scheduling appointments. They each have individual phone extensions but the caller does not know what they are. The caller uses only the main number.
The number of people in an ACD group is determined by the department when the ACD is set up. At some future time, a department may decide that there are too many or too few people in the group and adjust the number. If a department decides that one person can handle the scheduling calls, if other calls are sent to voice mailboxes, then an ACD is not necessary. A Department can just take advantage of the PhoneMail System and not set up an ACD.
An ACD forwards incoming calls to the staff member who has been waiting (idle) the longest. When all the extensions are busy, the ACD handles the call according to instructions in a "routing table" specified by the department. For example, the department might decide that if all agents are busy, it wants the caller to hear a recorded message and placed in a queue ("All agents are busy. Calls are answered in the order they are received."), or it may decide that a caller should be given the option of being put in a queue or leaving a voice mail message. There's a lot more to routine tables than this, but now you have an idea of how they fit in.
It can be confusing, because you often hear the term ACD used as an all-inclusive term for all the components that make up automated call processing. In general, the distinction doesn't matter, so don't worry about it.
Whom do I contact to install an ACD in my department?
Enter a Telephone Service Request (TSR). You do not need to fill in any information other than the standard Oracle PTAO that you have been given and the Comment box at the end of the form. Enter "I would like an ACD consult" in the Comment box.
I have an ACD but I'd like to be sure we are taking advantage of all the features it offers. Whom do I contact for help?
Enter a Telephone Service Request (TSR). You do not need to fill in any information other than the standard Oracle PTAO that you have been given and the Comment box at the end of the form. Enter "I would like an ACD consult" in the Comment box.
What reports are available and what do they tell me?
There are several reports available to help insure that you are providing good customer service while mazimizing your staffing resources. The reports are generated on a daily basis with the data summarized by the hour.
- Answered-Call Profile: This is the best overall report for a quick daily summary of the likely level of customer satisfaction with your call center and its overall health. This report tells you how long callers are waiting in queue before their calls are answered. It will also pinpoint your busiest times. The manager directly responsible for the ACD should review this report daily to insure that performance problems are addressed at the time they occur. It is difficult to discuss problems with staff days later as they are not likely to recall what events happened on the day to cause the problems. Our standard recommendation is that upper levels of management should set a threshold for the maximum average time to answer for each hour and require the call center's manager to explain what happened when this threshold is exceeded for any hour of any day. (Report Explanation)
- System Summary Report: Use this report to get an overview of the volume of calls received, how they are handled, and the amount of time involved in processing them. It will highlight problems but you will have to go to the more detailed reports explained below to determine the source of the problem. (Report Explanation)
- Position Performance Report: Use this report when you wish to look at the performance of your individual staff answering the phones. The term "Position" refers to the phone positions or extensions that are in the ACD group so the report is broken out by extension numbers. To be meaningful, you need to know the average amount of time a staff member is expected to spend on a call. When an ACD is initially setup, the average length of a call is used in conjunction with the acceptable time in queue to determine staffing requirements. If the report shows that all staff are spending more time on each phone call than was estimated, then the time callers are spending in queue is likely higher than you would like. If the increase is significant, it is likely to lead to an increase in abandoned calls. (Report Explanation)
How can I use the reports to better manage my ACD?
When your ACD was set up, staffing was determined by the volume of incoming calls, the average length of a call, and the acceptable wait time. If the Answered-Call Profile Report shows that wait times are greater than is acceptable, then either the call volume has increased or the staff is spending more time on phone calls than was expected, perhaps both.
Check the System Summary Report to see if the call volume has exceeded your projection. If so, then you may need to add staff. How many will depend on what you consider an acceptable wait time. If the call volume is about what you expected, then check the Position Performance Report to see if the average time spent handling a phone call is in line with your expectation. If one or more staff members are spending more time per call than was estimated, then you need to determine if additional training will help or if you underestimated the amount of time a call would take.
Following these suggestions will allow you to detect problems before your abandoned call rate raises red flags. Of course, there will always be abandoned calls because some people will hang up when they hear a recorded message either because they called the wrong number or they don't have time to wait (or don't want to).
What summary info will be helpful to my upper management?
Different managers will want to see different information, but in most cases the System Summary Report is a good place to start. The departmental Manager is interested in verifying that the ACD is operating within the guidelines that were set. You insure this is the case by looking at the details in the other reports.
Meet with your departmental Manager and ask what information s/he is interested in seeing. Some columns on the System Summary report may not apply to your department, i.e. OVFL (overflow will only have data if the departmental ACD forwards calls to another ACD). Create a spreadsheet that only contains the selected columns and enter the totals daily. It is a good idea to add a "Notes" column. If during your daily review of the Answered Call Profile Report, you see that the "Avg Time Before Answer" is high, then research why, determine the solution, and enter this information in the "Notes" column while it is fresh in your mind.
This may sound like a lot of work, but it really isn't. There are two things that must be done once: meeting with your departmental manager to understand her/his expectations and creating the model for the spreadsheet. After that, you only need a few minutes a day to enter the totals from the System Summary Report and any "Notes."
What performance measures should I check on an on-going basis?
The key figure is the length of time a call is queued before it is answered. It should be compared to the acceptable wait time set by your department. If it is greater, then you will likely begin to see a variety of symptoms, such as an increase in abandoned calls or irate callers if you don't bring it back in line.
The Answered-Call Report will tell you during which hours of the day calls exceed the threshold and by how much. If it's only certain hours, then you may opt to only add extra staff during those times, but if it is consistent throughout the day, then you may find it helpful to check the Position Performance Report to look at the performance of the individual staff members.
What performance measures are used for the University Operators?
The University Operators receive around 4,500-5,000 calls per day. Staffing to answer these calls is based on an average call time of 25-30 seconds with a maximum wait time of 20 seconds. If the average wait time goes over 20 seconds in any one hour, then the University Operators' Manager must send an email to the Manager of Communication Services explaining what happened and why.
I work in the Medical Center. Where do I find the telephone statistics that are referenced in the Decade Plan?
The Decade Plan calls for tracking the following ACD metrics daily for each clinic:
- Number of phone calls/staff member
- Time in queue
- Number of abandoned phone calls
The number of phone calls each staff member handles per day appears at the end of the Position Performance Report. You can also see the average time each staff member spent on the calls they handled. Generally, a clinic will know how long a call should take, because they will have used that figure plus the acceptable time in queue to determine the number of staff required to process ACD calls.
The time in queue before a call is answered is available on the Answered Call Profile Report. This report also shows the percent of calls answered within 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 seconds. If you just want to see the average time before answer for a specific hour or the day, then look at the System Summary Report.
The number of abandoned phone calls is available on the System Summary Report. This will never go to zero because there will always be wrong numbers and people with no time to wait. That said, if the number is higher than acceptable, then you need to determine if all the staff or only one or two are spending more time on calls than you projected. Use the Position Performance Report for this.