Automatic Call Distributor

It is a device which distributes incoming calls to a specific group of terminals that agents use. It is sometimes a part of a computer integration system. These systems are found in companies which handle a lot of incoming calls and where the caller has no specific need to talk to a a certain person but wants to talk to a person who is able to talk to him at the earliest opportunity.

The ACD system routes incoming calls. It consists of hardware for terminals and switches and software for the routing strategy. This strategy is a rule based set of instructions which tells the ACD how calls are handled inside the system. Most of the times, it would be a set that determines the best available employee for a certain incoming call. In order to make this match, extra variables are taken into account in order to find out the reason why the customer is calling. A number of times, the caller's caller ID is used which is more often a simple IVR used to just ask for a reason.

The cost of an ACD server ranges between anywhere from a few thousand dollars to close to millions of dollars for a very large call center handling thousands of calls per day.