If your calls are being handled in more than one site, you’re most likely familiar with automatic call distribution (ACD). ACD makes sure that the incoming calls are divided among the planned sites based on for example a calendar distribution with a weighted distribution. This weight is calculated based on the number of planned agents at the sites. Something you can easily manage in our online portal Gearbox for any amount of numbers and routings.
Blog - February 11, 2019
What if you could have more insight into the performance of your external contact centers? And you could distribute incoming calls in such a way that the best performing contact center gets the most calls? And therefore, have more influence on achieving your KPI’s instead of being dependent on the contact centers’ service levels? Dream or reality?
Automatic call distribution
Keep the numbers accurate
But what if the number of planned agents is different from the actual number of agents due to unforeseen circumstances? If you don’t adapt the number of planned agents accordingly, a site receives more calls than they can handle. This can lead to longer waiting times, more abandoned calls and decreasing service levels.
To avoid this, you need to be kept up to date with the number of active agents to have a correct distribution of calls. That way both you and the contact center can achieve the desired KPI’s and service levels. But with multiple service numbers, campaigns, skill groups and contact center sites, it can be a lot of work to keep the numbers accurate.
Planned versus actual
If the planned number of available agents isn’t always the same as the actual number of available agents, why not base the distribution on the latter? That way no changes have to be made if the numbers are different than expected and the distribution is based on actual numbers instead of planned. To be able to do so, we extended Gearbox with Cruise Control.
Call distribution on cruise control
Cruise Control is an API that enables contact centers to provide the real-time number of available agents automated. This information allows Gearbox to see the actual number of agents available for a campaign, skill group or service number. This number of agents per site is continuously and automatically updated. Gearbox can then make a near real-time automated weighted distribution of incoming calls across sites based on call center capacity without human interaction.
More control and more insight
Because of cruise control, incoming calls are distributed in the most effective way. The best performing contact center gets the most calls. This gives you more control as well as more insight into the performance. No need to wait for reports from external contact sites, you can see it all in Gearbox 24/7. And make any changes you feel are necessary.
Additional benefit
As an additional benefit, because Gearbox is updated real-time of available agents, it spots problems like outages faster than humans can and diverts calls accordingly. It works even better if you combine Cruise Control with an Overload Solution, so you can be sure no caller will get a busy tone.