ACD

ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) is the system that routes inbound calls from a queue to the next available agent. It’s the foundation of contact-centre operations.

Routing strategies

Different strategies suit different operations:

• Round-robin - calls cycle through agents in order. Fairness across the team.
• Longest-idle - call goes to whoever’s been free longest. Best for keeping idle agents engaged.
• Hunt - ring all available agents simultaneously, first to pick up wins. Aggressive answering; useful for small queues.
• Skills-based - match call to best-fit agent by language, product, account tier. Best CX-oriented strategy.
• Priority - VIP callers jump the queue based on caller ID lookup or CRM data.
• Hunt by random - randomised, prevents top-of-list bias.

ACD in 3CX

• PRO basic queue strategies - round-robin, longest-idle, hunt.
• PRO and AI Edition - adds skills-based, priority, hunt-by-random.
• PRO and AI Edition - adds callback option, SLA alerts, supervisor listen/whisper/barge.

ACD vs IVR

[[ivr|IVR]] greets the caller and routes to a queue. ACD takes over once the call is in the queue and routes to a specific agent.

The two work together: IVR (“press 1 for sales”) → routes to Sales queue → ACD distributes to next available sales agent.

What modern ACD adds

Beyond basic distribution:

• Callback option - caller declines to wait; system calls back when an agent is free.
• Position-in-queue announcements - “You’re 3rd in line.”
• Estimated wait time - based on average handle time and queue depth.
• SLA alerts - notify manager when queue breaches SLA target.
• Sentiment-driven routing (AI Edition) - escalate negative-sentiment in-progress calls to a senior agent.

See also

• [[ivr]] - front-end menu before ACD
• [[hosted-pbx]] - ACD runs on the PBX
• Wallboard - real-time visibility of ACD state

Call queues feature → | Skills-based routing →