Performance modeling of distributed automatic call distribution systems

The number of businesses using Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) systems has grown significantly in the last five years. The industry shows all the signs of continued or greater growth in the foreseeable future. While ACD systems have proliferated they have also evolved from fundamentally local to distributed systems. An ACD manager can no longer optimize his traffic by using inputs from a simple set of queueing tables. The most common system is now a distributed network where subsystems interact with each other and cannot be analyzed in isolation. This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of queueing models that have been used historically with ACD systems and develops modifications to these models (including agents wrap-up times) that are combined with queueing network theories to construct an original ACD network performance algorithm to work with distributed systems.