Quality
Answer rates explained: what ASR and ACD mean for your campaigns
ASR and ACD are the two numbers that tell you whether your outbound routes are healthy. Learn how they are calculated and what good looks like.
- 6 min read
If you run outbound campaigns, two metrics tell you most of what you need to know about route quality: ASR and ACD. They are simple to calculate and surprisingly powerful when you track them per destination.
ASR: answer seizure ratio
ASR is the share of call attempts that were answered. If you place 1,000 calls and 420 connect, your ASR is 42 percent. It reflects both the quality of your data and the quality of the route.
ACD: average call duration
ACD is the total talk time of answered calls divided by the number of answered calls. A sudden drop in ACD often means calls are connecting to voicemail, being cut short by poor audio, or being answered by something other than a person.
Reading them together
- High ASR, healthy ACD: the route and the list are both working
- High ASR, very low ACD: suspicious. Check for false answer supervision or voicemail detection issues
- Low ASR, healthy ACD: your list quality or calling times may be the problem
- Low ASR, low ACD: likely a route problem. Raise it with your provider
How to track them yourself
Export your call logs, group by destination prefix and calculate both metrics per day. In the Aerocalling portal you can filter call logs by destination and status, then export to CSV for a quick pivot table.
What a provider should do
A good provider monitors these metrics across all customers and moves traffic between carriers when quality drops. Ask how often routing is reviewed and whether failover is automatic.