Predictive Dialler Mode

Predictive Dialing is normally used when you have high volumes of calls to make which are likely to be of similar duration, and is typically used in a sales environment. It is the most aggressive form of automated dialing and consequently can be deemed to be the most productive. It involves dialing out on more than one line per agent in a bid to keep all agents busy all of the time.

Situations where predictive dialing has the most potential are those where talk/wrap times are short, live call rates are low and you have at least 10 agents working on your campaign. Under these conditions the benefit of predictive dialing over preview dialing can be as high as 20 or more minutes in the hour.

New legislation brought in to combat the rise in silent calls means that it is essential to choose a dialler that was designed from the outset with compliance in mind, as only then will you reap the benefits of dialing in a predictive manner. As a user making a decision to buy a dialler the issue is not whether a dialler is compliant.  Every vendor claims compliance, and compliance is not hard to achieve.

The real issue, which cannot be over-emphasised, is the ability to dial efficiently under compliance.

Any buyer who cannot be sure to achieve this should keep his money in his pocket, or stick to progressive or preview dialing. Many people do not realise how few abandoned calls they are allowed to make!

Imagine that you are running a predictive campaign where one in every five calls is answered by a person, and you are working within the OFCOM limit of 3% for abandoned calls.

What is the maximum number of abandoned calls you can make under compliance per 1000 calls dialed?

This is not a trick question; think about it for a moment, before you check the answer at the bottom of this page. Once you have used your quota you will have to resort to compliant dialing modes (progressive or preview) which are likely to lead to a drop in agent productivity. How can you avoid this?

By choosing the right dialler to start with!

Most diallers were designed to make as many calls as possible as quickly as possible in order to keep agent productivity high. Others were designed to monitor the progress of an agent through the script and guess at when they were likely to become free and make the next call based on that.

Our dialler was designed to cope with compliance rules and as a consequence makes millions of calculations in order to decide the likelihood of ANY agent coming free in the next second, two seconds, etc and dialing the next number on this basis.

The answer is 3% x 20% x 1000 = 6!