Predictive Dialer 101

By Spencer Chin
TMCnet Assistant Editor for Channels & SEO

Given the complexity of today’s businesses and the large number of agents in many call centers, the predictive dialer has become an important means for call centers to ensure maximum productivity.

As its name implies, the predictive dialer is an intelligent dialer that uses a variety of algorithms to predict both the availability of agents and called party answers. It adjusts the calling process to the number of agents it anticipates (or predicts) will be available when the calls it places are expected to be answered.

The predictive dialer monitors the answers to the calls it places, detecting how the calls it makes are answered. It discards unanswered calls, engaged numbers, disconnected lines, answers from fax machines, answering machines and similar automated services, and only connects calls answered by people to waiting sales representatives. Thus, it frees agents from listening to unanswered or unsuccessful calls.

A predictive dialer is commonly interfaced into CRM software, to both generate call lists and report call attempts. Unsuccessful calls are often analyzed to determine if the number called needs to be called back later or needs special treatment, such as a manual or autodialed call by an agent to listen to an answer machine message.

With such advantages, it is no wonder many call centers have adopted predictive dialers.

A predictive dialer is compatible with existing phone systems and can be easily deployed. They carry Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission compliance, thus freeing the call center from dealing with concerns stemming from Do Not Call regulations. Using a predictive dialer does not incur a license fee.

Telemarketing organizations have adopted the predictive dialer as a standard as the system allows their sales representatives to have much more customer contact time. Moreover, market survey groups and debt collection services, which require extensive agent telephone contact, use the predictive dialer to automate many calls.

Welcome calls for new customers, customer service call backs, and appointment confirmations, are just types of calls conducive to automation through a predictive dialer. The time saved using a predictive dialer is not trivial: research has found that if a person was to sit down and manually dial 1000 numbers, a large percentage of these calls will not result in contact with someone at the other end.

The predictive dialer takes that into account. It exhibits predictive behavior when it has more call attempts (dials) outstanding than it has agents that are already available to handle calls. The predictive dialer dials ahead of the agents becoming available or when the predictive dialer matches a forecast number of available agents with a forecast number of available called parties. The matching and dialing ahead perspectives provide the large increases in dial rates and agent productivity.

Predictive dialers come in several types, including software, hardware, smart, and hosted dialers. The trend in recent years has been toward mixed predictive dialers based on simpler hardware, such as voice modems, and more powerful software for answering machine detection and call progress detection. These predictive dialers lower the cost of ownership for the call center.

Another emerging predictive dialer is the 'smart' predictive dialer, which combines voice broadcasting and attendant phone agents. Hosted predictive dialing is a service provided by third party providers that connects calls via the Internet to agents.

Regardless of type, a predictive dialer is a smart investment for many businesses that rely heavily on phone contact.

To find out more about the customized predictive dialer solutions available from Creative Software Solution visit: http://creativesoftwaresolution.com/predictive-dialer.php

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Spencer Chin is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

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