Predictive Dialer

This Predictive Dialer Channel at TMCnet™ is written for call center professionals.

Predictive dialers, systems that automatically place outbound calls and deliver answered calls to agents; they are the key to using your sales force time as efficiently as possible in your outbound call center.

If you've just heard of a predictive dialer and are considering the purchase of a predictive dialing system, or want to upgrade your existing predictive dialing system, TMCnet's Predictive Dialer Channel is an invaluable source of information on the Internet which will guide you each step of the way.

We hope you may visit our site at http://www.opc-marketing.com and select one of our predictive dialer products in our SpitFire® Predictive Brand, the most well known and searched for predictive dialer brand on the Internet.

Today's call centers, while committed to the same basic functions, are vastly different from one another.

The same holds true for predictive dialers. While they all perform the same core function of dialing numbers from a list, they differ by:

• 1) ease of setup and system integration,

• 2) feature adaptation, and

• 3) customer support provided.

To get the most out of your predictive dialer system, you must provide a clear game plan of your dialing requirements to the predictive dialer merchant. If youve never used a predictive dialer before as opposed to a seasoned veteran of call center predictive dialers, your needs may not be known at this stage.

From the start of your relationship with a predictive dialer vendor, your knowledge of your business goals is more essential than is your knowledge of computers and telephony. Telephony originally meaning voice (analog) communication by telephone (land line), this term has come to encompass virtually all of telecommunications, today because virtually all of telecommunications can be done over or while connected to a telephone line.

Unlike some other call center equipment, you must manage the predictive dialer technology to address your specific needs, rather than have your business conform to the dialer technology.

Dont let your vendor try to over-sell or under sell you as not to address your specific needs and future requirements.

A predictive dialer system when managed correctly, the results are surprising.

As the following illustrations show, manual dialing typically results in, on average, 16 minutes of agent talk time per hour. The predictive dialer has the potential to more than double the customer contacts per hour per agent. For more information, on OPC Marketings line of predictive dialers visit: SpitFire® Predictive


Figure 1. The productivity impact of a predictive dialer



It's up to you to decide where you want your organization to be tomorrow and how to drive this business improvement process.

You will also make your mind up how you want to use this convenient, informative easy-to-read TMC predictive dialer channel. We will be updating these columns with the most relevant predictive and call center topics, or you can select only topics that address the current needs of your organization.

With the help of this site combined with your knowledge of your organization's needs, you will be equipped to make informed decisions that will unleash your predictive dialer's full potential.

Congratulations on your decision to maximize your call center's potential. A true predictive dialer is the cornerstone of your success. We hope OPCs predictive dialer channel provides you with the answers you need to select the right predictive dialer, the right predictive dialer merchantand optimize your outbound callsto meet your organization's needs and provide a framework for the successful integration into your current operation.

The predictable results will surely be a high point in your organization's history, as well as in your career in call center leadership.


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What are Predictive Dialers? On a very basic level, predictive dialers automate the total outbound dialing process.


This technology converts the manual dialing process agents were responsible for and automates it within a computer with specialized software.

The predictive dialing computer selects the person to be called, dials the number, waits for a human response, and only
passes a call to an available agent when it connects with a human voice. The dialer has the programmed intelligence to prevent non-productive calls from reaching the agent. Since the agent doesn't have to deal with busy signals, answering machines, network messages, and "no answers," he is freed up to take one "ready" call after another.

The main reason for the increasing popularity of predictive dialers is their ability to dramatically increase the efficiency of your agent team by eliminating the dead time between calls. If you're just learning about predictive dialers, you should know that this technology goes by a variety of other names. Included among these interchangeable names are the following: automated telemarketing system, outbound contact management system, and automated dialing.

To keep things simple, we will use the term predictive dialer throughout this book.

What Are Related Definitions That You Should Know? Related definitions that you should know as you increase your understanding of predictive dialers include:

Agent: telephone professional to whom a predictive dialer sends the ready call.

Anticipatory dialing: the system that uses the statistics from an agent to "anticipate" when that agent will be ready for his/her next call. Predictive dialing, on the other hand, averages talk times across a group of agents.

Auto dialer: the "low cost relative" of the predictive dialer. It can screen out busy signals, "no answers," fax machines, answering machines, voice mail, and all other types of non- revenue calls, but normally pays little regard to the number of accounts being placed in hold queues. See our line of SpitFireX® Autodialers

Computer: any PC, mini-mainframe, or mainframe device used to store or sort data.

Dialer: generic term for any computer-driven device that places outbound calls and connects the answered calls to an agent or operator.

Overdials: when a dialer dials aggressively to the point that it receives more answered phone calls than there are agents to take those calls.

Power dialing: the same definition as auto dialer.

Preview dialing: a feature of the more robust dialers that gives you the option to display account information and/or the telephone number on the screen before the call is made.

Switch: PBX or other device to allocate phone lines to and from agents or the dialer.

Trunk pooling: the ability to acquire multiple lines from various inbound or outbound groups.

Voice system: the ability to play digitized messages and in some cases route calls based on user input.

How Do Predictive Dialers Work?

Typical predictive dialer systems are made up of a dialer engine, server, database, printer, modem, agent workstations and a telephone system with 1.5-2.5 phone lines per agent.

Predictive dialers use complex mathematical algorithms that calculate, in real time,

1) the number of available agents,

2) the number of phone lines available,

3) the probability of reaching a human being at a specific number,

4) the time between calls required for optimum agent efficiency,

5) the length of typical agent/customer or debtor conversations, and

6) the average length of time agents require to wrap up after a call.

The dialers place more outbound calls into the network than there are agents available to handle them if they are not all productive connects.

Sometimes the dialer predicts incorrectly. When there are fewer failed attempts than anticipated, the called party will pick up the phone call and not be connected to an agent because there are none available.
OPC's SpitFire® Predictive is well known for predicting correctly and is known as a true predictive dialer. Beware of imitations.

In this case, the dialer automatically disconnects the call, or some dialers play messages instructing the party to hold the line for the next available operator.

Some states in the United States and some foreign countries require these messages.

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1. Manages the process of dialing tens of thousands of calls or tens of millions of calls in its lifetime.

2. Detects the result of the call, as an example: no answer, busy, fax, bad number, answering machine without any presence of human expertise. Consequently saving time by only transferring calls which are voice connects to the agents locally or remotely.

3. Using predictive dialer increases the productivity of the company by drastically increasing the time agents spend on the phone talking to actual customers or prospective clients.

4. Predictive dialer users get the ability to organize and better manage the client information, no lost notes scribbled on pieces of paper. The database used by the dialer organizes the calling structure.

5. The most significant task done by the predictive dialer is to predict, which means always making an effort to get a live call to the available agent with the shortest amount of wait time. This is achieved by self learning algorithms within the predictive dialer to increase or decrease the dial ratio per agent, logged into the system.

6. Inbound call can be better dealt with by allowing the customers to wait on hold in an IVR system, or a way to leave a message theyd like a callback while the agent is busy talking with other customers.

7. Most important benefit of a predictive dialer is it reduces expenses for your company over a period of time since you do not need to buy and deploy a complex and sometimes extremely expensive PBX system. Your company will experience return of investment (ROI) in a period of six to twelve months.

8. A predictive dialing system can effortlessly fit into your companies existing infrastructure since it is software controlled.

9. The call routing logic and the contact management is all included in one software package. Your call routing logic implemented as per your specifications. Since it is a software package it can easily be upgraded even if you are located remotely with the help of internet.

10. Provides an added cost effective method of managing the client database by giving the user of the predictive system ability to rework your database on previous call results. Example: 1. only redial records which were busy, no answers and answering machines. 2. Delete records which are bad numbers, disconnected numbers or operator intercepts.

11. Do a real time look up against the do not call database saving the predictive dialer user from accidentally calling people who have enrolled in the do National not call registry. This saves the company from lawsuits and others risks conforming to all legal statutes and FCC complaints.

12. Provides progressive dialing capabilities like call blending which means handling inbound and outbound call at the same time.

13. Provides ability to integrate call recording devices and call monitoring interfaces which helps call center supervisors to train agents and users and improve their customer support skills.

14. Easy to setup and learn the predictive dialer logic and software tools.

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