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TransNexus (News - Alert) has its headquarters in Atlanta, GA. You might recall during the winter there was a major traffic jam caused by snow and ice. But when snow threatened Atlanta again, the city escaped having major problems. That was in part due to an outbound dialer system.

State and local government offices used outbound dialers to send robo-calls to employees on their cell phones. That prevented a recurrence of the traffic nightmare experienced during the first storm. The use of outbound dialer, as seen in Atlanta, shows how the market is experiencing a resurgence.

In a recent white paper from Trans Nexus, it was explained how outbound dialer systems are either software-based or a combination of software and hardware. They make it easier to automate outbound telephone calls from contact centers. The most commonly used method in large contact centers is the predictive dialer. It statistically predicts the availability of agents to answer outbound initiated calls and launches enough outbound calls to keep agents busy. Also, outbound dialers often use pre-recorded messages, known as “robo-calls.” Dialer systems comply with regulations, and are more effective than in the past.

Dialers are an economical method to reach a lot of people. They are easy to launch, and they are effective. Spencer Kimball, a scholar-in-residence at Emerson (News - Alert), said that 75 percent of people listen to more than 19 seconds of a pre-recorded robo-call, which means they hear about 40 words. About 97 percent listen to a minimum of six seconds. “People aren’t just hanging up when they get these calls; they’re actually listening,” Kimball said.

DMG Consulting found that as of mid-2013, there were 10,990 organizations using 2,635,756 outbound dialing seats globally. DMG expects most sales over the next few years to be replacements of outdated dialing solutions. There will also be a substantial increase in sales of cloud-based outbound solutions to companies that require fewer than 10 seats. DMG expects the outbound dialing market to increase by 5 percent in 2013, and 6 percent in each year between 2014 and 2017.

“Despite regulations limiting outbound calling to unwelcoming prospects, dialing is not going away so long as consumers continue to invite companies to reach out to them with useful information,” Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting, said in the white paper.

Here are some examples. Robo-calling is used by pharmacies to notify customers that a prescription is ready. Service-based businesses use it to confirm appointment times. Other companies use it to deliver weather updates, flight times or driving conditions. Local police departments are using dialer technology to reach residents in case of an emergency. Also, some supermarkets and retailers are sorting through sales data, loyalty cards and membership information to identify customers who may have purchased recalled items. They use dialer technology to call the customers with alerts. Customers are also getting personalized service messages and sales offers. It is seen as proactive customer contact. Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) predicts proactive content will become a leading driver for outbound dialer system sales over the next few years. For instance, patients monitored with interactive voice response (IVR) tech were 44 percent less likely to be admitted in the 30 days after discharge from a hospital than the same patients before and after being monitored.

In addition, dialer traffic is demanding to any service provider's network. Networks need to be able to handle the increased traffic. Service providers should have a Least Cost Routing (LCR) solution in place that is capable of handling a large amount of traffic.