Predictive Dialer Featured Article

OPC Marketing: Where Are Predictive Dialers Now?

August 12, 2009

By Stefania Viscusi, Assignment Desk Editor

Predictive dialer technology, which touts the ability to save companies time and money on outbound call campaigns, made giant headlines just one year ago as the end neared for the U.S. presidential races and campaigners fought to win over voters.

Now, with November, and a non-election season around the corner, I reached out to Erin Henochowicz, co-owner of Addison, Texas-based OPC Marketing, a provider of predictive and auto dialer software, to find out where the buzz in predictive dialer technology currently lies.

OPC Marketing’s "SpitFire" line of predictive dialer offers computer-based dialing of outbound call based on a pre-loaded list of numbers that are scrubbed against the “Do-Not-Call” federal dataset.

According to Henochowicz, one of the areas where the company’s SpitFire predictive dialers have seen increased use is for appointment reminders and verifications.

Henochowicz said that since “no shows” cost businesses a great deal of money, using a predictive dialer to verify appointments and to confirm dates and times, can help company’s to combat this possible loss and even increase their bottom line.

In addition, the professional follow-up capabilities offered by a predictive dialer have been well received by customers who appreciate reminders and the ability to reschedule appointments when necessary.

Henochowicz also said that last quarter, 10 percent of OPC Marketing’s customers were made up of service companies using predictive and/or auto dialers. These companies are attributing their increased use of predictive dialers to the productivity benefits and increased revenues they can achieve through use of the technology.

In addition to the services industry, Henochowicz also said that the company’s SpitFire Dialers are being utilized by nonprofit organizations, collections, schools, unions, mortgage lenders, insurance companies and retailers.

For more, check out the Predictive Dialer channel on TMCnet.

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Stefania Viscusi is an assignment editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Stefania’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Michael Dinan

What Are Related Definitions You Should Know?

Related definitions that you should know as you increase your understanding of predictive dialers include:

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

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

Predictive Dialer: Predictive dialing was introduced for the purpose of increasing efficiency within calling centers. They are computer based system that automatically dial groups of telephone numbers, and then passes live calls to available agents. The SpitFire Enterprise dialer utilizes sophisticated algorithms to speed up and slow down the call rate based on, number of available agents, number of available lines, the campaign’s average call time and other statistical information.

Quick Connect: Quick Connect allows your agents to log in one-to-one with a phone line. This option is great for B2B purposes, especially when your agent needs to be on the phone line through the entire call.

Fixed Dialing: Fixed Dialing gives your call center manager the power to manually set the volume of calls. The software will then automatically dial a predetermined number of lines per agent. Fixed dialing is ideal for political campaigns, charity campaigns, and other situations drop call ratios are not a factor.

Auto dialer: makes thousands of calls screening for busy signals, no answers, fax machines while detecting answering machines/voicemail and delivers pre-recorded messages. SpitFireX Auto Dialer is a low cost solution for voice broadcasting.

How Do Predictive Dialers Work?

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

SpitFire Enterprise Predictive SEP is a fully blended call center solution that supports unlimited lines, agents, and campaigns. Its greatest strength is in its flexibility: multiple campaigns can be set up, viewed, and changed with the click of a button. With easy options for customization, data and dispositions can be catered to each campaign. In addition to our user-friendly interface, SEPhighlights full customer data and combines multiple campaigns on one screen. All the information your agents need is accessible at a glance, freeing their energy to focus on what matters: the calls.

Keep It Simple with SpitFire Fully Integrated Call Center Software

Our greatest priority is making your call center run smoothly, and we do that by developing software that is intuitive and easily integrated with your current systems. SEP works seamlessly with most CRM applications and long distance carriers, making it the simplest and most cost-effective solution for your call center.

Benefits of Using a Predictive Dialer

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 they'd like a callback while the agent is busy talking with other customers.

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.

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

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.

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:

only redial records which were busy, no answers and answering machines
Delete records which are bad numbers, disconnected numbers or operator intercepts

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.

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

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.

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