Predictive dialing has been an effective tool for telemarketing for the last two decades. For those who may not be familiar with it, it is an automated algorithmic dialing where the predictive dialler software will dial more number of lines (phone numbers) than the number of agents available to handle the calls. The purpose of the algorithm is to minimize the wait time between calls there by increasing the productivity. Should more number of calls connected be more than the available agents, the excess calls will be dropped.
Use of predictive dialers in countries like U.S.A and Canada reached its peak in early 2000 and has quitely diminished. They are still used in industries like conducting surveys and fundraising where mass contacting is necessary. With strict rules governing cold calling and diminished returns, this is slowly declining. It is also seen widely used for subscription based services like cell phones, cable and newspapers. Looking at the trend it appears like the predictive dialers are giving way to more intelligent ways of sales and marketing.
The lead generation industry for one, has turned its attention to more sophisticated warm and web lead generation where the focus is not on mass dialing but more towards higher conversion. Often times, you will find the use of Skills based routing for outbound calling. This is an evolution from the skills based routing of inbound ACD but is quite effective for web leads where an interested customer requests a callback. The leads are pushed into queues for the most appropriate available agent to call the potential client.