Answering Machine Detection (AMD) is something that interests everyone running a predictive dialer or other automatic dialing. As discussed previously, the changing world of outbound dialing and telephony leaves call center software users looking for ways to wring additional efficiencies from their lead lists and call floors, and AMD appears to be one of those ways.
Put simply, AMD allows the calls that do connect to be screened for the presence of a live person or an answering machine (or IVR in the case of businesses). Call centers who have a high percentage of answering machine hits often find that these calls take up too much of their agents’ time, and would prefer to have that machine handled automatically. This analysis is sometimes flawed. What they often fail to appreciate is that the accuracy of Asterisk AMD is not 100%. Usually not 90%, and the highest rates of accuracy are dependent on correct tuning of the parameters Asterisk makes available. Badly configured settings can result in an accuracy rate of near 0% – it may identify every call as a machine.
Even in the case that AMD is tuned correctly and reaches an accuracy of 85%, this can still cause issues. You may be missing a significant percentage of the live people the dialer is able to connect you to. If you are losing 15% of the contacts you actually reach, this may put a serious crimp in your business. Furthermore, you may have regulatory concerns if you are not handling those calls correctly, and they may count as dropped calls. Of course, if the number of connects is actually mostly answering machines, the cost of handling all those calls may make the tradeoffs well worth it.
Even with these caveats, well-tuned AMD in the correct environment can be a boon to your business. For this reason, the Q-Suite predictive dialer has included direct access to the AMD settings on a per-campaign basis for years in a convenient location, allowing power users to tune values selectively, while making it easy to use it with the default settings.
Lately, Sangoma’s Lyra AMD product has been gaining traction in the Asterisk-based call center software arena. Sangoma has been a player in the Asterisk market for years with their line of products, and improved AMD is certainly welcome. With their patent-pending technology and claims of improved accuracy, the cost of the product may be quickly recouped in centers where answering machine handling is a large cost. Clients have demanded the ability to use this technology with the Q-Suite, and so development work has been done to allow the use of Lyra with the Q-Suite. Indosoft believes that adding this option with their predictive dialer gives clients access to the additional tools they need to manage the tradeoffs in using Asterisk AMD.