Are your outbound agents spending most of their time talking to clients, or each other? If you’re not using the right mode of dialing for your campaign, it could be the former. When you have an outbound dialing campaign, the agent talk rate is going to be a big factor in its effectiveness. The more time agents spend talking to clients, the better. You need to have a good understanding of the options available, and when each may be most effective.
For dedicated outbound campaigns, there are four primary ways methods of dialing prospects:
1) Progressive: In progressive dialing, the agent clicks to indicate they are ready for another call. The dialing software selects a lead based on the campaign dialing rules, and presents it to the agent. The agent waits for the call result: busy, no answer, disconnected, or talks to the person who answers. Once the call is over, there will be a wrapup period, then the agent clicks to indicate they are ready for the next call.
2) Preview: In many ways this works like progressive dialing, but the lead information is presented to the agent before any dialing occurs. The agent can then familiarize themselves with the details of the individual lead before clicking the dial button.
3) Predictive: This is the big gun of outbound dialing. The predictive dialer uses an algorithm and pre-set values to determine the optimal dial rate for the number of waiting agents. Factors taken into consideration are:
- The number of agents waiting
- The average wait time
- The connect rate
- The current abandon rate
- The number of lines available
among others. When the agent clicks the button to indicate they’re ready for a call, a live person should be connected to them very quickly.
3a) Power dialing: When the agent indicates readiness, the system dials a fixed number of lines to attempt to connect a call to the waiting agent. This has the disadvantage of requiring a lot of manual intervention if abandon rates are rising or the connection rate fluctuates. When Predictive dialing is available, Power dialing is not recommended. The Q-Suite uses a predictive dialer instead of power dialing, with the ability to specify per-campaign settings.
4) Voice broadcasting: This is also sometimes called robocalling. Voice broadcasting can be used to play a pre-recorded message to a contact list, based on time of day and trunk utilization rules. Some jurisdictions have very strict regulations on how this method of dialing can be used. Normally it is not used to connect calls to live agents, but one use is to play a message then allow the recipient of the call to press a key to enter an interactive dialplan or speak directly to an agent.
Factors such as cost of leads, agent utilization, telephony infrastructure and contract specifications will determine which of these methods is appropriate for your campaign. In the coming weeks we will discuss each method in more detail to allow you to choose correctly.