April, 2023

Have you ever been looking for different types of outbound dialers and campaign execution? Kingasterisk Technologies provide more than just one type of dialer.

Whether it’s for customer loyalty, collection, surveys or telemarketing, dialing technologies are indispensable tools for any contact center. A contact center has the option to choose from different types of outbound dialers including Preview dialers and Predictive dialers.

Preview Dialer

Preview dialing is the simplest outbound dialing mechanism provided by King Asterisk Technologies. With a preview dialer at the end of a call your advisors are able to see the next call in the list. It is up to them when to make the call and they may also be able to skip to the next name on the list. This can be ideal for more complex sales where a bit of research is require between calls to increase the chances of success.

The preview dialer selects a customer record from a call list and proposes this call record to an agent. The agent can then look at the customer record (the “preview” phase) and decide to call this customer. The agent will hear the progress of the call on the phone line. If the customer is busy, the agent hears busy tone, if the customer is not answering the phone the agent hears ringback tone until ending the call, and, of course, if the customer answers the phone the agent can talk to the customer.

When your system detects that one of your agents is available, it presents him with a form containing all the information contained in external databases (CRM or other).

The agent will then read the file in front of his screen, get an overview of the customer’s situation and will be able to get a first idea of what to expect from that specific call. Thus, when he is ready he will be able to trigger the call by clicking on a button on his interface.

The Preview Dialer allows you to:

– Give agents the option to reject a recording and move on to the next recording;

– Apply a more restrictive mode where your agent has no choice but to make the call;

– Set an automatic timeout period after which, the registration number is dial no matter what happens.

It is clear that Preview Dialer offers the greatest working comfort to agents. However, it is not necessarily optimal in terms of productivity. If your agents cannot be sure before initiating calls that a client will pick up and another will actually be available. He may indeed spend a significant part of his time preparing calls that will not succeed.

This is why it is wise to use this dialer for qualitative phone campaigns where clients could be warned in advance that they will be called. This optimal use is one where the starting point is a list of scheduled appointments or reminders are set to guarantee a much higher reachability rate than simple cold calls. Once the agent finishes the current call, the next call request is routed to the agent screen. The dialer decides which call is propose to which agent and when. The agent can preview, accept, or reject the call. This can be ideal for more complex sales where a bit of research is require between calls to increase the chances of success.

If each case of call is complicate, or needs to be personalize to a high degree, then you might want your agents to spend 5-20 minutes preparing for their call. In this case, it’s best you use a preview dialer.

Predictive Dialer

The most intensive solution is the predictive dialer. With the progressive dialer, although calls are made as soon as advisors are available, many of those calls incur a long ring time, are engaged or hit an answer-phone—all wasted time with an advisor on the end of the line.

The predictive dialer determines that a percentage of calls will be unsuccessful and therefore over-dials connecting ‘live’ callers to the advisors as soon as they come available. Predictive dialers are typically use in very high volume low margin outbound contact centers where the efficiency of the advisors and the cost per call are paramount—seconds matter.

The areas to be aware of are two-fold. As we see in TV programmes, unless managed correctly predictive dialers can overcompensate and end up with more live callers than advisors. This leaves bewildered customers or prospects hanging on a deadline.

To counter this, Ofcom regulations state that no more than 3% of callers can be abandone in this way.

Secondly, the effect on your advisors should be taken into account. They are not cogs in a machine. Having calls deliver to you without respite can reduce their morale and effectiveness with customers. Time should be taken to weigh up the extra gain from predictive dialing versus the negative risks on your brand and your team.

This is ideal where the calls are very similar in nature and advisors benefit from having the system tee up the next call for them.

Predictive dialing introduces a predictive dialing engine that initiates outbound calls based on outbound campaign call lists automatically in the background. The predictive dialing engine handles all calls (including call classification if a number is busy or not answering) until a call is connect.

Our predictive dialers even feature an answering machine detection so that only calls answer by a person are connect to an agent. Based on complex and mathematical algorithms, the predictive dialing engine defines the number of calls that are initiate and when they are start. However, introducing predictive dialing bears the risk of calls needing to be drop when a customer answers the phone but no agent is available at this moment. Predictive dialing is the most effective outbound dialing mode.

The predictive dialing engine starts outbound calls automatically based on outbound campaign call lists. The dialing algorithm balances automated dialing rate in real time based on agent availability and multiple call handling-related statistics. The campaign manager can adjust dialing algorithm parameters. Answered calls are routed to agents, others are re-scheduled automatically.

From a technical point of view, it would be more appropriate to describe them as over-numbering call campaigns. After all, predictive refers to the ability of the system to use data from your telephone activity. In particular, the conversation time, the dropout rate, the occupancy rate, etc. This will allow predicting which agents will soon be available. 

However, to achieve this balance between agents and callers, you must take into account calls that are not answer and those that end up on answering machines. Which triggers over-numbering, dialing many more numbers than there are agents.

On the other hand with real-time statistical analysis of activity data, it is now possible to go very far in the adjustment between number of calls and number of agents.

So if you want to take your outbound call campaigns to the next level, Predictive Dialer drastically improves the efficiency of your Contact center. 

Predictive dialers help contact centers to manage large-scale outbound marketing campaigns without deploying extra agents. As the auto dialer initiates multiple calls for each available agent, it becomes easier for businesses to communicate with more customers and leads by reducing the time between two outbound calls.

However, predictive dialers do have some flaws. Predictive dialers begin making new calls before an agent is available, assuming that it will have a customer ready as the agent is ending another call. With this type of auto-dialing, calls often reach prospective customers before an agent is available to speak with them.

When this happens, there is a delay in response time from the agent, which many customers find frustrating. Customers may already be frustrate when they are connect to an agent, or they may abandon calls before an agent is even available. Because of this, predictive dialing can seem impersonal, and may not be the best choice when your call center prioritizes rapport between an agent and a customer.

For instance, if you are cold calling completely new data, and have no prior history to read up, that means your agents can get on their call with zero preparation. So, a predictive dialer is best for this.

Conclusion

As we said at the beginning of this article, any campaign must be based on a detailed analysis of clients. In other words, you must answer these pivotal questions, when can you reach customers? Are they really likely to be interest in the offer? And also on which communication channel should we contact them?

Rather than betting on volume, Kingasterisk Technologies focus on customer experience. So, it exploit the ability of call engines to integrate this knowledge to define more targeted call and callback strategies. Typically, we suggest you should choose dialers based on the number of calls made per day. 

For example,

50-100 calls. Choose a Preview Dialer.

500+ calls Choose a Predictive dialer.

At Kingasterisk Technologies, our core focus is on helping our customers to handle inbound calls with style. As part of our service, customers also get the ability to make outbound calls from their CRM instance and this often raises questions about terminology for outbound calls.