The Intro... Increasing productivity within the call center has been a key goal of every contact center manager. In the past, managers have relied on predictive dialers as a means of increasing productivity. However, the true components that increase productivity within the average call center are readily available when using a Preview/Progressive agent based dialing system. These allow a call center to take advantage of the true components that provide the productivity improvement, while keeping costs within budget and complexity within manageable norms. Dialing Types Predictive Dialing A true predictive dialer will use a statistical algorithm to project when a call center agent will become available and will have a live connection ready at that instant in time. The predictive algorithm must take into account the standard deviation of the call center, average talk times, number of sales vs. no sales (that result in longer calls), and connection rates to determine when to accurately place calls. With a specific, constrained environment, predictive dialing will increase outbound productivity by up to 300%. This requires a large number of agents (typically greater than 40) working on one dedicated outbound campaign. Power Dialing A power dialer will dial numbers successively when an agent becomes free. The power dialer will filter out non-connects, and only transfer live contacts to an agent. Power dialing will increase the outbound contact rate by over 200%. Power dialing provides answering machine detection but its accuracy is limited by the specific hardware in use, and is typically in the 80 to 90% accuracy range. Progressive Dialing A progressive dialer will successively dial numbers for an agent. The agent must take an action on each call to disposition the call. The progressive dialer will increase an outbound contact rate by over 200%. Since no external hardware is required and the agent’ phone is directly dialed, this is one type agent based dialing. Preview Dialing Preview dialing will show the agent information about a call prior to placing that call. The agent has time to review the call record before the call is placed. The preview dialer will typically increase outbound contact efficiency by 150% depending on the preview times and business rules. Again, this is a type of agent based dialing. Screen Based Dialing Screen based dialing will allow agents to select numbers from a computer based list, or from a CRM/ host application. Selecting the number and clicking will automatically dial the phone for the agent without the requirement for digit entry. Screen based dialing does not use any form of automated campaign management, and so recalls must be handled either manually by the agent or by the back end systems. This is a third type of agent based dialing. The above outbound dialing modes can also be used in an inbound blended environment to allow agents to handle inbound and outbound calls in sequence. Campaign Components The main components that go into a successful outbound campaign are as follows: -
An automated dialer -
Campaign management (re-dials), -
Call center management, -
Management reporting, -
System administration -
Agent behavior, -
The behavior and nature of the consumer, -
Legal issues, -
On-going system maintenance. These can be examined individually to determine where an agent based dialing system can help improve a call center’s performance. Automated Dialing: Predictive Vs. Preview/Progressive The Basics Predictive dialers function best in large call centers with large groups of agents doing the same predictable thing over and over again. This is because predictive dialing is statistical in nature, and simply maintains a current set of statistics on each call and each agent. For example, let’s assume the following statistics: -
33% of all dialed calls are live contacts -
Each connection will take to 15 seconds on average to set up (dial, ring, ring, hello?) -
Each agent takes an average of 2 minutes per call Given this information, a predictive dialer would out dial 3 new numbers 15 seconds before an agent was due to complete a call (i.e., at 1m45s). This is based on the statistical knowledge that at two minutes, the agent will be available, and there will be one live consumer available to connect to an agent. However, as Mark Twain said, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Here is where they breakdown in a call center: -
More connects than are requested occur. Remember, you’re placing 3 calls to statistically connect to one person. In most cases, you reduce your sample size to three and so have a significant chance of getting 0, 1, 2 or 3 connections. If you get zero connections your agents wait. 2 or 3 and you have to hang up on the customer. -
Standard Deviation is a killer! Your average agent time on the phone is 2 minutes. However, you likely have a high variability in the calls – from Mr. Smith answering and saying not interested (shortest case, say 45s) to Mr. Smith’s 10 year old answering, getting Mr. Smith and he is interested (longest case, say 15 minutes) -
Agent sample size- Anything under 40 agents and you don’t have statistics; you have individual results. Even with over 40 agents, you may have split campaigns or skill requirements, effectively reducing the sample size. Low sample size means poor statistics, which means the dialer won’t accurately predict when to out dial. Conversely Preview/Progressive dialers connect an agent to a call on a one on one basis. During the call, the agent is live 100% of the time and can hear busy signals, rings, etc. in their headsets. Connections for answering machines or fax/modems can be dispositioned by the agent with a single mouse click, which will enable dialing of the next record in the call list. -
Preview Dialing – records are delivered to the agent but are not dialed immediately. -
Progressive Dialing – records are delivered to the agent and are dialed immediately. -
Blended Dialing – the associated phone set is logged onto an inbound ACD or skill set. Whenever a new outbound record is requested, the phone is first put onto the queue for two seconds. If an inbound phone call is received, it will be processed instead of the outbound record. When using progressive dialing, an algorithm is used to determine the number of outbound calls or call attempts for each ‘ACD’ check. -
Predictive Blending – outbound agents are automatically moved from dedicated outbound to dedicated inbound by the dialer system. The random nature of inbound calls prohibits a predictive dialer from accurately determining agent availability based on any type of statistics as inbound calls may happen at any time. For this reason, agents are typically placed either in an inbound queue or an outbound queue. If the inbound call volumes increase, agents are removed from outbound and put dedicated on inbound. Once volumes drop, they are moved back to dedicated outbound. Read Part 2 |
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