Services: predictive dialler
A fully predictive, blended dialler and sales and service system. Most diallers pace calls with Erlang formulae or a simple ratio. Ours profiles every agent individually and times each call to answer just as that agent becomes free.
The result is less time waiting between calls, almost no calls answered with nobody there, and a drop rate that stays inside the limit set by the regulator and your client.
Agent states
Every agent is profiled on the time they spend in each state, so the dialler knows when each one will next be Ready, and launches the call to meet them.
Prediction
Each agent is profiled on their time in every state, by dataset, time of day, day of week and campaign. Once an agent reaches Sale, history says how long a sale takes for that agent, on that campaign, with that data, at that time of day, and how long Close and Wrap will follow it.
The data is profiled the same way: answer rate, answerphone rate, time to answer and the proportion of numbers that fail to dial. The orchestrator combines the two across every agent at once and decides how many calls to have in flight, and for whom.
Profiling individual agents is what set the previous generation of this dialler apart, after ten years of tuning in live contact centres. We have been at this a long time: our first machine learning network, in 1990, predicted when telephone calls would end.
Compliance
Every call is recorded and every call made is tracked, with what happened to it. The rules are enforced by the pacer itself.
Agent endpoints auto-answer, so an answered call reaches a live agent inside two seconds. If nobody is free, a message is played and the call counts against the drop rate.
Ofcom applies the limit like for like, so campaigns are grouped by client product line. Groups never span clients, so no client's figures are ever disclosed to another.
Each campaign carries its client's drop rate target of 0%, 1% or 3%. The pacer works to whichever is tighter, the group's 3% ceiling or the campaign's own target.
The regulator dislikes AMD, and it distorts the figures. Agents disposition answerphones themselves, which gives a genuine answer rate.
The definition of the base keeps changing, with answerphones in, then out, then back. Everything needed is captured, so the drop rate can be rendered on any basis without touching what was recorded.
An unanswered call is never released before 15 seconds, so nobody reaches the phone to find the line already dead.
Campaigns and agents
Each campaign belongs to one client and is either inbound or outbound, typed as Sales, Service or Leadgen. Service and Leadgen are generally more tolerant than push sales channels, and the targets reflect that.
No agent starts on a campaign automatically. A manager puts each agent on a campaign for the session, and an agent without one cannot go Ready, so nobody launches calls on the wrong campaign.
An agent on both an inbound and an outbound campaign could take an inbound call just as an outbound one answers, so their outbound calls drop to preview automatically.
Going on Break starts a 30 second countdown while the dialler reduces dial-ahead, and moving an agent between campaigns takes 60 seconds, so neither leaves an answered call with nobody to take it.
A full event stream drives the statistics and dashboards, and any call can be intercepted by ID and dropped, redirected or transferred.
Hanging up on a delivered call, vanishing to Break or switching off the softphone are tracked and reported, along with active endpoints per agent.
Resilience
Agents use hardphones or a standalone softphone, never WebRTC. Agent PCs also run client portals and research tools, which makes the browser the least reliable thing on the desk. If the screen crashes, the agent is still talking to the customer and can say "give me a minute, just rebooting".
Decisions are made centrally and the calls are carried by a switch, usually one per customer, running Asterisk 22 and FreePBX 17. If the central system fails, calls carry on. If a switch fails, the customer moves quickly to another. Switches can be placed close to the contact centre for better latency and jitter.
Agents earn much of their pay through commission, so who made, changed or cancelled a sale, and when, will be disputed. The record settles it.
Questions
Most pace calls with Erlang calculations or a basic ratio of calls to agents. This one profiles each agent's time in every state, by dataset, time of day, day of week and campaign, and times each call to answer as that particular agent becomes Ready.
No. The regulator dislikes AMD and it distorts the figures. Agents disposition answerphones themselves, which gives a genuine answer rate.
No, deliberately. Agents use a hardphone or a standalone softphone, so a crashed browser never drops a customer. Endpoints auto-answer, which is what makes delivery inside two seconds possible.
Yes. Each campaign is either inbound or outbound, and an agent can be active on both. Their outbound calls then drop to preview dialling, since they may take an inbound call at any moment.
Dialling data is kept for a set period, typically three or five years, after which the customer information is purged and only the IDs remain. Retention periods are configurable, so they can follow the law as it changes.
Tell us your agent numbers, campaigns and current dialler, and we will show you what profiling does to your figures.