Answering Machine!!

[n_meghanath]

we use Davox to run our outbound sales campaign (existing customer database). the issue that we face now is the percentage of Answering machine disposed by system as well as by agent as compare to the no. of calls made is very high, to be precise it is about 50% of total calls attempted. considering the quality of the leads it seems 50% seems to be too high. any suggestion??????

[Michcall]

The 50% doesn't surprise me. Your leads may not be bad. All the 50% tells you is that your population uses answering machines a lot.

With the Davox, you can program answering machine dispositions to recall the number again in a set number of hours. Depending on your hours of operation, you can set that at 3, 4 or 5 hours with the assumption that if they weren't home the first time you called, they may be home later. You can also throw those records into a weekend bucket and try them again on the weekend.

Second thing to try is to look at the hours you are calling against your target population. If you are calling high income or affluent households, there is a strong possiblity that it's a two income household, so you have less chance reaching anyone before 6 or 7PM local time. If you are calling mostly in the evening and still get answering machines, you probably have a high percentage of prospects who screen their calls.

If this continues to be a problem, you may try to leave messages on answering machines with a number to call back [assuming you also have an inbound group]. This won't give you a great return rate, but it is better than leaving those leads out there with no contact. This works better if you have an existing relationship with the prospect rather than on cold sales calls. We used to try the records 5 times at different times of the day/week. If there was no success after the last attempt, the record would route to a live agent to leave a message.

[larron.fritz@bellsytems.o]

You may consider setting your dialer to a preview mode which allows the agent to screen the calls for the proper tone. Also, turning off the answering machine filter may decrease the misses you would otherwise get. While not the most efficient.. for screening purposes this may be a better option to give you better insight and peice of mind how the dialer is working.. you may also want to turn the filter off as penetration grows and you want to make sure you are getting to every lead. Make sure your dispositions also denote the difference between an IVR (which is rapidly growing and many agents mistake without proper training and monitoring....) Answering Machines, and Privacy Managers each take a different methodology to deal with.

Hope this helps. I would like to hear others insights here....

[n_meghanath]

Thanks a lot, I have played around a little with the filter and it seems it works. And I have created a weekend queue too.