Outbound Contact center

[sunil_misquith]

Hi, I'm working for an outbound contact center. Would like to know how much idle time between calls is observed on the predictive dialer, some of you are using. The dialer we are using is I3 and the average idle time is around 25 to 30 seconds on a fresh leadlist.

[gerrard]

I do not have my own centre, we are a supplier to the call centre industry. Typically you should expect a wait time between calls (not inc wrap-time) of less than 10 seconds in predictive mode. However you should also look at your data, do you have a lot of wrong numbers, no answers, ans machines etc ?

[sunil_misquith]

Gerrard,
The lead lists which we receive is perfectly fine as we receive it from Experian group for the last couple of years. The only observation is we are experiencing higher percentage of wait time on calls(close to 40% of hours on a daily basis is wait time). Is this something to do with the Dialer predictive algorithm or is it something else? Will you be in a position to provide dialer statistics of wait time for any outbound campaign.

[gerrard]

Experian do provide great data so that is not likely to be the cause of the problem.

It's difficult to say whether it's the algorithm or not.

Can you post other stats such as talktime, wraptime. It would also help if you could post the call penetration to detail percentage of ans machines, wrong numbers, ring no answers, connects. Please could you also state what the line to agent ratio is as you may simply need to increase this.

Let me know here or if you do not want to disclose these stats on line you can contact me at tony.hudson at topstrata.com (replace the at with @)

As stated earlier, your average wait time between calls should not really go much above 10 seconds with an effective algorithm. Having looked at two of our customers today randomly they are operating at an average 7.1 secs and 9.8 secs between calls.

[CC_Guru]

Originally Posted by sunil_misquith

Hi, I'm working for an outbound contact center. Would like to know how much idle time between calls is observed on the predictive dialer, some of you are using. The dialer we are using is I3 and the average idle time is around 25 to 30 seconds on a fresh leadlist.

Hi Sunil,
There is no definate answer for your Question as Wait / Idle time is not depends on Dialer most of the time. It depends on Lead quality as well. It is possible that your FRESH leads will be having half disconnected numbers and Answering Machine , then no dialer in this industree will give you good results. I've seen wait time of 2 Sec. and 15 Sec. on same floor at same time but for Different Campaign.
I work for Dialer Company www.stratasoft.com.

If you won't mind can you share your details with me ?

Please do write me on rahul.khokale@stratasoft.com.

Thanks,
Rahul S. Khokale
Operations Manager,
Stratasoft India,
Direct : +91 98211 83653.

[sunil_misquith]

Gerrard,

On one of our biggest outbound telemarketing projects(115 seats), we are seeing an average talk time of 56%, wait time of 41% and wrap time of 3%.

We penetrate our lead lists close to 60% and the percentage of wrong numbers observed is close to 5% and sum of answering machines +no answers+sit+fax amounts to 75% and connects as 25%(figure calculated from total dials). We operate at 1:3 pacing ratio on all our outbound projects

Having given the above details, can you also suggest the best available and cost effective technology available in the market...
Also, if you can provide me a white paper on technology available in the market, scalability of these products, pros and cons, cost per seat..that would be great piece of information.

Looking forward for a better insight on predictive dialer technology at the earliest.

[gerrard]

Sunil

Thanks for the response. Please could you provide me with your email address so I can make contact with you as some of the information is sensitive.

I can be mailed on tony.hudson @ topstrata . com

[CC_Guru]

Hi Sunil,
You can Visit our site www.stratasoft.com for more details on Predective dialer Technology. I can send you more information on same, but for that I need your mail ID. You can send me your mail ID on rahul.khokale@stratasoft.com
Thank you.
Looking forward for your mail.

Rahul.

[sunil_misquith]

Hi Gerrard,

My mail address is sunil_misquith@yahoo.com.

Looking forward to get quick information on this at the earliest.

[Abstech]

Hello Gerrard,

you can check out our site, for all your predictive dialer software needs. We have the best deal on the market today, with the most available features.


www.absolutetechnologies.net

Thanks

[Dadi Bhote]

Sunil,

The idle time between calls in an Outbound calling scenario is quite complex and is a factor of several settings, leads and equipment capabilities:

Typically a Predictive dialer has a detection system which analyses each call for 1) fax machines 2) answering machines 3) operator intercepts 4) no answers 5) busy tone 6) bad numbers and some more , depending on the design and efficacy of the detection systems. After detecting these and elimating them , the PD throws only live calls to the agent. This is an ideal scenario !

The practical scene is that there are different levels of detection systems with varying levels of accuracy - maybe due to reasons of technology, maybe due to the other factors like type of answering m/c's etc, and a major factor in accurate detection is the TIME taken to detect these calls. Here is where the trade off neeeds to be done - greater time is better detection - with systems with weak detection : weak detection takes longer times to detect these, and therefore calls take longer to be disposed by the dialer and longer to get thrown to the agent. Resulting in longer wait time between calls. The sophistication of the answering machine detection is another variant between different predictive dialing providers. Less sophisticated systems use voice cadence detection -- which assumes that a long burst of words (Hello, this is the Jones residence...) is an answering machine. Cadence detection alone is about 60% effective in correctly detecting an answering machine. Another factor for this long wait time between calls is the number of lines used to dial out from the PD. Typically most systems deploy 2 lines per agent. When on outbound telemarketing needs more , maybe three lines per agent, this is due to the fact that these Outbound calling lists are notoriously contain a large number of unavailable numbers. Even from reputed lead providers , due to the fact that B2C calling is at times when customers are not always available.



As I see it you may improve your performance by using :
1) a dialer with more accurate detection system,
2) increase the number of lines outgoing per agent and increase the pacing

We see a practical wait time below 10 seconds with our dialer.



Regards

Dadi Bhote

dbhote@five9.com

[loprox]

Sunil,

30 seconds is WAY too much wait and I think that someting is wrong with your dialer.

I think Dadi is on the right path that the detection system is erroneous on your system.

Try this: turn of answering machine detection. Have your agent disposition these by hand for a couple of hours. Compare the numbers you are now getting with what you had before. The answering machine detection might be too sensitive and picking up live calls as answering machines.

Also, I have seen this problem come up when the dialer was not actually using all lines to dial. So, you have 3 lines per agent but the system is not using them all. Have your IT department check this area.

There is definitely something wrong here, hopefully you can optimize your numbers.

Let me know if you have been able to change your wait times.

Alex
atrottier@kjmg.com