Good day.

I am merely interseted in knowing, from a predictive dialler's perspective. When I work the campaigns loaded, do I start off by doing the High risk accounts first, having all the agents on the campaign or do I allocate certain agents to certain campaigns.

Which would be more effective?

Thank you.

Hi all.

Whilst on the topic, I want to know, what would the best possible way be to increase contactibility from an outbound perspective, even after a datawash has been done, the contact rate still remains low. Any suggestions on how to improve this.

They have mentioned power dialling as an option, but I'm still struggling to undertsand the definition of power dilling, as it borders closely to normal predictive dilling?

Any help or advice will be appreciated.

Thank you.

Johan,

Power and predictive are actually different.

Predictive looks at agents, handle etc and dials
accordingly to try and match call to agents.

Power does exactly what it says and dials at a
constant rate, this leads to a vastly increased
dropped / silent call rate.

I cannot stress the following strongly enough.


i) This is illegal in the UK. There are strict
rules on silent call rates and OFCOM have now started
growing some teeth and started prosecuting and fining
rather than Gumming the offenders.

ii) This will P*ss your customers off no end. People will vote
with their feet and a walk.

With the current environment for the banking sector customer churn
will start to be an issue soon. There has always been competition,
but, with the current banking loss / debt levels the banks need
the investment capital. We all know retention is cheaper than
aquisition!

Hope it helps

Regards

DaveA

Thank you for this.

I need to ask regarding the contact rates, after datawash has been done and the contact rate is still only 35%, how would I get this to increase?

Hi Johan,
The contact rate will be virtually irrelevant when using a decent, well configured predictive dialing solution.

The lower the contact rate, the more outbound calls will be dialed in order to ensure the wait-times between your call is at your preferred level (or at a minimum if that is preferred)

A good predictive dialer will move seamlessly between what you understand in power dialing and predictive, however it will only dial as many calls as required to maintain your Agents productivity.

In essence, a good predictive dialer will predict when to commence calls, but depending on contact rate, data availability, call type, target waiting time, target dropped call maximums, recent success rate, time of day, team size (and a few others) the dialer might decide not to start calls until an agent has finished their last call and waiting for the next one.

In summary; A correctly configured predictive dialer will always out-perform alternative solutions. It tracks to meet your requirements, and if the contact rate is low, it will use more resources to meet the desired goal.

Best regards
Darren

Disclosure!
I'm the MD of a UK Predictive Dialing Solution and would be happy to discuss more off-line if you would like to know more about the options available.

Thank you Darren.

I still need to know,. even if all the dialler efficiencies are effective, I still can't see why the contact rate remains low, I'm not focused on the connect rate, as this can be manipulated with the attributes. I just look at it as if we are calling 100 people, but only make contact with 35 of them. Overall this will not be beneficial, because we make more calls than we actually get to collect on.

Regards.

Hi Johan,
I'm suspicious we are talking about a different statistic.

I refer to Contact Rate as the number of calls answered / number of calls made, so 35% in your example.

Is this what you see as Connect Rate?

Of course no one can force the customers to pick up the phone, so the only change we can make is the time when we call them.

I assume your are working under your Company's specific restriction, not to attempt a particular number more than x times, which is why you may be concerned about the contact rate - ie each attempt to contact someone is a chance lost to complete your task?

On a very simple basis, some people try dialling strategies such as:
If your target audience is working consumers, it might be best to try their mobile numbers during the day and home phones in the evening.

The crux of the matter is that at the beginning of a call, you may know virtually nothing about the intended target. As soon as you make the call, no matter what the outcome you now have some information, which you should endeavour to use (and not loose) to improve your chances for a contact next time.

If it is a No answer - Reschedule the call for a different time of day next time, or try an alternative phone number for the same contact.

If the number is engaged, try again in just 5 minutes (Unless it is a mobile)

If the call is answered but it is not the RPC, (assuming the hardware will enforce the rescheduling) let the agent ask what a convenient time / day is to re-attempt, and ensure that that call actually does happen at that time. This can be a specific time and day or more generic such as mornings / afternoons / evenings. It might also include an alternative or prefered contact number etc.

Have you tried calling at the weekend and compare the results to the rest of the week?
What time of day to you start / stop calling? - Have you tried dialling with a pilot team outside of these hours and seen if the contact rate changes?

Do you obtain all of your dialling data from the same source and if not do you run comparisons between then shortly after the start and completion of the campaigns?

Ultra Communications supply this type of support proactively to clients of our particular dialling solution to make the most out of client data and Agent time. Often it can be a case of build a strategy to target a clients paticular KPI, ensure the KPI can be monitored in real time, then monitor activity and results during live calling, making alterations to the stratergy based on the outcome.

I assume you already have a automated dialling solution, but assuming it has at least some of the programming flexibility, the strategy will be similar for your hardware as it is for our solution.

regards