Everything You Need to Know About Call Center Dialing Modes

Everything you need to know about call center dialer patterns is based on the type of campaign you're running, the length of your sales cycle, and the size of your team. You must have a Dialer for your business.

The Different Dialing Modes

Mode With Preview (Semi-Automatic)

Preview mode, semi-automatic progressive, is the most used dialing mode in contact centers for more complex cases. As the name suggests, the agent can preview the customer's details before initiating the call. After reviewing the case, the agent can take the call manually whenever they feel ready.

When To Use It?

Use preview (semi-automatic) dialing mode in a few particular situations. For example, in complex customer cases, an agent may need to review the information before starting the call to have the best chance of closing. It is often the case in the context of B2B prospecting where it is helpful to know your prospect well enough to anticipate his approach, or even in the context of calls by collection companies to individuals (B2C) for whom it is essential to know the contact's file before the call.

Inside sales and customer, follow-ups can also take advantage of preview mode for more precision in sales. However, consider your data. If your data only includes a name and phone number, you won't get any benefit from a preview dialer.

The Pros and Cons

Benefits

The agent can read the information in advance to fully know the customer.

Disadvantages

Agents can review each case before calling, resulting in inefficiencies.

The Progressive Call Automaton

They seek a solution that increases agent efficiency but eliminates the risk of dropped or silent calls. The progressive or automatic dialer also called Power Dialer is designed to work so that, as soon as the agent has finished the last call, the next contact in the list is automatically called. There is a notable difference compared to the predictive call automaton, which estimates when the calls will end to connect the agent with a new call picked up.

When to use it?

Progressive automation is beneficial when you want to maximize the impact of a campaign targeted at existing clients. For example, renewal or upsell campaigns, where agents still have a short time to see contact information before the customer responds.

The Progressive Dialer is ideal for a motivated team and gamified work, from big-screen leaderboards to in-window updates and personalized agent announcements.

 

The Pros and Cons

Benefits

• The agent automatically receives a call when the previous one ends, increasing efficiency.
• The agent still has a short time to view the contact information.

Disadvantages

• Each call is dialed and then rings for approximately 20 seconds, which can reduce efficiency during off-peak hours.

The Power Dialer

Sometimes power dialing is used as a catch-all term for all automated dialing and is confused with, among other things, progressive dialing. The power dialer is a specific automatic dialing mode with always more active calls than agents.

Smart Power Dialers can even combine ring time to calculate call intensity. Power Dialing is a good solution when you have a small team with a long average call duration.

When To Use It?

Power dialing usually works best when you have a small team with an extensive list of prequalified prospects that you want to tap into.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Benefits

• Increases efficiency while eliminating most possible automation issues, such as call prediction failure or voicemail detection failure.
• The speed of the dialer can be changed by adjusting the calls/agent ratio.

Disadvantages

• Lower efficiency than predictive dialer, for example.

The Predictive Dialer

Predictive dialing can skyrocket your success rate when you have a large team and short call durations. As an agent, getting someone on the phone is one of your biggest hurdles. The Predictive Dialer calls the numbers automatically, detects voicemail boxes and transfers the call to you only when the prospect answers, which saves you precious time.

The system's core algorithm calculates when the following contacts should be dialed. This algorithm continuously monitors activity to optimize the dial rate accordingly. It means the agent will still have someone on the line after the last call ends.

Many predictive dialers allow you to choose drop rates, such as 0.5-10%, to meet country-specific regulations. Some predictors also have unique modes that set more aggressiveness and completely ignore dropped calls. Even the best predictive dialers will see a small percentage of abandoned calls when there are no free agents to take the calls. You can reduce this percentage with some dialers by transferring the call to an announcement or an IVR.

It should be noted here that predictive dialing is heavily regulated in some countries, and you should always be aware of local laws to ensure they are followed. For example, the dropout rate in the UK and the US should be at most 3% over a 24-hour or 30-day period.

When to use it?

Predictive dialing is most effective in simple campaigns, like selling simple products, and you have an extensive list to call.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Benefits

• Fast processing of large contact lists.
• I am increasing agent productivity up to 80-90%.

Disadvantages

• There is a risk of dropped calls; there are calls in progress, but all agents are busy.
• Moreover, even the best-answering machine detectors can give false positives and therefore drop a call even if someone is on the line.

Power IVR (ALL)

When you want to free up your agents so they can concentrate on closing deals, outbound IVR is excellent for existing clients and excels. Contact centers will use big data analytics and more outbound IVR in the future to find and initiate transaction possibilities without being spam.

Many nations forbid outgoing IVR because of the spam issue. However, outbound IVR that is legal and compliant is expanding. The outgoing SVI was mainly used for political campaigns, where many voters were contacted. Other legitimate use cases for high-volume IVR are, for example, public service or emergency announcements, where a large group of people need to be informed quickly.

We advise you to speak with a local outbound call expert to understand your country's regulations on outbound calls and the implications of the European GDPR privacy directive.

When To Use It?

The power IVR (SVI robot) is useful when, for example, you remind your current customers about overdue payments or for public sectors that cater to a large group of people in an emergency.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Benefits

• The machine handles the calls and lets your agents focus on closing deals.

Disadvantages

• Listening to pre-recorded messages can annoy people.
• We must always insist more on this point: highly regulated and even prohibited in many countries.