Naveen,
Ths distinction between hard and soft dialers has been pretty much
overtaken by events.
In the old days of proprietary dialers, you could buy everything you
needed in one comms server, which did dialing, call progress and also
handled much of the application, i.e. taking numbers from a calling
list, issuing screen pop commands etc. You can still buy these systems.
They are more open than they used to be and available not just on Unix
but Windows as well.
As the switch vendors moved into the predictive dialing space, they have
both competed directly with 'hard dialers' by using ISDN to do call
progress and using their own resources to do all the dialing and
switching of calls, as well as deploying predictive algorithms on their
own servers.
And some solutions have become mixed, with so-called hard dialers
working in conjunction with switches, where for example the former make
the calls and do call progress, and the switches transfer and manage the
calls.
In practice, the best way to approach this subject is not by thinking
hard or soft, but thinking about what you want to achieve in
implementing a dialer.
For example
* what level of call progress detection do you want to do, and do you
want to deploy DSP resources to do this, or rely upon ISDN to provide
results, and let the agent manage the rest of the work. If you have
access to ISDN, then that should suffice, whatever you may hear about
the need to use DSPs to do answering machine detection.
* do you want to take the leap to VOIP and can you be assured that
issues of cost, latency and voice quality can all be managed to your
advantage. Many vendors offering this; as yet not all will have
mastered the issues.
Naveen,
Ths distinction between hard and soft dialers has been pretty much
overtaken by events.
In the old days of proprietary dialers, you could buy everything you
needed in one comms server, which did dialing, call progress and also
handled much of the application, i.e. taking numbers from a calling
list, issuing screen pop commands etc. You can still buy these systems.
They are more open than they used to be and available not just on Unix
but Windows as well.
As the switch vendors moved into the predictive dialing space, they have
both competed directly with 'hard dialers' by using ISDN to do call
progress and using their own resources to do all the dialing and
switching of calls, as well as deploying predictive algorithms on their
own servers.
And some solutions have become mixed, with so-called hard dialers
working in conjunction with switches, where for example the former make
the calls and do call progress, and the switches transfer and manage the
calls.
In practice, the best way to approach this subject is not by thinking
hard or soft, but thinking about what you want to achieve in
implementing a dialer.
For example
* what level of call progress detection do you want to do, and do you
want to deploy DSP resources to do this, or rely upon ISDN to provide
results, and let the agent manage the rest of the work. If you have
access to ISDN, then that should suffice, whatever you may hear about
the need to use DSPs to do answering machine detection.
* do you want to take the leap to VOIP and can you be assured that
issues of cost, latency and voice quality can all be managed to your
advantage. Many vendors offering this; as yet not all will have
mastered the issues.
* and given the trend towards regulation, especially in the US, how do
you plan to get effective predictive dialing? The real benefits in
predictive dialing lie not in the call progress but in the quality of
the predictive algorithms. Compliance with the coming regulations (it
won't just be the US) is easy. What matters is choosing the right
algorithms so that your operation is EFFECTIVE UNDER COMPLIANCE. Most
predictive algorithms are based on dated design methodology and will
simply not cope with the coming legislation, no matter how good their
branding in the marketplace! We work with the Sytel product, Softdial
Plugin, which has been specifically designed to give performance
benefits under compliance. Worth a good look.
If I can help further, feel free to contact me.
|