If you turn on Answering machine detection, all diallers have a delay. Most even have a noticable delay even without it.
Maybe you should look at a preview dialer. No, I'm not a sales person. I'm not sure who even sells one.
I've built my own preview dialer for my company using VB, SQL and CTI functions. The reaction of the people we call is much better than when we use our predictive dialer. We save the predictive dialer for surveys and announcements, and stick to the preview dialer for high touch situations.
Also on a predictive dialer, you will always have a drop % or you will have to run it on a 1-1 ratio which is the same as running a preview dialer.

Best of Luck!
Marianne

Absolutely true. We sell both hard and soft diallers (and can offer preview dialling). The hard dialler we favour has a delay of sub-1 second while it identifies the signal tone. Most soft diallers average 2-4+ seconds.

I would beg to differ.....

If you run a Unison predictive dialler on 1:1 / 100:100 etc the dialler will re-balance the dialling patterns according to resource about every 15 mins. Predictive dialling will gain you 70 - 90% agent utilisation gains which will smash any preview dialler performance.

Drops can be managed, Target Percent Connect can also be used (if you have Concerto kit).

AMD will impact slightly with a delay to the routing of customer - agent however this can be tuned and we operate at about a second, this is due to the sampling of the trunk to see if the customer end is an answering machine etc. Sampling generally runs for 1 sec, therefore cust recieves about 1.5 - 2 secs silence.

Hope it helps,

Ian

It's interesting to see that you are using Unison and have reduced AMD to a delay of 1-2 secs.
Do you find that you have many 'drops' as a result of the AMD cutting customers off due to background noise etc?
We are currently having Unison installed and one of our concerns with using AMD and lowering the default setting for detection, is that it may cut customers off.
I'd appreciate your thoughts on this one.

Thanks
Amanda

Hi Amanda, AMD by its very nature will cut customers off. Dialler's will use a table of audio signatures that it uses to recognise a number of digital and analogue answer machines by signature. It may be worth enquiring what revision your dialler has and also whether you get any upgrades within your support contract. I have found excellent service with the UNISON when required.

I understand the concern with cutting customers off, with our installation our diallers are configured to sample from customer pickup until end of customer salutation, and then the dialler compares the sample recorded with its table of answer machine, modem / fax entries and thresholds for noise vs. audio level etc. This will have (should have been), discussed and documented as part of the service level agreement / high-level design document with your supplier. Monotone voices and high background noise will all influence the dialler perception.

88% accurate detection of AMD's or better will be the benchmark to aim for with a sub-second detection of answer machine, you need to define what the acceptable level of failure is for the client (within DMA guidelines etc). Once you have established the benefits of predictive dialling on call centre agent utilisation and explained clearly to the call centre / campaign managers the thresholds that they can work within to achieve their targets you can work to develop the MIS reports they need to track the campaign performance :)

The dialler manager role is a fine balancing act (I am more than sure that you are aware of this)... Monitoring is the only way that you can really deliver, but this is the bit that most 'business people' miss, what do you monitor? With the plethora of statistics available this is an area that is virtually unexplored and exploited within the organisation (it's worth millions if utilised correctly).

Another discussion thread I am sure....

Use the trunk monitor application from the UNISON suite and monitor around critical time periods to gain a feel of how the campaign will perform over the lifecycle. I would start by checking resource levels vs. expected vs. actual inbound (assuming blended predictive campaign). If you are expecting a TV commercial (or other inbound call generator), pace the dialler down a few lines vs. agent for 3 minutes beforehand to soften the blow to the agent group. This small thing will improve abandonment. Pace up again after.

Try using Target Percent Connect if you have steady periods of resource (make sure that you have re-sched enabled). You could try flowing between campaigns to suit resource profiles. The technology can make decisions faster than you could ever do, but the decisions should be yours. It's the old adage, crap in, crap out... But faster!!

I hope that this helps somewhat, go for AMD but manage closely and impress on the business the pivotal role that the dialler manager has in delivering usually a multi-thousand (if not million) pound advertising campaign.

Keep me posted on the installation of the UNISON system, I have an appreciation of the challenges you business will face and will help when I can.

Regards,

Ian

Dear Mr Fretti,

May I comment on just a couple of the comments you make in your note. Inter alia, you say

* With predictive dialling wait times between calls can be as low as 1 second and are usually around 2 or 3 seconds.

* Everyone in our industry should be concerned with drop rates and silent calls are now becoming a problem also.

* Sorry if this sounds like a sales pitch.

Well, I hope that this isn't a sales pitch and you are just someone who has got his facts badly wrong. You are certainly right about drop rates and silent calls, and if you are in the UK as I suspect, you company publicly heralded the update to the DMA dialer rules, when they came out last year. Good to see your company's support on this.

So what is this about 2 to 3 seconds?! The only way that any dialer can achieve this kind of performance is by generating nuisance calls that are truly in the stratosphere. My guess is at least 50%, but probably a lot more. I don't want to make a sales pitch, and won't, but don't doubt this.

Which leaves me wondering where the huge rise in nuisance calls that has taken place in the UK recently is coming from. I hope you have indeed got your facts wrong.

Michael McKinlay

We used to have a problem with the BT 1571 answer phones and our predictive dialler, but got around the problem by measuring the time it takes for the BT service to come on (20 seconds), and set our ringout time to below this. Answer phones presented to agents went down by over 72%. Live calls presented went up by over 28% and telephony costs per live call presented went down by 27%. I've spoken to reps from two dialler companies and neither of them knew about this fix.

My point of view is that traditional hardware based diallers have the best and fastest answering machine detection and the call usually is presented to the agent within one second or less from the call being answered. If the call is transferred using PBX hookflash then this will take between 2 to 3 seconds.

Soft diallers rely on receiving the call outcome from the PBX and when answering machine detection is turned on this takes 2 to 3 seconds but when answering machine detection is not used, the call is transferred in 300 MS on average. There are many advantages in using a soft dialler, especially when providing service to multiple sites.

These guidelines are applicable to almost all predictive dialers.

Often you will find that an integrator is more focused on these finer points and will do a better implementation then the actual software architect.

Note: The purpose of this forum is not for suppliers to compete against eachother in a subtle way.