Predictive Dialer System
The Key to Successful Auto Dialer Telemarketing

In one form or another the predictive dialer system has been employed as a contact center productivity tool for some twenty to thirty years. In the early days there wasn't a great of intelligence embedded in the box. It was basically just an autodialer with little if any predictive capability. Despite this lack of sophistication and smarts they were able to achieve substantial productivity improvements over manual dialing.

Early predictive dialer systems were completely hardwired and inflexible, but with the passage of time the predictive dialer system evolved into a flexible highly sophisticated business phone tool. Software based dialers (soft dialers) have superseded hard dialers and there is now no shortage of predictive dialer software options. In addition to the major proprietary brands there are a number of adequate Open Source predictive dialer solutions as well such as Gnudialer. There are also a significant number technophiles who have developed their own solutions. We suspect that these latter options are the ones that don't pay a lot of attention to compliance issues.

"Compliance" has grown into an issue of major significance. The predictive dialer system has become so pervasive that it's now almost impossible for anyone with a telephone to avoid contact with the technology. Inevitably the trend will continue because predictive dialers are highly effective business tools. Furthermore, compliance with legal requirements such as Do Not Call registers and dropped calls is not difficult to manage with modern proprietary systems, but nevertheless the FCC levies tens of millions of dollars in fines annually for non-compliance.

The cost of the technology has tumbled and it is now used not only by large scale enterprises, but also by SMBs and even SOHO business operators. A 6-12 seat premise based predictive dialer system is within the reach of even small business operators, but the hosted predictive dialer is without doubt the preferred option for this segment.

The virtual predictive dialer is an attractive option for both large and small scale enterprises. They are typically owned and managed by specialists who are familiar with recruiting and training contact center staff. Their services can be used on a campaign by campaign basis without incurring an on-going commitment to employing personnel and there is no capital expenditure commitment.

There are also no geographic limits on where an outsourced predictive dialer service is located. As a consequence of IP telephony the biggest element of cost in running a service from the US or Europe is not the phone bill, but the cost of contact center staff. It explains why India and the Philippines are the hub of a global call center industry.

The data used to drive early predictive dialers was loaded as text files that had been extracted from index sequential file systems. It's still common, but increasingly dialers are required to integrate with CRM database software and other applications via APIs and middleware.

Current generation predictive auto dialers equip contact center agents to communicate not only via voice, but also fax, text, email and video. They have at their finger tips the means of comprehensively completing a call using whatever medium is most appropriate and then moving on immediately to handle the next.

Ironically the ultimate objective in the evolution of the predictive dialer system is to make the technology invisible. To eliminate delays while the technology senses the line and to always have an agent ready to respond as soon as voice contact is established. The very best call center technology has now achieved this objective.

Related Articles

Finding a Used Predictive Dialer - the Secret

From Predictive Dialer System to Predictive Dialer Software

From Predictive Dialer System to Business Phone Tools