Predictive Guessing v. True Predictive Dialing: avoid inferior dialing solutions
Nine years ago when I started working for IAT, I assumed that other dialer vendors offered very similar products. Recently, I’ve had several conversations with prospects that showed how IAT is far ahead of the competition.
When I demonstrate IAT’s dialing technology, I like to ask the individual about the technology they’re currently using, so I can explain any differences. The various vendors these individuals currently use are all very fine reputable vendors. In fact, many of you are using them now! But I was shocked as the prospects described the shortcomings of their selected dialers. I have discovered that the similarities I initially assumed existed in fact do not. And many of our competitors still have not figured it out.
The reason these prospects were so anxious to see IAT’s cloud dialing solution is because the deficiencies in their current systems significantly lessened their recovery capabilities. Below is just one example of the differences I found.
Each of the vendors the prospects discussed with me engineered their predictive dialer with Static Resource Allocation. This may not seem like a big deal, but this poorly conceived concept will reduce the entire performance of your dialing capability. This logic inherently produces the following deficiencies:
- Under Dialing: Excessive “wait times” between calls to agents (4 – 5 minutes between calls). Not only are accounts not being called, human resources are drastically underutilized.
- Over Dialing: When the manager observes excessive wait times, he has a tendency to over compensate by assigning too many dialing resources to the call list. Now many calls are placed on hold. The consequence is an unacceptable dropped call rate because the dialer is working too fast.
- Group/List Pacing: Dialing resources are assigned and set for the entire agent group or call list. The dialer is unable to adjust for the unique pacing of each agent.
- Real Call Blending is non-existent: Some of the dialers can feed inbound calls to agents, but this alone is not true call blending. If outbound calling cannot be controlled on the fly—adjusting the dialing rate to accommodate inbound traffic—the dialer is unable to quickly feed inbound traffic to agents. Missed inbound calls are lost opportunities for taking payments.
- Limited Skills-Based Routing: Because the dialer cannot monitor outbound/inbound traffic effectively, skills-based routing cannot feed calls to the appropriate agent in a timely manner.
What I have described is not predictive dialing . . . It is “predictive guessing.”
It requires a manager to constantly “babysit” dialer operations—it makes them try to guess the optimum dialer speed. What may work for a few minutes can change in the blink of an eye because variables you have no control over change every second—hit rate, call length, wrap up time, answering machine messaging, etc.
A word to the wise: Just because a vendor uses the same terminology (i.e. predictive dialing) to describe a particular feature does not mean they really have that feature.
IAT SmartDial’s Dynamic Resource Allocation adjusts resources for the individual agent “on the fly” for optimum operation. Managers can spend time on meaningful tasks rather than playing a guessing game. If you don’t believe me, I can prove it to you in just a few minutes with a simple demonstration. If not . . . lunch is on me.
Step up to a superior predictive dialer: SmartDial. There is no need to wait any longer. It’s available now!
This article was written by David E