You can describe predictive dialing as a technique to automate the management of unsuccessful calls. A humble mission? Hardly. An average of fourteen calls out of one hundred manually dialed result in a connection to the right person. What happens to the rest of the 86?
Typically:
- 25 numbers will not get a reply after the ring.
- 10 will have a busy signal.
- 30 numbers will be answered by an answering machine.
- 5 will receive a recorded message from the telephone company.
- 14 will be answered but not by the correct person.
- 2 will be modems or fax.
As these figures make clear, physically dialing means that some action will need to be taken on all of the unsuccessful calls, even if just to jot down the number so that you can make another call later. Tedious work, for sure. The person appointed to this (needless) task can end up with incredible frustration. Predictive dialing can relieve this frustration by automating the handling of unsuccessful calls, but it can also do a great deal more. Predictive dialing can improve an establishment's incoming and outgoing operations, as we will soon see.
THE BENEFITS
A cost advantage analysis of only the likely productivity gains is for very often enough to persuade them to adopt predictive dialing technology, for numerous businesses. This has been true for the most part in collections and telemarketing where the math is evident. Enhanced call quality (very important when customer service issues are involved) and, because of better job fulfillment and a smaller amount of stress and frustration, a reduced staff turnover number are other benefits that are not as easily quantifiable, but just as doable.
A campaign supervisor sets the strategy for dealing with each type of fiasco and what you should do to follow-up, and can be changed as the campaign moves forward. Going by the figures above, you can achieve productivity increases of 300 to 400 percent (or more) with measuring payback intervals in months, not years.
Benefits of Predictive Dialing Page 2
