The Smell of Predictive Dialing Success By Lee Hollman , CallCenter Dec 5, 2001 (9:13 AM) URL: http://www.callcentermagazine.com/article/CCM20011204S0007 If you've been avoiding buying a predictive dialer because agents at your call center make too few calls to justify the cost of purchasing one, your wait is over. By adding a predictive dialer module to software suites you might already use for managing customer interactions and service, e-mail, company data or other resources, you can achieve effective outbound campaigns with a rapid return on investment. Just ask Larry Mark, the chief technical officer for VorTecs, a Shelton, CT-based consulting firm for call centers. "Predictive dialing is one of the clearest returns on investment that you can make in a call center," he says. "You don't need to call millions of people, especially as the prices have come down. And you can have fairly small outbound call centers now." Predictive dialing software has found growing acceptance among large numbers of call centers that can't afford the more traditional proprietary hardware dialing systems. Many of these software dialers are modules of comm servers, which can route messages from different mediums to agents. But call centers that focus primarily on outbound calls appreciate the power and efficiency of a hardware dialer, since they can typically accommodate more agents and handle greater volumes of outbound calls. Both types of dialers have their strengths and liabilities, which we will explore later in this article. Predictive dialers have dramatically impacted how call center managers run their centers. Mark says that agents who answered outbound calls from a dialer typically worked separately from inbound agents, leaving "islands of information" between them (i.e., agents handling outbound calls weren't able to view the same customer information as agents handling inbound calls). "Upon the realization that there were these islands, [vendors] wanted to start sharing agent resources," he says. Mark says that software-based predictive dialers emerged to bridge these islands of information. He explains that vendors of dialers and software for call centers contributed to the development of software-based dialers. "The traditional dialer vendors added products to their offerings that enabled them to work with software suites, and software vendors added outbound [modules] to their suites," he says. As a module of a suite, predictive dialing software can work with other applications. That lets agents, for example, answer customers' e-mails and text chat requests, in addition to inbound and outbound calls. But Mark cautions that requiring agents to respond to blended calls, let alone blending different media, can confuse them. "Blending information is the present and the future of predictive dialing," says Mark. "But people just don't seem to adapt well to call blending. You've got the human factors of switching modes between inbound and outbound calls." He doesn't foresee hardware-based predictive dialers becoming obsolete. That's because hardware dialers often have more features than their software counterparts. For example, a hardware dialer might be able to associate more phone numbers with a given customer or include more options for finding customers' names on a calling list. Predictive dialer hardware still grabs by far the largest share of the market. Brian Huff, technology analyst at New York, NY-based research and consulting firm Datamonitor, says that 68% of the revenue earned by predictive dialer vendors in 2000 came from sales of dialer hardware. Huff notes that centers that have already invested in a legacy-based dialer won't rush to replace them. But he also anticipates a rise in demand for soft dialers during the next five years. Call centers are increasingly using predictive dialers for applications besides collections and telemarketing, such as assessing customer satisfaction. As more predictive dialing options come to market, say observers, they'll spur additional apps. Below, we detail how the latest products can help you design successful outbound campaigns. Comm Servers Serve Outbound Campaigns Many communications server vendors offer predictive dialing components to help manage outbound campaigns. David Fuller, the director of marketing for Interactive Intelligence (Indianapolis, IN), explains that call center managers appreciate the convenience of adding outbound dialing capacity to a software package. "They want to buy a module that fits in with the rest of their communications system," he says. "And," he adds, referring to the limitations of standalone predictive dialers, "they've been through the CTI mess of the past. "The problem with more traditional dialers is that they're proprietary solutions and they limit customization options," he says. "They have to be connected through trunks to a PBX in many cases. When you run out of physical trunks, you can't do any more [outbound] dialing." Let's say for example, you dedicate a certain number of ports to IVR and to predictive dialing. If you want to devote additional ports to predictive dialing, you would need to physically free up those IVR ports, creating extra work for your center's IT staff. Using predictive dialer software like Interaction Dialer 2.0 lets you reallocate your call center resources from your PC. The software works as a module of the Customer Interaction Center comm server software suite. Version 2.0 also includes new features, like multi-server campaign support. You can set rules to filter phone numbers from your outbound calling list to other servers also running Interaction Dialer. If you work on the East Coast, for example, you can send numbers with California area codes to a call center on the West Coast so that agents at that center can answer West Coast-directed calls. For every outbound campaign, the Interaction Dialer 2.0 automatically determines how often to make calls on behalf of agents based on statistical data collected from prior calls. For example, let's say that your center places 100 calls, 20 of which end with the customer hanging up after ten seconds. The next time a call reaches the same stage, the software knows to make another call. To keep track of multiple outbound campaigns, the software features a real-time statistics display. The information details how many agents work on a given campaign; how many calls they answer; the number of times they call the same customers; the estimated time of completion for each call; and the number of calls that agents answer per hour. All statistics can be displayed on agents' PCs. Pricing for Interaction Dialer Server and the Interaction Dialer Workstation are approximately $5,000 and $3,000, respectively. Interaction Dialer comes with the Interaction Scripter, software that enables you to write call scripts for inbound and outbound campaigns. You can also purchase the last as a standalone product for $750 per agent. Cellit (Miami, FL), another comm server vendor, offers the optional Automatic Outbound Dialing (AOD) module with its flagship product, ContactPro. Automatic Outbound Dialing lets you assign multiple phone numbers to customers so the software can dial the number where they can be reached. The software automatically updates your outbound calling list so that when agents successfully reach customers, their names are removed from the list. Philippe Houdard, vice president of marketing for Cellit, says the company also began offering Automatic Outbound Dialing as a standalone product last year due to popular demand among call centers. He says that call centers can integrate the dialer module with ContactPro to leverage features other than predictive dialing. And Houdard notes that adding a module to an existing suite makes upgrading your call center easier than attempting to integrate disparate software packages from different vendors. "When you have a soft dialer that's a separate component, there are many complications with integration," says Houdard. "Beyond the cost of integrating it, there's [the problem of] pulling reports from the dialer and the ACD separately." He adds that ContactPro provides call center managers with a unified platform for generating reports containing real-time and historical information. ContactPro also lets agents respond to inbound phone calls, e-mail messages and text chat requests. The software additionally gives customers touchtone options to speak to appropriate agents. The features reflect the trend among call centers to handle blended calls. "As companies grow, they identify different revenue streams," says Houdard. "Even if you're just initially an outbound shop, you need to ensure that customers can interact with you through any channel of communication." Providing additional communication options from your call center can also help you do more than find new sources of revenue. Houdard recalls how earlier this year Entergy, a utility company based in New Orleans, LA, wanted to alert customers in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi to a possible power outage related to an ice storm. Agents used Automatic Outbound Dialing with ContactPro to call all 1,200 people on their medical protect list for those areas in less than an hour. Because the people on that list depend on life support machines, they had time to connect their machines to generators. They could also contact agents with questions and concerns. Pricing for Automatic Outbound Dialing preinstalled on a Windows NT server is approximately $2,000 per agent. The MSRP for the ContactPro suite with the dialer on the same server is $3,000 to $4,000 per agent, depending on the number of agents and redundant servers. CosmoDialer, an optional component of CosmoCom's (Melville, NY) CosmoCall Universe software, uses call simulation, rather than the probability model of previous dialers, to determine when to make outbound calls. "Think of [call simulation] as basically running like an ACD," says Erik Laurence, CosmoCom's vice president of marketing and business development. "It's simulating the operation of the dialer by tracking the number of agents who are logged in and finishing calls." CosmoDialer simulates how many available agents can answer a given number of outbound calls every few millionths of a second. The product thereby accurately matches as many successful outbound contacts as there are agents who can respond to them. As you make outbound calls, the application also saves new data specific to an outbound campaign. The software can, for example, update records noting the percent of outbound calls that end with a busy signal, receive no response or get picked up by a customer's answering machine. Based on this real-time data, the software constantly figures the probability of successfully contacting a live customer. Because standalone dialers use historical data to determine this probability, the information they use is less current and less accurate. Laurence says the call simulation technique leverages your PC's processor to calculate the odds of connecting customers to available agents. The technique reduces the likelihood that customers receive calls only to wait until agents have time to speak to them. "The difficult thing about predictive dialing is maintaining productivity while minimizing the nuisance calls," he says. "Since Legacy dialers don't use smart dialing technologies, they have as high as 15% to 20% nuisance call rates." Reducing the number of nuisance calls from your center is no small concern. Laurence says that FCC legislation and telecom industry pressure might soon require you to reduce nuisance call rates to as little as two percent, a rate that most dialers can't adhere to while remaining productive. Yet he also concedes that call center managers need to play an active role in managing outbound campaigns to avoid an overflow of nuisance calls. CosmoDialer's Campaign Manager feature lets you set rules and monitor agents' performances for outbound campaigns. You can customize the software with graphics to view the results for each campaign based on customers' area codes, time zones, and demographics for a given region or other criteria. For example, if your outbound sales campaign receives a strong reaction in Texas, you can view a graphic of the United States and click on Texas. You can then view the sales statistics for that state and decide if you want agents to focus their sales efforts there. CosmoDialer also provides you with unified reporting and administrative features by reading information from any ODBC-standard database. Although Laurence says that CosmoCom doesn't market its software as a replacement for your PBX, it can be used to route calls and messages from other media without a phone switch. You pay $1,500 per agent to use CosmoDialer with CosmoCall Universe, and a starting price of $3,000 per agent for CosmoDialer alone on a Windows 2000 or Windows XP server. The Unison 6.0 software suite from Davox (Westford, MA) lets you blend calls, view real-time campaign statistics and sort the data for each inbound or outbound campaign based on criteria that includes the date of each campaign and agents involved. You install Unison 6.0 on a Unix server. Agents can view call scripts or customer information from PCs running all current Windows operating systems. Pricing for the software begins at $3,000 for 100 agents. Hardware Dialing Systems in a Box Several vendors have upgraded hardware predictive dialers to handle non-outbound campaign functions. One is the Chicago, IL-based divine (formerly eshare Communications; Norcross, GA), which will release its Conversations 5.0 dialer in early 2002. Unlike previous iterations, which only did predictive dialing, version 5.0 can initiate multimedia outbound contacts with customers, enabling you to push e-mail messages and Web pages to them, in addition to making phone calls. What are the advantages? Karl Walder, vice president of product management for divine, says you might first use the software to send outbound e-mail messages to your customers requesting late payments. If you receive no response, you can push a page of your company's Web site to customers so they can make payments on-line. If this doesn't work, agents can then make outbound calls to speak to customers directly. Walder says that managing multimedia campaigns is a bold but inevitable step in the evolution of predictive dialers. "If you look at the nature of the predictive dialing algorithm, it's not oriented just to phone calls but to outbound notifications to generate a response," he says. "We still have the basic core dialing mechanisms. But this is about an overall strategy where we really want to be the focal point to manage [all] interactions." Walder adds that because the dialing algorithms used by hardware dialers tend to be more sophisticated than those for dialing software, hardware dialers connect agents and customers faster. He explains many dialing software products force customers to wait several seconds before hearing the agent's voice - prompting some customers to become impatient and hang up. "We haven't given up on the idea of a soft dialer," he says. "But when it comes down to that hard dialing mission, our customers demand that millisecond connection [that's] best fulfilled by a hard dialer." Conversations can also work with other vendors' software. Compatible products include apps from Clarify and Siebel that provide agents with customers' histories; and call recording systems from Nice Systems and Witness Systems. Conversations 5.0 also works with Cisco Systems' Cisco Intelligent Contact Management (ICM) software. ICM automatically directs call flows across multiple sites. It also connects agents to your phone switch or Conversations, depending on how many agents you need to answer phone calls. (We learned at press time that Cisco Systems upgraded Intelligent Contact Management version 4.6 to include call blending so the software can route inbound and outbound calls to agents.) Although you can use Conversations 5.0 with any legacy switch, the company recommends using the predictive dialer with PBXs from Aspect, Avaya and Nortel Networks. The software works with switches from these vendors to let you view agents' call queues. The software runs from an AIX server; agents need to run Windows NT or Windows 2000 from their PCs. Pricing for Conversations 5.0 was not available at press time. Other vendors offering predictive dialers have also begun partnering with software companies. Eric List, product manager for Avaya (Basking Ridge, NJ), says the company upgraded Avaya Predictive Dialing System version 11.2 to integrate with other Avaya products. He says that you can, for example, use the predictive dialer to contact customers, then enable them to participate in a survey by entering touchtone data using Avaya's IVR software. The Avaya dialer works with additional software from Avaya and other vendors using the Integration Feature Pack software. Add-ons to the predictive dialer can, for example, monitor calls, deliver campaign statistics to wallboards and agents' desktops, generate real-time reports and provide touchtone menus to customers. Avaya currently partners with CenterForce Technologies and Nice Systems. You can use CenterForce Optimizer software with the Avaya dialer to predict the best times to contact customers based on when it successfully contacted them previously. Nice Systems' voice recording products can monitor and record calls. The Avaya dialer includes call blending; the Campaign Manager module for viewing real-time information; and Campaign Analyst for generating reports containing real-time and historical campaign data. The outbound dialing algorithm with version 11.2 dials every two to five milliseconds (instead, as previously, every three seconds), improving dialing accuracy and successful outbound contact rates. Pricing for the Avaya Predictive Dialing System begins at $150,000 for ten agents and at $400,000 for 100 agents. CRM Software Meets Predictive Dialing Not all software suites that incorporate predictive dialing are comm server suites. Genesys' (San Francisco, CA) Genesys Outbound Contact Solution works as a module of the Genesys 6 CRM suite. You can use Genesys Outbound Contact Solution with phone switches from vendors including Avaya, Nortel and Seimens, to route outbound calls and deliver screen pops with customer information to agents. Joe Heinen, vice president of product marketing for Genesys, says that the predictive dialing abilities of comm servers have their limitations. He explains that because the software runs from a PC server, the server can only accommodate a limited number of agents. "We hear about them topping out at 100 agents or maybe as many as 200 agents, but we're in a world where they need to grow up to literally thousands of agents," he says. "Instead of a comm server, you need enterprise class hardware for that." Heinen says that PBXs, closed architecture systems dedicated to call routing, can handle large call volumes more smoothly than comm servers. He describes how vendors can upgrade their switches to accommodate thousands of agents, without some of the constraints of working with open standard software. "With a comm server, you have general purpose hardware and operating systems that aren't necessarily oriented to the high degree of performance that some PBX boxes are built for," he says. In addition to being faster and more powerful than comm servers, Heinen says that phone switches are more reliable. "It's a combination of processing power, hardware characteristics of the server, and issues that have been solved in the PBX world with 25 years of product maturity," he says. By using predictive dialing software with a phone switch, you combine the former's user-friendly format for generating outbound campaigns with the latter's proven reliability. Like most predictive dialing software, Genesys Outbound Contact Solution enables you to set rules for each of your campaigns from an administrative screen. Recent upgrades to the module allow for efficiently managing multiple outbound campaigns for as few as ten to 20 agents. Yuen Chen, product line manager for Genesys, says that when you work with a smaller number of agents, it's more difficult to balance the rate at which you dial customers with the rate that agents become available to answer them. You can also use Genesys Outbound Contact Solution as a standalone product. The software can generate reports based on outbound campaigns and provide screen pops containing customer information. Chen estimates that roughly 25% of the company's customers use Genesys Outbound Contact Solution alone; the 75% majority use the software with Genesys 6 to enable agents to respond to inbound calls, e-mail messages and text chat requests. Genesys Outbound Contact Solution starts at approximately $2,800 per agent as a standalone product; as an add-on module to other Genesys software products, the MSRP is $1,150 per agent. Controlling Predictive Dialing Options Can't decide if you want to purchase a turnkey predictive dialing system or dialing software for your call center? Calltrol (Valhalla, NY) offers its Object Telephony Server (OTS) preinstalled on an industrial PC or as software for a Windows NT server. Calltrol installs, configures and tests the software for you when you purchase it with a Calltrol server. You can connect the server to your phone switch or directly to your call center's phone lines. If you don't have a switch, you can use OTS as a comm server to set rules for routing inbound and outbound calls to appropriate agents, monitor and record calls, and create touchtone menus for customers. The OTS software comprises 12 modules that you can purchase together or separately, depending on the features you want. David Friedman, vice president of marketing and sales for Calltrol, says that most of Calltrol's customers rely on OTS for more than predictive dialing. He says that customers often purchase the complete comm server system, and those who don't often license the complete software suite eventually. But Friedman adds that if you use OTS exclusively as a predictive dialer, the software still includes call monitoring and coaching features. The majority of call centers that use Object Telephony Server purchase the software with its own server. But Friedman says that a growing number of centers select the software-only version. He explains that as more call centers gain IT sophistication, they collect their own assortment of servers, voice cards and other hardware and don't need to purchase another server. These centers save money, if not time, by installing the software on their own. Friedman concedes that some businesses expressed concerns that the Windows server running OTS software isn't as dependable as a proprietary predictive dialing system. But he notes the server isn't necessarily the cause of problems. "These [Windows] systems are extremely reliable, so the bug, crash or lock-up rate isn't significant enough to make a material difference in the call center," he says. "It depends on what vendor's software you're running. Implementing a Windows NT solution doesn't make it less reliable, but predictive dialing software may vary in quality." A starting version of the OTS software that handles predictive dialing for a server with 24 ports for analog or digital phone lines lists for $274 per port. An upgraded version of the same software with all OTS features, including call blending, recording and routing, costs $398 per port. The same versions of OTS on preinstalled servers cost $9,699 and $12,371 respectively. Each server can reach nearly 500 ports and the OTS software supports multiple servers. Super-Dialing To The Rescue If you're managing a small call center with a limited budget, Digisoft (New York, NY) offers Super-Dialing as a less costly alternative to predictive dialing. Super-Dialing is a module of Digisoft's Telescript 5.3 software that lets you create outbound calling lists based on your own criteria, like customers who live in a specific region or who want to learn more about a particular product. You can then assign individual agents or groups of agents to answer calls from each list. And you use Telescript to provide them with customized call scripts. Digisoft recommends using Super-Dialing for outbound campaigns that focus on customers who have previous histories with your company. After you create your calling lists, the software enables you to set outbound dialing times for each list. For example, the software can dial every number on a list on weeknights between 6 pm and 8 pm. If agents receive no answer or a busy signal for some customers, Super-Dialing can dial their numbers again on another evening between 8 pm and 10 pm. You connect the server running Telescript 5.3 to your phone switch. You can also use the software without a PBX by installing the app on agents' PCs that have dial-up modems. Digisoft also offers Telescript 5.3 as a call scripting supplement for Calltrol's OTS-NT server. Andrew Davidson, director of marketing for Digisoft, says that many of the company's customers use Super-Dialing primarily during the early stages of their call center operations. "A lot of them do Super-Dialing first, and when they need a more powerful dialing platform, at that point they upgrade to a dialer," he says. Telescript 5.3 recognizes the phone numbers that OTS-NT or Super-Dialing dials to provide agents with the appropriate call script for each customer. Agents can also transfer calls with customers' information to you and to each other. And they can resume interrupted calls at the same point in the script where they left off. New features for version 5.3 enable you to monitor calls using OTS-NT. Pricing for Telescript with Super-Dialing begins at $1,350 per seat. Telescript with predictive dialing functionality begins at $3,000 per agent for ten agents. Where to Go For Dialing Information Here's a list of vendors mentioned in this article that you can call for more information about predictive dialers. Avaya908-953-6000 www.avaya.com Calltrol 877-673-6284 www.calltrol.com Cellit 888-293-7250/305-436-2350 www.cellit.com CosmoCom 631-940-4200 www.cosmocom.com Data-Tel Info Solutions 480-844-5154/888-926-1131 www.datatel-info.com Davox 800-480-2299/978-952-0200 www.davox.com Digisoft 212-687-1810 www.digisoft.com divine 770-239-4000 www.divine.com Genesys 888-GENESYS 415-437-1100 www.genesyslab.com Interactive Intelligence 317-872-3000 www.inin.com