In the early days of call centers in the 1960s, agents were given a list of phone numbers to call that they would dial by hand. As technology evolved, programs were created to dial numbers at a much faster rate than manually punching them in. This was critical to making call centers profitable and successful, as the more time agents spend on the phone with customers the more likely they are to make sales—in other words, time spent dialing is time wasted. So devices were developed to automatically dial numbers one after the other, either sending them to a recording or to an available representative if anyone answered the phone.

Eventually, these auto dialers became software-based, but they were still relatively inefficient. The rate of dialing was the same no matter how many agents were working and/or available to speak to customers, so the risk of abandoning calls or forcing customers to listen to a recording while waiting for a representative was high. There had to be an even better solution.

Enter the predictive dialer. Unlike a standard auto dialer, predictive dialers use statistical algorithms that take into account the number of available agents, wait times, dead numbers, number of answered calls and more to optimize the number of calls made and answered per day. Predictive dialers are constantly adjusting the rate at which they are dialing in order to reduce unanswered and abandoned calls, eliminate long wait times for customers and keep agents busy. There is no limit in terms of the ratio of dialed numbers to agents, nor does the dialer need to be monitored and adjusted by agents throughout the day. Call center software that uses a predictive dialer will drastically increase the number of connections agents make, plus ensure that customers are not being abandoned at an unacceptable rate that violates regulations or poisons the customers’ perception of the company.

CallShaper offers a predictive dialer (in addition to a few other options, depending on your needs) that will dramatically transform your campaign. To learn more about the benefits of a predictive dialer, contact CallShaper today.