Predictive Dialer Software

What is predictive dialer software?

Predictive dialer software automates the dialing of group phone calls and connects only answered calls to available contact center agents. The system predicts the agent availability and the likelihood of a successful outbound call based on factors such as historical call data, call volume, and more. In addition, the predictive dialing tool screens out a busy, disconnected, or unanswered call to reduce the agents' idle time. 

Predictive dialing software helps businesses increase the call success rate by eliminating manual dialing, which reduces the contact center agents’ workload and allows them to focus on increasing sales. 

What are the common features of predictive dialer software?

• Campaign management: Set up and manage outbound call campaigns. Define a target audience, create a calling list, and set calling rules for the dialer. Track each phone call campaign in real time and generate performance reports.

• List management: Capture and manage contacts across multiple phone call lists such as customer type, campaign requirement, geographical location, and more. Remove duplicate or incomplete customer contact details to ensure dialing only valid numbers. 

• Reporting and analytics: View live updates of performance metrics, such as call volume, agent availability, and calls in queue, using an analytics dashboard. Also, track agents’ performance metrics such as handling time, success rate, and conversion rate. 

• Call recording: Record all inbound and outbound calls for training agents on ways to handle customer types and their specific series. Automate call recording to begin at the start of every call to avoid missing out on the process. 

• Call monitoring: Listen in on live phone conversations between agents and customers to train and assess agent performance.

What are the benefits of predictive dialer software?

• Increase agent productivity: You can automate the dialing process and filter out unproductive calls, allowing agents to spend more time resolving customer concerns. You can also get real-time insights into the agent performance, identifying areas of improvement and guiding the agents to enhance customer service. This process improves call quality, increases sales, and enhances customer satisfaction.

• Improve call connect rates: The tool predicts when agents will be available and then makes calls to help reduce unsuccessful calls. This process ensures that all the customer calls are addressed by your agents with adequate issue resolution. Improving call-connect rates lead to increased customer satisfaction and conversions. 

• Enhance customer experience: You can reduce the wait time of customer calls by predicting the agent's availability to resolve queries and increase customer satisfaction. Having an automated dialer and call filter help agents focus on issue resolution and prioritize calls based on the severity of the issue. Furthermore, you can personalize the customer experience by tracking their previous calls to know their past experiences, sales, and ongoing issues.

• Reduce operational costs: You can automate outbound call scheduling based on the customers’ time zone to ensure that the call is made at the most optimal time. This process increases the likelihood of connecting with the customer, reducing the cost of repeated multiple calls. In addition, you can record conversations between customers and contact center agents to train them in better assisting customers while reducing the call duration.

• Access real-time call insights: You can get insights into the contact center agent performance, including metrics such as call duration, successful calls, number of calls taken, abandoned calls, idle time, and more. Such insights allow you to reroute customer calls in the queue based on the agent's availability to reduce dropped calls and increase the success rate. In addition, you can listen to a live call to analyze the issue resolution process and reroute calls for better customer service.

• Enhance lead management: You can enhance your lead generation and management practices by allowing the tool to automatically capture the customer details such as emails and phone numbers. All the details are then stored in a centralized database for the dialer to access and make calls based on their historical call and sale success rate. 

What is the cost of predictive dialer software?

Most predictive dialer software products on the market are priced on a per user, per month basis, and their entry-level pricing plan ranges from $23 - $149 +* per month. An enterprise product that’s priced higher may include additional features such as custom auto-dialing, user-based access controls, custom performance reports, interactive dashboards, and open API integration.

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offerings found on vendor websites as of Feb. 24, 2023.

What are the key questions to ask when choosing predictive dialer software?

• Can the tool integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) software and other sales automation tools? Check your selected predictive dialer phone system's ability to integrate with CRM software and other sales automation solutions. This will assist you with keeping track of existing customers and new leads. In addition, you can better communicate with customers and prospects using the CRM tool’s collaboration feature, which includes chat, email, and social media integration.

• What call routing methods does the tool use? Different call routing methods are used by a predictive dialer system to direct an answered call to an available agent. These include skill-based routing, geographical locations-based routing, language-based routing, and more. It is important for you to understand the call routing type followed by your selected predictive dialer software and if it matches your calling needs. 

• How does the tool provide insights into the call metrics? An ideal predictive dialer software offers an interactive dashboard to monitor the agent and call performance metrics. However, the ability of the dashboard to generate reports and customize metrics data varies for every tool and its subscription plan. You need to check and find the most appropriate tool that allows you to monitor metrics, which are consistent with your business goals. 

• How are the call recordings stored and accessed? Call recordings capabilities include fill-time, on-demand, and selective. You need to check if your selected predictive dialer tool offers any or all of the three recording types. This process will assist in training your agents to enhance the customer experience while addressing queries. In addition, check the supported format to store calls, including WAV, MP3, and other file formats.

• Is the tool compliant with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)? TCPA compliance regulates telemarketing calls, auto dialer calls, pre-recorded calls, text messages, and unsolicited calls. A TCPA-compliant tool allows you to manage customer opt-ins and opt-outs and maintain a do-not-call list. Check the tool’s compliance with the act and how the vendor ensures meeting the regulatory requirements.

Sources

Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from GetApp’s predictive dialer software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the GetApp’s directory that offer them.