What goes into the Predictive Algorithm?
While no two predictive diallers are the same, the main factors used by the algorithm to predict agent availability includes:
- Answer ratio of the past hour/specified period of time.
- The total number of agents logged in.
- AHT of Agents ( talk time + wrap up time).
- The average number of breaks taken by agents.
Best practices: Increasing productivity by 150-250% using predictive dialers
How do you know if your dialer is performing as expected? If you are getting a 150-250% increase in dialing productivity while maintaining your drop ratios less than 10%, and not more than 20-30 seconds between calls, your dialer is working at its optimum. If not, follow these best practices to improve your productivity:
1) Regularly remove all invalid numbers. Set a value beyond which you will not retry number, for example, 5 tries (at different times). And clean those numbers from your database.
2) When you have completed a number of outbound campaigns, you will start noticing patterns. Certain geographies have better answer rates than others. Ensure you cover those geographies first.
3) A predictive dialer completes campaigns extremely fast. You should be targeting a minimum of 200 calls per agents with around 15 seconds per call. Anything short of these numbers indicates your data is not sufficient for a predictive dialing campaign, or that you need to assign fewer agents for the given campaign.
4) Continuously monitor your connectivity rates and drop ratios. Maintain drop ratios less than 10%. When drop rates increase reduce your dialing ratio. In the US and UK, it is important to maintain drop ratios above 3% for compliance.
5) Train your agents to maintain a consistent and low AHT or wrap time. Train them to use disposition codes correctly. Train your agents on achieving daily goals and having consistent Average talk time. This helps the dialer algorithm to predict when an agent gets free correctly.
6) Enable answering machine detection to skip connecting to answering machines or voice mail.
7) Run a DNC/DND (Do Not Call/Do Not Disturb) filter prior to uploading data.
8) Ensure that your agents don’t take breaks at the same time.
9) Have sufficient agents to avoid call drops due to agent unavailability.