All-in-one Hosted Predictive Dialler

	Outbound Predictive Dialler
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Start increasing sales today with a hosted predictive dialler service – on a pay as you go basis.

Saffwood offers a hosted dialler that automates the time-consuming process of making large volumes of calls. It minimises the amount of time your people spend waiting between conversations. With Saffwood, your telesales team can spend more time talking (and selling) - not waiting for calls to connect.

And because it’s a hosted service, Saffwood is available to small businesses with just a few seats, for a single monthly fee.

We have been using Saffwood's Hosted Predictive Dialler for 18 months now. This has helped to take our Solar PV business from 12 - 30 seats and a turnover of 1.3M to nearly 6M with increased profits. Saffwood have provided us with all the training, support and development that we could have wanted and more. We would not reccomend anyone else.

– Leanne, MD - Solar PV LTD

We use Saffwood Communciations Hosted Dialler as our method to contact prospective and existing customers. With their integrated dialler and workflow system, our revenue has increased, and we have seen a massive increase in revenue recovery from 34% to over 90% in 3 months. This has remained for over a year now.

– Ayoob, Senior Partner - AIA

25th May - 2014 - What is a hosted predictive dialler?

The main premise of a hosted predictive dialler solution is that their is no onsite equipment to purchase. As calls are made via an internet connection, their is no requirement for PBX or ISDN lines. Their are several distinct advantages to this hosted solution:

- Low Capital Expense. You can setup a hosted dialler for little or no capital expense. Using softphones, which can be downloaded free of charge to a PC, there's no need for handsets.

- Portable Solution. As a hosted predictive dialler routes it calls through the internet, moving premises is simple. You can just unplug your PC's, move, plug in and your system is live

- Low Calling Rates. As hosted diallers use different carriers to fixed line solutions, you can expect great calling rates as well and crystal clear voice quality. As Saffwood only uses tier 1 carriers, all our calls are routed over established connections.

- Not Limited By Lines - with ISDN diallers, you can only make as many connections to the dialler as you have lines. With a hosted dialler, this is unlimited.

- Secure Access Anywhere. You can securely access your hosted predictive dialler as either a dialler agent or a manager as long as you have an internet connection.

How does a dialler work?

The objective of a dialler is to make similtaneous calls for each user on the basis that all calls are not likely to answer (time of day dependant).

A predictive dialler will make a permanent connection to an agents phone. This is vital as realtime statistics can then be gathered. In effect the agent has now joined a conference area where other agents are also going to log into. Once these connections have been made (only one agent needs to join to begin the dialling process), the dialler will then start to make calls from a list of numbers stored within it. As a connection is made to a prospect (someone answers) the prospect is then brought into the conference area and routed to an available agent. The prospects details then popup on screen.

In this blog post, we'll explain the 3 types of dialling settings, all of which can be set on our hosted predictive dialler within seconds:

Manual Dialling

This is the least productive dialling method for a hosted dialler. The agent is in control of when to make a call which can lead to a loss in productivity. The best use for this dialling method is for business to business where an agent may need to research the propsect prior to dialling (sometimes known as preview dialling). By viewing live call stats you are still able to track if agents are in a call, however tracking the time between calls can be more challenging.

Ratio Dialling

This is one of the most common dialling methods for smaller outbound campaigns. Ratio dialling relies on a dialler manager or administrator to set a ratio of "Lines to Agent". The premise of this dialling method is that for each agent available to take a call, the dialler will have been told a number of similtaneous calls to make. For example, a 2:1 dialling ratio would mean two calls made for every agent available. So if two agents were waiting, four calls would be made.

The reason this dialling method is so effective is due to the fact that you are not relying on an algorithm to set the pacing (see adaptive predictive dialling below. It is vital however that a dialler administrator regularly checks that the dialler is not making too many calls as this will lead to aborted calls. Unlike adaptive dialling, the dialler will continue to make calls at that ratio until told otherwise.

Adaptive Predictive Dialling

Adaptive dialling is better for larger outbound campaigns (the larger the better). Adaptive dialling works by setting its own pace to ensure that all agents get calls as quickly as possible. The dialler will work to an abort (dropped call rate) of 3% as a maximum. Unlike ratio dialling, adaptive predictive dialling will slow when it reaches this percentage.

Adaptive dialling uses an complex algorithm to forecast how many calls it needs to make. As an example (not 100% accurate as diallers make these changes by smaller degrees): If 10 agents were logged into the dialler, adaptive dialling would start by making 10 calls. If only 5 of those calls answered, the dialler would make 20 calls expecting 10 to connect and service these agents.

The next stage would be for the dialler to look at the average handling time of each call as well as the ring time until a call is answered. If it sees the average handling time is 30 seconds, and it takes, on average, 15 seconds for an answer, in tangent with the above the dialler will start to dial 20 seconds into any call, knowing that is will take 15 seconds for a connection (thus giving the agent only 5 seconds pause (idle) time.

The next stage would be for the dialler to look at the average handling time of each call as well as the ring time until a call is answered. If it sees the average handling time is 30 seconds, and it takes on average 15 seconds for an answer, in tangent with the above, the dialler will start to make calls 20 seconds into any call, knowing that is will take 15 seconds for a connection (thus giving the agent only 5 seconds pause (idle) time.

As previously stated under ratio dialling, adaptive dialling is better for larger outbound centres. A scenario of why: Two agents dialling in adaptive mode have an average handling time of 30 seconds, 15 seconds connect wait time, and only one in two dials made answering. The dialler is now making 4 calls at a time for these agents, and dialling 20 seconds into each call to give a 5 second wait.

One agent has a 10 minute call. This means that the dialler placed a call with nowhere to go after 20 seconds, causing a drop. Not only this, but the average handling time (depending on number of calls) will have been pushed up, causing the dialler to slow down (it's expecting a higher average handling time now). The net effect is your dialler slowing down, and dropping calls.

With larger outbound call centres, as higher number of agents are making calls, longer duration calls do not effect the average handling time of the dialler as there is far more data to compare against. Also, if the dialler makes too many calls, it's more likely that another agent will become available to take the calls.

6th June- 2014 - Hosted Predictive Dialler CLI

There is a lot of debates about hosted predictive diallers CLI (caller line ID) as to which offers the best contact rates. Typically a hosted dialler can present any caller ID is wishes, but this must fall in line with OFCOM automated dialler regulations.

As an accepted rule of thumb, a hosted dialler will have contact rates (the rate of which people answer a call to calls made) from lowest to highest based on:

- Withheld Number

- No Geograhpic Numbers (0845 / 0870)

- Geographic Numbers (01 / 02 / 03

- Mobile Numbers (07)

With the above in mind, most call centres using hosted dialler, or a dialler of any kind which can set it's own caller ID, would want to use an 07 prefix.

The challenge in the past has been that any presented CLI must route through to an answering desitination. For example if your hosted dialler presented a mobile number that was just a switched off PAYG, this would not reflect compliance. However if the number routed to a call centre, this would be a large step in the right direction.

The second phase is to find mobile numbers than can be pointed to geographic numbers. This is possible through Saffwoods hosted predictive diallers as we are first able to set a mobile CLI, and secondly can point this back to our inbound dialler which has a geographic number. This therefore increase the answer rate of dialler calls by 30% as an industry standard, and keeps the compliance balances in place.

More information cane be found on OFCOM regulations for diallers by following the link

It may sound strange for a hosted predictive dialler company to talk about not using a predictive dialler. But there are times when using this type of solution will have massive productivity benefits, and times when it may not be required.

So what should we use a hosted predictive dialler?

The main type of campaign that benefits from a hosted predictive dialler is business to consumer (B2C). This is becauase there tend to be larger volumes of data available and contact rates varying. What are contact rates? Contact rates matter masively in the hosted predictive dialler arena. This is the measure that is given to the number of calls made by the dialler vs. the number of humans that answer the diallers call. The figure is typically provided as a percentage and is around 30%. In the day time 9-5 workers are not available, so the contact rate from a hosted predictive dialler tends to me low (more like 20%). In the evening when people come home from work it's higher, more like 45%. This means in the day with a B2C campaign, your hosted predictive dialler needs to work harder to get you speaking to people. There is no firm rule as to what pacing you should have you dialler set provided you stay below the OFCOM guidelines of 3% abort, but in our experience it tends to be around a pacing of 2.1. So in the scenario of needing to make a high volume of calls, knowing that many are not going to be answered there and then, a predicitive dialler is vital.

Another reason to use a hosted predictive dialler is when you need to be able to see live call statistics (think of a call centre). If you are calling a lot of data, then being able to manage that data effectively is important, otherwise your business could spend too much or run out! They key factors within a hosted predictive dialler live dashboard tend to be logged in time, talk time, calls taken, decision makers (DM's), sales and conversion rate. One KPI (key performance indicator) that get's overlooked is complete rate. this is the volume of calls taken by an agent vs. how many they complete (an answer machine would be an incomplete, whilst a Not Interested would be a complete). if you take the volume of completed records and divide this by the total calls taken, you get a complete rate as a percentage on your hosted predictive dialler. If you take this percentage and for each agent and compare it agains the average, then you will find if certain agents are burning data by completing too many records(could be a training issue, not objection handling, choosing the wrong outcome). In any event, it needs tackling.

When not to use a predictive dialler

If you have a small volume of staff, say two or three, it might be difficult to get the most out of a hosted predictive dialler. That's because most diallers, that are not being managed by a dialler manager, need to build up an algorythm. What's an alogrythm? This is a complex calculation that a hosted predictive dialler uses to establish how many calls is should be making for each agent waiting. When a low volume of agents are using a hosted predictive dialler, changes in dialler profile (say a long duration call) can dramatically change the averages that the dialler is using, and thus it can negitively alter its behaviour as a result of this.

Data is precious. If you don't have access to larger volumes of data, or the data you buy is very expensive, then you may want to consider a CRM approach. This is because hosted predictive diallers are built to get through large volumes of data very quickly. With CRM, people tend to look at the record they are about to call, perhaps look at the website first. This allows a better entry to the call, but of course means that your agents are not as productive as they would be on a hosted predictive dialler.

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