Predictive Dialer Pacing Explained: Dial Ratios, Abandoned Calls and Who Needs One

Predictive dialer meaning

A predictive dialer is the most automated of the types of dialers: outbound software that forecasts the second each agent will finish a conversation and starts new calls early enough that an answered line is waiting at that second. Its inputs are live figures: how many agents are logged in, the share of dials that reach a human, average talk time and average wrap-up time. If a quarter of dials are answered, the engine may launch around four calls for every agent it expects to free up. When more people answer than forecast, the extra ones hear silence or a click: an abandoned call. Under Canada's CRTC rules, an answered call that does not reach a live telemarketer within two seconds is abandoned, and will not let the rate pass 5 percent over any calendar month. The Auto Dialer does no forecasting at all; as a SIM based auto dialer, each phone rings one number, with the caller already listening.

Predictive dialer algorithm

1. The supervisor loads a list and sets a target abandonment ceiling for the campaign.
2. The engine measures answer rate and handle time over the last few minutes of traffic.
3. For every agent about to finish, it launches a batch of dials sized by the answer rate.
4. Busy tones, no-answers and, where enabled, answering machines are filtered out by the system.
5. A human answer is routed to the first free agent; if none is free, the call is held, played a message or dropped.
6. The engine recalculates and slows down when abandonment climbs toward the ceiling.

Predictive dialer terms

Two of those terms have pages of their own: the abandoned call rate formula and how answering machine detection guesses.

Predictive dialer example

Illustration using round numbers; not taken from any real centre.

An outbound supervisor in Manila runs 40 agents on a cold insurance list where 1 dial in 5 reaches a person. The engine expects 10 agents to become free in the next minute, so it launches 50 calls. Chance does not average out inside one minute: suppose 13 people answer instead of 10. Ten are routed to agents and 3 hear nothing, which is 3 abandoned out of 13 answered in that minute. Over a full shift the misses and the quiet minutes balance, and the engine holds the running rate under the ceiling the supervisor chose by slowing its batches. The agents, for their part, spend almost no time listening to rings. That is the bargain: higher talk time per agent, paid for with a share of people who answer to silence. How a manager decides which campaigns get that bargain is covered in predictive dialer vs progressive dialer.

Predictive dialer rules

Regulators aim at the abandoned call, not at the software. Ofcom's persistent misuse policy, a statement of 20 December 2016, treats silent and abandoned calls as something calling parties should not make, and the regulator's penalty ceiling for that misuse is £2 million. Canada's limit is set out above. In the European Union, the ePrivacy Directive requires prior consent for automated marketing calls made without human intervention, and leaves live calls to each member state. Country detail sits under dialer laws by country and UK dialer rules.

This section is general information, not legal advice. Check the current rules where you call.

Predictive dialer limits

A predictive engine needs volume to forecast; with a handful of agents a single wrong guess is a large share of the day's answered calls. It also needs internet telephony lines with spare capacity and someone to tune it. Buy a cloud contact centre platform with predictive mode when dozens of agents share one cold campaign; the fit for smaller centres is discussed in auto dialers for a call centre. For a small team calling people who asked to hear back, the one-call approach of a power dialer, compared in power dialer vs predictive dialer is usually the better tool, and that is what The Auto Dialer provides. The earlier side-by-side, auto dialer vs predictive dialer, covers equipment and cost.