Dialing Modes

A dialer refers to a core feature and its associated functions used by Call and Contact Center software to initiate calls. In VCC Live, the way the dialer initiates calls is determined by four dialing modes: Manual, Power, Predictive, and Outbound IVR.

Table of Contents

• Understanding the Concept of Dialing Modes
• Manual Dialer
• Power Dialer
• Power Dialer — Settings Overview
• Predictive Dialer
• Predictive Dialer Submodes
• Predictive Dialer — Settings Overview
• Outbound IVR
• Outbound IVR — Settings Overview
• About the Dialing Mechanism
• Dialing List Order
• Dialing List Order — Settings Overview
• How the Dialer Chooses What Number to Initiate Calls With
• What happens when a new record is inserted into the database during dialing
• Record Status
• Dialing Lists
• Answering Machine Detection

Understanding the Concept of Dialing Modes

Depending on your organization’s needs, dialing modes can be used to automate the process of dialing phone numbers to reduce or eliminate the need for human input.

Power, Predictive, and Outbound IVR dialers are based on sophisticated algorithms and can execute complex calculations in real-time, so that the agent effort is utilized most effectively. The algorithms can take into consideration factors such as the quality of your database and record behavior patterns.

The Manual dialer is fully manual, which means that the calls are placed manually by an agent.

For more details about each dialing mode, including how the dialers work and what the configuration options are, see the related sections below.

Manual Dialer

The Manual dialer is a manual dialing mode in which the agent selects the next record to be called from the records list. This mode is recommended for projects that have long pre-call preparation times. Records visible to one agent are not visible to others. The Manual dialer is the least efficient dialing mode.

Note: For a detailed overview and step-by-step guide, check out our Tutorial on how to set up the Manual Dialer.

Power Dialer

The Power Dialer is an automatic dialing mode in which the system automatically initiates as many calls as there is available agents, making sure that all agents are kept in a call.

When the dialer successfully reaches a customer, it automatically connects the customer to an available agent. Once the agent finishes the call and allocates a disposition, the system automatically initiates the next call.

When the dialer cannot reach a customer (e.g., the number is wrong or the customer is not answering the call), the dialer automatically dials the next record without the agent having to do anything — so the agents save the time they otherwise would have spent in prework and afterwork states.

Note: For a detailed overview and step-by-step guide, check out our Tutorial on setting up Power and Predictive dialing modes for your project.

Note: When working with automatic dialers, it is important to remain aware of the state of your database and the workload, so that you can reach the highest efficiency possible.

Power Dialer — Settings Overview

To read about the Dialing List Order tab, see Dialing List Order.

Predictive Dialer

The Predictive Dialer is an automatic dialing mode in which the system usually initiates more calls than the number of available agents to ensure the highest agent utilization, with an average talk time of up to 45 minutes per hour.

While the concept of the Predictive Dialer is to make as many calls as possible, to prevent an immoderate number of calls, an advanced algorithm takes into consideration factors such as average talk time, average time spent in afterwork, number of currently available agents, the percentage of reached records, as well as the database quality.

If the dialer senses that there are not enough agents in the project (e.g., the number of available agents significantly drops below a threshold), the dialer automatically switches to Predictive Power mode to avoid an excess of dropped calls due to the sudden change in circumstances. When agents, within a set minimum, become available again, the system starts collecting information about calls and begins to work in Predictive Static mode. When the necessary number of calls for statistics has been collected, the dialer intelligently switches back to its most efficient version, (e.g., Predictive Adaptive mode).

Note: When working with automatic dialers, it is important to remain aware of the state of your database and the workload, so that you can reach the highest efficiency possible. A high fluctuation in agent numbers within a project may result in lower efficiency.

Default mechanism if the Predictive dialer fails: If there was an excess amount of calls initiated, and the called party answered the call, but the system could not distribute the call to an agent within 5 seconds, the system allocates a Dropped disposition to the record. The dialer will attempt to recall the record within 24 hours (default value). For example: in Power or Predictive project, the agent logs out shortly after logging in, and there are fewer available agents than the number of calls initiated by the dialer.

To minimize the number of dropped calls, the system monitors the number of “calls needed”. If the “calls needed” value equals zero, we examine how long ringing calls have been actually ringing.

• If the call has been ringing for no longer than the set value, we won’t undo the call, but we examine when the value set is reached.
• If the ringing time reaches the value, we’ll undo the call and allocate a “Not available” disposition (generic clearing hang up – unavailable), just as if the call was ringing out as it normally would (this feature can be enabled and disabled).

When it’s a callback, the system will automatically assign an agent to the record to avoid another Dropped call.

Tip: Your agents can also receive calls from multiple predictive projects at the same time, learn more about them here.

Predictive Dialer Submodes

Depending on certain circumstances, the Predictive dialer may switch to various submodes to indicate how optimal the dialer configurations are. These statuses can be kept track of on the Real-time Statistics interface.

Predictive Dialer — Settings Overview

To read about the Dialing List Order tab, see Dialing List Order.

Outbound IVR

The outbound IVR is an automatic dialing mode that is used to establish connections between customers and the system without involving an agent. The system transfers an answered call to a specific inbound process.

As a project that utilizes the Outbound IVR dialing mode requires no agent input, the Outbound IVR dialer can be considered a fully automatic dialing mode, but it can also be configured to allow your customers to quickly reach agents in just a few steps. This mode may include voice recordings played to clients, reading the client’s balance and payment due date, redirecting to an available agent or answering machine feature, and more.

For the list of processes you can transfer the calls to, see Inbound Processes.

Outbound IVR — Settings Overview

To read about the Dialing List Order tab, see Dialing List Order.

About the Dialing Mechanism

When a project is started and a database is imported, new records are added to the New dialing list. For these records, the primary priority is to call based on the next call time (next contact), and the secondary is based on the order or numberID.

In an entirely new database, the next contact time is 000-00-00 00:00:00, so the secondary prioritization option is in effect, going from numberID1, numberID2, and so on. If numberID 1 is not added to the list, then logically that is sorted as the last item on the list, and the next contact is set to NOW, so that the record remains new, but is allocated a next contact time and date (e.g. today’s date), which is later in time than those not handled records that are allocated 000-00-00 00:00:00. This guarantees that if the zero date records are emptied, the order is kept, as well as if a new record is added to the database, the new records are called first. The system keeps track of the number of call attempts simultaneously.

Before a call is initiated, the system checks for example, the Robinson list, the call limit, or those numbers that are considered invalid (e.g., numbers shorter than 4 digits). These records are automatically managed by the system.

In addition, the system keeps track of callbacks and automatically assigns callbacks to agents. If an agent is not available, you have the callbacks redistributed to available agents. The dialer can also take into consideration time zones.

Dialing List Order

The Dialing List Order tab allows you to customize your call list handling order. When uploading or editing your records to your database, you can mark each record with a single-value field’s values, then using this interface, you can order these records as needed.

For example, before uploading your database, you can mark the first 100 records in row as “type B”, and then you can define using the Dialing List Order settings to prioritize “type B” records over other records. Then the dialer algorithm picks “type B” records and will continue dialing them until each record has been attempted to be reached — while also taking into consideration the Max. attempts per record setting. For more details about database fields, see Managing Fields.

Note: The Dialing List Order tab is only available when using automated dialing modes (Predictive, Power, or Outbound IVR).

Dialing List Order — Settings Overview

How the Dialer Chooses What Number to Initiate Calls With

If there is more than one phone number set as an outbound caller ID, the dialer will randomly choose a number to be used. This allows you to attempt to reach a record from various phone numbers or avoid using hidden caller ID. For callbacks, the system remembers which phone number was used to call the client so that the same number will be used to initiate the call.

Tip: You can also assign a phone number to certain fields or records, which overwrites the number rotation.

What happens when a new record is inserted into the database during dialing

Whenever you load a new record or modify an existing one via API, VCC Live evaluates whether the record has a higher priority in the Dialing List Order than existing records or not. If yes, then the system automatically adjusts the set of records that are currently loaded to the dialer to include the new, high-priority record as well. If the new record is of lower priority, then no modification is done. The same process applies to records added via the interface.

Note: If multiple modifications are done via API, then the dialer is only reloaded every 10 minutes to avoid affecting the speed of the dialer.

Record Status

When initiating calls, the dialers pick which record to call based on the records’ status. The status record can be changed by and is always affected by the use of dispositions.

You can also change the status of the records to “new” by using the To Set Records as New function. However, this function doesn’t change the status of “recall” and “dropped” records. “Shared”, “New”, and “Closed” records can be dialed again until the recall limit is reached.

Dialing Lists

The dialing order goes in a linear curve (based on the dialings list above), and if:

• There is a record on the recall list, the dialer continues dialing these records until there are no records left on the list.
• There are no recall items, then the dropped list records are called. Dropped calls are also assigned to agents, and if the dropped call is recalled at a later time, the same agent will be assigned to the call.

The next in the call list order is the shared lists (timed call and new), when the dialer takes into consideration the availability of the agent.

Dropped and shared list records are called in turns, and if an agent is assigned a call from either the new or timed list, then the next call in line will be from the dropped list, and then another from the shared list. If the shared list is in focus, until there is a callable timed call, no new records are called. The system checks for callbacks when agents are changing their statuses (to available state).

Answering Machine Detection

For details about this function, see Answering Machine Detection.