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The call center serves as specific purpose for the business trying to drive revenue. That call center, whether serving as a customer service division or to promote telemarketing efforts, must maintain costs if it is to deliver optimal benefits. The hosted predictive dialer can help control costs, but the business must select whether they need a hard, software or intelligent predictive dialer.

The Hard Dialer

The hard dialer is hardware-based and will detect an answering machine on the other end of the line to determine the best action on the call. The detection accuracy with the hard dialer is significant, although it is the more expensive option when compared with the soft dialer. Hardware must be selected, deployed and maintained.

Telephony switches are used to perform answering machine detection and call progress analysis. The switches typically have two main connection types: external audio and agent audio. The external audio enables outbound connections, which are typically ISDN/T1/E1 connections directly to the PSTN. If an outbound call is made and answered, it is immediately joined to an available agent. Agent audio connects are generally T1/E1/ISDN/ etc. telephony spans directly connected to an existing PBX (News - Alert).

The Soft Dialer

The soft dialer is simply a software program. There are no expensive hardware implementations and the cost of deployment is very low. The soft dialer will often offer features like automatic call classification and call analysis as it is equipped with ISDN or CTI (News - Alert) capabilities. The call center or telemarketing organization generally leverages VoIP for the use of the soft dialer.

Non-productive calls made with the soft dialer are filtered out with the ISDN as it provides a digital code indicating the type of non-connect. All non-connects are eliminated and right reason codes are transmitted to the software application. Agents don’t have to listen for tones to detect a busy call. For answering machine detection and voice related functions, the soft dialer may not offer as many features as the hard dialer.

The Intelligent Dialer

An intelligent predictive dialer takes the operation of the call center or telemarketing call to the next level. Not only does it enable automatic voice communications, it also detects an answering machine, busy signal or live voice to prompt the proper next step. When a live person answers the phone, a voice message will play, indicating the purpose of the call and prompting the called individual to select the next step.

The intelligent dialer is by far the more efficient choice, as long as the called party is willing to stay on the line. Some individuals do not like the automated voice message and will quickly abandon the call. When compared with the normal response to the hosted predictive dialer, however, this abandon rate is lower, making it the optimal choice. After all, the main point of the dialer is to ensure agents spend their time talking to interested individuals, not dialing the phone.

When selecting a dialer that best suits the call center or telemarketing organization, the hosted predictive dialer can deliver on the promised benefits, while still maintaining the lower cost and improved efficiency. Each organization is different, however, and must select the right choice based on internal needs.