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Wouldn't you like a company to offer a few beneficial add-ons to its predictive dialer software? And wouldn't you want it to start small and upgrade by adding additional hardware and software licenses?

And hey - being a call center agent isn't quite so bad when you have cool toys to play with, is it?

SpitFire's Predictive Dialer might be what you're looking for. It's an computer-based dialing system that quickly places outbound calls via database interaction, company officials say, using "special telephone cards that connect to a variety of communication and telephone lines."

The software automatically places outbound calls from a pre-loaded database list of numbers on a single line or multiple line cards. These databases are scrubbed against the "Do-not-call" Federal dataset just to keep you out of trouble when your list you're going to call is imported. Because we all know about imports, gotta watch those.

The configuration and the amount of live agents determines how many calls the Predictive Dialer places or receives per hour, as the dialing campaigns manager has the ability to increase or decrease the amount of inbound and outbound calls on the fly - if you're into having that capability. If not, well, maybe you should be reading about the French Open instead.

Now: How much thought do you give to headsets your agents are using? SpitFire's thought about that plenty, and offer binaural, monaural, voice tube, sound tube, wireless headsets and headset systems.

"Headsets were an invention born out of necessity," SpitFire officials say, as, well, frankly, as pretty much all inventions were. In this case, the necessity was to prevent the fatigue and strain caused when agents work all day on the phone: "In order to free both hands for operating equipment, handwriting messages, and filing papers, operators of yesteryear could not hold a telephone handset with one hand, but would pinch the device between an upraised shoulder and sideways tilted head."

You children go ask your grandparents what a "handset" is. There actually were days when there was this thing called a "cord" connecting two parts of a phone together… yes it is, isn't it?