Predictive Dialing and unpleasant calls to the client
Who has not yet being bothered by answering the phone and finding there is nobody on the other line, and suddenly, the connection is terminated? What is the consequence of this outrage to your business? This situation is increasingly present nowadays because of the large number of active campaigns, such as debt collection, direct sales, promotions, and polls etc, which are supported by predictive dialers. We are talking here of something inherent in the concept of predictive dialing: the dropped calls.
As a rule, what can be observed is the main concern of the active campaigns to have the largest possible number of calls being routed to agents as a direct way of obtaining gain in productivity and achieving success in campaigns. Is this a correct view? Yes, without a doubt. However, in no way it should be seen in isolation. The issue of dropped calls and the proper treatment by the predictive dialer is a critical success factor in any operation, including having a direct influence on the number of calls routed to agents.
This issue is so critical in the development of active campaigns that are treated in the U.S. and Europe markets by telecommunications regulatory agencies. To get an idea of the importance of the subject, today there are specific regulations in those markets that should be followed in case of abandonment of a call, for example, no more than 2 seconds to decide to drop a cal;, need to convey messages to the customer regarding the identification of the caller; no more than 5% of calls can be dropped, etc.
The excess of dropped calls implies the increase of the cost of calls because every dropped call is a call completed. It also involves increasing the level of idle agents, since the dropped calls are not forwarded to them, generating a low index of agent workload. These factors all provide a low rate of success with campaigns, reflecting on the success of the business of the call center and its client. The question that arises is: beware of the costs and the impact on productivity if you're using a predictive dialer that presents a high rate of dropped calls!
The predictive dialers provide numerous and real benefits to the telemarketing centers and their respective campaigns, if they are technologically updated and have algorithms with a very high level of accuracy and performance. The newest technologies are able to deal with dropped calls with high levels of results and are widely adapted to regulatory requirements, reality in other markets and that in Brazil, are already the subject of discussion in the National Congress and in ANATEL, and some state initiatives.
The matter is extensive and does not end here. However, the reader of this article may ask, I live daily with this situation. What should I do? The most important thing to bear in mind that there are dropped calls and will continue to exist when it comes to campaigns with predictive dialers. What should be considered is the actual capacity of the solution in treating this type of call, so that it does not generate impacts to your business, that is, if you have a high rate of dropped calls (anything over 5%) whether the decision to end a call is not immediately (making the client say hello, hello, hello and then the call is terminated), you are in urgent need of improvement.
* Cláudio Sá is president of Teclan, Brazilian developer of solutions for call centers and telecommunications operators.