Progressive dialers initiate outgoing calls only after the call center agents indicates that he or she is ready to manage the next phone call. When the agent is available to manage the next call, the progressive dialer initiates the outbound call after presenting information about the phone call. Contrarily, predictive dialers initiate outbound calls automatically based on a pre-defined dialing ratio. The dialing ratio is determined to deploy predictive statistical algorithms.
Both progressive and predictive dialers initiate outgoing calls from a contact list automatically and sequentially. The two auto-dialers also transfer only answered calls to live agents. Thus, the auto dialers initiate outbound calls before an agent is free to manage the next call. The cloud-based predictive dialers come with complex features to facilitate marketing customization, call center management, and monitoring for small, large, and midsized businesses. Most contact centers businesses switch between progressive dialers and predictive dialers based on the nature and needs of individual marketing campaigns. The decision-makers still have to keep the significant differences between predictive and progressive dialers.
Predictive and progressive dialer: what’s the difference?
How do predictive dialing and progressive dialers work for contact center?
Various studies show that the auto dialer software market has been developing consistently. More and more outbound contact centers and inbound contact centers have been upgrading form manually dialing numbers to automatically dialing outbound telephone calls. Besides expedite outbound calls, the auto-dialer also detects answering machines, disconnected lines, busy tones, and voicemails intelligently. The dialers play a pre-recorded message or transfer the call to a live agent only when live prospects answer the outbound calls. A contact center has the alternative to choose from different kinds of outbound dialers, including preview progressive and predictive dialers. To determine which predictive dialer is suitable for your business, let’s look at the difference.
Outbound dialing mode
Just as the name suggests, a progressive dialer contact centers solutions are a kind of auto dialer software that supports progressive dialing mode. The progressive dialing mode needs the auto dialer to place only one outbound call for every available agent. Thus, the call center solution initiates the outbound calls only when an agent is available to manage the next call. On the other hand, predictive dialer powers predictive dialing mode. The dialing mode predicts agent availability utilizing an algorithm. Thus, the auto-dialer initiates outbound calls before the agent becomes available to manage the next phone call.
Call frequency
A progressive dialer dials a single outbound call for every available agent. On the other hand, a predictive dialer system automatically dials multiple outbound calls for every available agent. Thus, predictive dialers are more efficient than progressive dialers in keeping dialing and connected agent rate constant. The increase in customer engagements aids contact centers to reduce agent idle time significantly. Nonetheless, progressive dialers help contact centers reduce abandoned calls by increasing agent availability.
Algorithms
As discussed earlier, a predictive dialer evaluates agent availability using statistical algorithms. The predictive algorithm recognizes what percentage of customers will answer the outgoing calls from the contact list and the amount of time the agents will need to manage the answered calls. The predictive dialing system decides about initiating outgoing calls at a slower or faster pace based on the algorithm. It further dials outbound calls before an agent is available to handle the next call. On the other hand, progressive dialers do not place outbound calls based on algorithms. They initiate the calls when an agent is available to manage the next phone call.
Agent requirement
The progressive dialers initiate a single outgoing call for every available agent. Thus, the contact center requires to employ additional agents to manage the increase in outbound phone calls. The contact centers cannot control large-scale marketing campaigns without using extra outbound agents. On the other hand, predictive dialers help all contact centers irrespective of business size to manage outbound marketing campaigns by employing additional call center agents. Since the auto dialer initiates multiple calls for every available agent, it becomes easier for businesses to communicate with more customers and results in reducing the amount of time between two outbound calls.
Personalized interaction
The predictive dialers assist agents in managing more outbound calls in a short amount of time. However, the agents frequently find it challenging to make customer engagements personalized and productive while using these contact center software. However, the progressive dialers assist agents in personalizing customer interaction by accessing and understanding relevant customer information before managing the phone call. They even enable agents to take an additional line to collect the information required to personalize customer engagement and increase sales conversation. Thus, predictive dialers appear more impersonally better quality management than progressive dialers.
Shortcomings of predictive and progressive dialers
Unlike predictive dialers, progressive dialers do not assist contact centers to initiate more outbound calls in a short amount of time. However, by automatically calling customers, they help contact centers to decrease call abandonment rate by making sure that an agent is accessible and increasing contact rates. Contrarily, predictive dialers initiate multiple outbound calls simultaneously without checking real-time agent availability. Thus, the chances of the agent being unavailable to manage outbound calls answered by customers increases. Therefore the new age multichannel contact center solution predicts agent availability accurately by leveraging artificial intelligence algorithms.
Business phone system: Ideal uses of progressive and predictive dialers
Both progressive dialers and predictive dialers assist contact centers in call management. However, each of these two automated dialing systems has its own pros and disadvantages. Unlike progressive dialers, predictive dialers connect agents with more customers and leads in a short amount of time. However, the predictive dialers do not assist agents in making outbound calls, and inbound calls are personalized and productive. The progressive dialers assist agents in improving customer engagement and increasing sales conversation.
Hence, the contact centers need to compare the quality of calls and features while comparing these auto dialers. First, you will need to decide what features your auto dialer should have. After you make a list of all the features you need, you will be able to choose the call center solution that best fits your needs. For instance, do you need an automatic dialer with capabilities such as: Call recordings, automatic call distribution ACD, call routing, call analytics and reports, workforce management, CRM integration, interactive voice response IVR, and workforce optimization tools? Such features and functionalities may assist take your business to the next level.
Both predictive dialers and progressive dialers assist contact centers to automate and place outbound calls. They further connect agents to only answered outbound calls. A predictive dialer initiates outbound calls based on a dialing technique ratio. The dialer examines the availability of the agent prior to dialing the next phone. Contrarily, a progressive dialer places outbound calls after the call center agent indicates their availability to manage the next call. Thus, contact centers should keep in mind the precise needs of each calling campaign while comparing progressive dialers and predictive dialers.
Preview dialers: Customer info before dialing the phone
A preview dialer enables each contact record to be automatically delivered to sales agents based on your outbound campaign settings, like list priority and ratios. This feature allows for agents to review details prior to placing a call, leading to an increased agent to customer connections. The system automatically dials based on your calling campaign settings, and agents can optionally skip records that should not be dialed. Preview dialing is ideal for the contact center business that deals with complex sales. Before dialing, preview dialers deliver vital information to agents so they can better prepare for their next call, increasing the chances of positive business outcomes.
Preview dialers come to features to boost your call center’s technology.
Some features include:
- Call recording
- Automated dialer technologies: power dialer, predictive dialer, and progressive dialer
- Answering machine detection
- Web call back
- SIP Trunking and any SIP enabled
If you are offering business process outsourcers, a sales dialer can be an ideal investment.
Typically all dialers can minimize idle time, increase efficiencies, empower call agents, and enhance greater insight into the inbound sales force and call center activity. Sales dialers, Cloud phone, VoIP phone, and Unified Communications as a Service allows call centers to migrate to IT technologies. These services result in instability, security, scalability, and lower total cost of ownership and other advances in technology offerings.
