 | It’s Sytel’s turn again! If you are going to do predictive dialing within responsible limits, then is there a magic number of agents on a campaign, below which you shouldn’t go? |
We regularly get enquiries from all over the world asking if our software, or indeed any predictive software, can be applied effectively to small agent groups; usually less than five on a campaign.
With a state of the art dialer you may get some tangible benefit with as low as five agents on a campaign, but certainly don’t think of paying big predictive dollars if you are running campaigns with fewer agents than this.
We know that the grand old man of CTI, Harry Newton, raised the idea of a “one man predictive dialer” a couple of years ago, but he was probably talking tongue in cheek (anyway we hope so). If you have a few agents only on a campaign, then you should be dialing out on one trunk only, each time a call is made. Looking to buy? Then buyer beware. No amount of marketing hype, branding, invention or product repositioning is going to change this. Not next year, not ever.
And if you are working with a dialer that is not particularly well designed, then your minimum level for effectiveness may be 10 or even 15 agents.
How to decide what’s right for you
Look for a reference sell who knows what he is talking about, or if you are a bona fide end-user, take advantage of the free Oceanic® trial that we offer. Oceanic® will allow you to figure out exactly what benefit your dialer will bring for any dialing conditions; numbers of agents, talk/wrap times and so on.
Many readers will be aware of the self-regulation being undertaken by national marketing associations in many countries, which is setting strict limits on nuisance calls. If one and two etc. man dialers observe the limits in these codes of practice, then it will be quite clear that predictive dialing offers no material benefit relative to auto preview dialing (this dialing method, also known as progressive dialing, involves just one trunk for each agent).
A key task for all national marketing associations is to ensure that self-regulation is observed by these small operators. If they cannot, then legislation may be required. This could take the form of the “opt in” model adopted by most European Community member states (you can call someone only with their express agreement), or what price a minimum limit on the numbers of agents on a predictive campaign?