What Is a Predictive Dialer and How Can It Help My Business

The American economy has been doing well recently, with the household debt to GDP ratio steadily declining over the past few years.

As consumers clear up their debt – or have the confidence to take on new debt – contact centers have never seen a better time to ramp up productivity; less debt means more buying power and more opportunity to get the products and services that people want into their hands.

This development makes it the perfect time to leverage and invest in outbound call center resources to capitalize on this trend while it lasts.

A key area many call centers can optimize to expand capacity and grow the bottom line is in helping agents make more effective use of their time.

An easy way to do this is by offloading time wasted dialing leads and waiting for an answer to modern, automated systems, such as a predictive dialer.

So, what are Predictive Dialers?

How can using them help call center businesses while maintaining compliance and customer happiness?

Read on to find out…

What is a Predictive Dialer?

A Predictive Dialer is a powerful tool call centers use to rapidly dial multiple, pre-loaded numbers of potential customers, at the same time.

They help reduce wasted time by automatically connecting agents to leads who pick up – and never to leads who don’t.

In fact, Predictive Dialers actually hang up when they reach voicemail, then call the next number in the pre-loaded database.

They do all of this automatically, while agents are talking to live leads.

So once an agent is finished with one customer, they can be connected to another without any time wasted, which is incredibly helpful for maintaining agent productivity.

More than that, Predictive Dialers can also help call center managers reduce one of the key risk factors in their outbound operations: regulatory compliance.

Before we dive further into just how Predictive Dialer software can help with both efficiency and compliance, let’s take a quick look at the alternative…

Manual Dialing Gets the Job Done…  For a Call Center 50 Years Ago

Before Predictive Dialers were created, there was only one, labor-intensive way to connect with customers – manual dialing.

Agents and salespeople would spend their days dialing each number from their list of leads, ten digits at-a-time, before waiting for a human to (hopefully) answer.

What if, after all that, customers didn’t pick up?

These company representatives would then waste even more time noting the customer didn’t answer.

Sure, this was what was necessary to get results.  But the high labor costs and low conversion rates made it difficult for many enterprises to scale.

Not to mention, individual agents grew tired as the day wore on, reducing their productivity and effectiveness.

Manually dialing customers did produce one major benefit: it was easier to avoid repeatedly calling the wrong prospects and thus, fines and lawsuits.

Because of this, in some contexts, manual dialing is still used today.

But, armed with the right Predictive Dialer software and a process for using them while maintaining compliance, fast-growing call centers can enjoy all the automation benefits this technology brings while minimizing their chances of violating regulations.

How Predictive Dialers Combine Efficiency and Compliance

Modern Predictive Dialers are an essential tool for call center managers looking to streamline their outbound calling operations.

By automatically dialing leads while disregarding voicemails, no-answers, busy signals, and disconnected numbers, they provide a massive boost to agent productivity.

The best Predictive Dialers also let agents and managers input any data needed to effectively close a lead.

Once connected, an agent can see any existing records for that lead and add additional notes to help move them further along the sales pipeline.

Plus, the latest cloud-based Predictive Dialers minimize the need for additional internal IT infrastructure while allowing agents to work remotely – providing call centers with increased flexibility.

And the best Predictive Dialers help managers maintain compliance with regulations like the Telephone Consumer Protect Act (TCPA) Regulations.

How?

Smart Predictive Dialers automatically populate Do Not Call (DNC) Lists and communicate with an Agent Gateway to provide agents with tools for documenting compliance data and call notes.

Predictive Dialers: A Vital Tool in the Call Center Arsenal

For call center managers searching for a more effective and efficient outbound calling system while reducing the risk of regulatory violations, TCN’s cloud-based Predictive Dialer software is the perfect solution.

Along with our full suite of call center tools like Interactive Voice Response, Interactive Voice Messaging, and Automatic Call Distribution, our software is great for both enhancing operational efficiency and maintaining compliance.

In addition to our industry-leading call center management tools, we also pride ourselves on offering actionable information to help call center leaders make smarter decisions across their operations.

In the case of Predictive Dialers, one of the key questions we’ve found managers have is “what regulations do I need to be aware of and comply with when using this technology?”

To address this question, we’ve created the free Guide to Call Center Regulations. Grab the guide here to learn more!