Predictive Dialers or Progressive Dialers - Which is Right for Your Business?
According to several studies, the worldwide auto dialer software market has been growing continually. Gradually, contact centers have been switching from manual dialers to on-premise and cloud-based auto dialer software for placing the outbound telephone calls automatically, efficiently, and quickly. It also helps detect disconnected lines, busy tones, answering machines, and voicemails, intelligently.
Different call centers may have distinct needs, and therefore several types of automatic dialers have been developed in response. Cloud Contact Center Solution has the option to choose from different types. Out of these, the most popular ones are predictive and progressive dialers.
Predictive Dialers
Predictive dialing involves making several automated outbound calls without the use of agents. Answered calls are then passed to a free agent. So, a computer makes dialing decisions based on certain algorithms to support business objectives.
It also can predict when the next call is likely to be connected, estimate when the next agent is likely to conclude a call and get prepared for the subsequent call. Because of this prediction capability, it helps in saving a lot of time and increases the call centers' productivity.
Progressive Dialers
These are automated dialing systems which can avail the contact information to an agent before dialing the phone number. The agent is given an ample amount of time to review the contact information before the dialer automatically places the call. This ensures a particular speed of calls while allowing agents to prepare for a call. However, unlike Predictive Dialers, it not capable of making any predictions.
Difference
Call FrequencyA progressive dialer places a single outbound call for each available agent while a predictive dialer places multiple outbound calls. Hence, predictive dialers are more effective in keeping dialing and connecting rate constant. The rise in call frequency helps contact centers shorten agent idle time significantly. However, progressive dialers help minimize call abandon rate, by enhancing the availability of agent.
Agent Requirements
In the case of progressive dialers, the contact center needs to deploy additional agents to handle the increase in an outbound call. While predictive dialers can manage large-scale outbound marketing campaigns without extra agents.
Personalized Interaction
Usually, the agents find it challenging to make customer interaction personalized and productive while using Predictive Dialers. On the other hand, the progressive dialers help agents personalize customer interaction by accessing and understanding relevant customer information which leads to increased sales conversion.
What dialer should you choose for your business?
Though a Predictive Dialer reduces the amount of time an agent spends between calls, there are a large number of customers who cancel the call within the first few seconds due to a long wait in connecting with the agent. Sometimes these dialers may incorrectly estimate the time required to finish a phone call and end up losing more quality leads.
The progressive dialer too has a longer duration of waiting; however, through such dialers, customers feel a personal connection with the person who is calling them. Thus, it gives you better customer engagement and is more likely to create higher conversions for your business. Also, it avoids the busy signals, answering machines, disconnected numbers or IVRs.
Both the dialers come with their attributes that work differently in specific business situations. Therefore, any dialing solution can be beneficial provided you understand the scale of your business. So, a dialer must be chosen depending on the business scale and it’s need.