Getting the most out of your predictive dialer

So you've just spent $6,000 dollars per seat on the latest, most high-tech predictive dialer on the market and you expect some dynamic results! Instead, all you achieve is an avalanche of unsuccessful sales calls. You're getting more rejections because the phones are being dialed faster!

So, what's the problem with your predictive dialer? Probably nothing. There are many types of predictive dialers on the market today - each equipped with its own unique procedure. The end result is the same - only live calls are transferred to the agent's desktop. But what happens after the live call is delivered to the agent within milliseconds of the contact saying "Hello"? Does your agent have the proper tools to handle the call efficiently once person-to-person communication begins?

Keep in mind that the predictive dialer is only one of many pieces required for a successful call center. One can view the predictive dialer as the gasoline in your automobile. If your car's engine or transmission is not functioning properly, then the highest grade of gasoline won't make any difference, except for a higher gasoline bill. The same goes for your predictive dialer. Spending lots of money and getting the best predictive dialer on the market will only guarantee faster phone calls - not necessarily more sales. The predictive dialer can do the greatest job in the world of dialing numbers and serving up live contacts with zero abandons, but if the agent does not have relevant contact and product information at his or her fingertips, how good can this call really be?

That brings us to the application on the desktop in front of the agent. What's required to interface with the predictive dialer for the agent to make the most out of every call that comes into the call center?

To get the most out of your predictive dialer, the agent must have certain features available at the desktop, including the following.

A full contact history with notes. Of course, if this is the first time you are speaking with a contact, then this feature won't help you. However, once conversations have occurred, the agent can effectively use information gained from previous conversations to enhance the current call. The contact will feel as though this is not just another random call because the agent has some knowledge of the contact's needs.

Past product presentations and purchases. Knowing what products a contact has purchased in the past and how they responded when a certain product was presented will greatly improve the agent's ability to resell that product or sell new products to the same contact.

Automatic upsell prompting to the agent. Many call centers start out with one or two products or reasons to call a contact. As time goes on, the quantity of items to present to a contact will usually grow. The desktop application should automatically provide the agent with a subset of items that this particular contact would be most interested in buying. By doing this, call productivity will increase dramatically.

Online help. This feature allows the agent to a have a wealth of information at his fingertips about the products he is trying to sell. When a contact asks a detailed product question, the agent can immediately access online help to quickly and intelligently answer the question.

Online, dynamic scripting. This feature helps the agent tailor each presentation to the conversation at hand. While most systems do provide scripting, the functionality and capabilities of the scripting environments vary dramatically. Having this capability online is just the beginning. It should also be dynamic so certain questions are presented at certain times, depending on how the call is progressing and the contact's answers to certain questions.

To get the most out of your predictive dialing environment, look at the whole system and processes not just the part that talks to the phone company. Soon that part will be as commonplace as the printer on your network. It definitely needs to be there, but it is only as good as the application in front of it.

Tim Davis is president of Davis Software Engineering, Inc. The Dallas, Texas-based software development firm specializes in design, implementation, and installation of computertelephony integration (CTI) business solutions.

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