Outbound

 

Ofcom is watching…don’t dial into disaster

 

Outbound calling is now surrounded by regulations.  Keep yourself safe by following these tips from our experts

 

Join us in our Ofcom campaign

 

YOU’LL know that one of the biggest challenges in outbound calling is maintaining a profitable, cost effective operation in an environment tightly regulated by Ofcom. The regulations followed public concern at the number of silent calls caused by companies using predictive diallers.  As a result of this campaign there is greater sensitivity amongst the public about the issue.

It is clear that making a sales call to a consumer where there is a discernible delay before the greeting will often cause a negative reaction, meaning that the sale is less likely to succeed.  Arguably, this is less important in other types of outbound calls, e.g. debt collection.

Unacceptable levels of silent calls are not a necessary consequence of using predictive diallers.  A predictive dialler should attempt to forecast agent availability and pace dialling to match availability as closely as possible.

 

The sophistication of the predictive algorithm is one critical factor in achieving dialling accuracy – be aware there are even diallers in use that are crudely controlled by manually allocating a number of trunks to a campaign.

A second critical factor is how accurately the dialler can forecast when agents will be able to handle the next call. For example, our diallers track the progress of the agent in each call and maintain a dynamic record of the average time to completion at each stage.

Thirdly, improving agent availability by minimising or eliminating after call work, important for achieving high levels of productivity, is made possible by using a unified desktop that records information captured during the call and automates fulfilment tasks.

One of the more controversial aspects of predictive dialling as it relates to the Ofcom regime is answer machine detection (AMD).  Ofcom recently added “false positives” – that is, people incorrectly classified as answer machines – to abandoned calls in its calculation of the three per cent limit of abandoned calls as a percentage of live calls.  What this means is that using answer machine detection becomes almost self-defeating for a number of reasons:

If AMD is turned off, one effective method of dealing with answer machines when they are connected to an agent is to allow the agent to click a button that can transfer the call to an IVR that plays a message to be recorded on the consumer’s answering service.  Alternatively, the call can simply be disconnected.  In either case, the agent is immediately made available to handle the next call and the system reschedules the call according to rules set up in the dialler.

As a medium to long term initiative, my company is asking the industry to join with it in an effort to protect outbound dialler operators’ business model by calling on Ofcom to introduce legislation that can automate network answer machine detection.

Telcos should be required to play a brief tone immediately on connecting an answering service.  In this way, there would be no need to wait for two seconds to complete the detection process. In addition, agents should then only need to handle digital answering machines, and the problem of false positives would be eliminated.

 

Richard Woollaston is general manager of Altitude Software; rjw@altitude.com

 

Try this test before you buy a dialler

 

HERE are my views on the two recurrent themes right now:

 

Predictive dialler performance We have yet to come across any dialler vendor that didn’t claim to have the best dialler in the world.  So how is the poor user supposed to choose?  On the basis of a reference visit, a live trial or perhaps being convinced by some intricate design information about a dialler?  All potentially useful, but also potentially flawed.

But there is one thing that users can and should do to determine whether a dialler, any dialler, is providing reasonable performance over progressive dialling and that is to assess the amount of predictive gain, in minutes of talk time per hour.

 

It involves a very simple test.

Run the dialler in progressive mode for a day and then, using the same campaign, turn on predictive mode.  Any dialler should allow you to switch between the two modes easily.  The difference in talk time is the predictive gain.

If you are running with 10-20 agents on a telemarketing campaign you should be looking for a gain of at least five-10 minutes of talk time per hour and possibly a lot more.  If your predictive gain is just a few minutes talk time per hour then you may want to consider whether this is an appropriate investment, or whether you have the right technology.

 

Answering machine detection (AMD) This ongoing debate is about whether it can be used in conjunction with predictive dialling, given the issue of false positives.

Well, no serious call centre really believes that this is possible any more.  But there are still call centres who want to deploy AMD because they see it as key to their business.  The only way this is going to be possible is by Ofcom raising the limit for silent calls to well beyond three per cent.  The chances of this happening look very slim.

So if you are new in this market, what do you do?  Just turn off AMD and follow the recent example of the outsourcer LBM, widely quoted, which did this and found that performance went up.  A key reason for this is that when consumers are not subject to the predictive pause of AMD, they are more likely to be responsive to whatever the purpose of the call.  In the US, many call centres in collections keep AMD turned off so that the called party does not hang up when they are being “detected”.

 

Michael McKinlay is the founder and CEO of Sytel; michaelm@sytelco.com

 

Find out when is the best time to call them

 

NOT knowing when people are available to take calls can make running outbound campaigns extremely tricky.  Not only in terms of predicting the success of outbound campaigns but also in terms of staffing up with the right people, at the right times, to meet your targets.  These problems can multiply if you have multiple diallers, multiple hosts and run campaigns across multiple sites.

Fortunately, help is now at hand in the form of a software capability that’s available with the latest unified communications applications.

Campaign optimisation software helps organisations develop, execute and manage high-yield sales and collections campaigns across global operations by conducting centralised campaign management, monitoring activity in real time, and making simple and rapid adjustments to campaigns.

 

However, it is the ability of the software to track predictive dialler call result history and create best-time-to-call strategies that will be of most interest if you are suffering low rates of connecting to the right customer.

Campaign management software uses intelligent dialler management capabilities to learn from past experiences, using sophisticated patented algorithms to track call result history over time and predict the best number to call and the best hour of day to reach the person at that number in the future. 

The software also creates calling strategies optimised according to campaign objectives and prioritised according to user-defined criteria.  These optimised accounts can then be fed into your dialler for execution, dynamically adjusting record levels as agents log in. The entire process is automated and there is no sorting on the dialler required during optimisation.

The result: reduced call attempts, increased “right party connect” rates and improved campaign effectiveness -- regardless of whether your business is in collections, telemarketing or proactive customer service -- as well as lower telecoms charges.

When integrated with workforce management and call centre analytics applications, the results can be even more powerful.  You can schedule and manage the right agents, at the right times, with the highest productivity work, to yield the best return on your investment in people and technology.

 

Mark King is senior vice-president of Aspect

 

Pay as you go for all you need

 

GIVEN the current climate of change and uncertainty, alternatives to the traditional approach of in-house diallers and call centre systems now feature heavily because of their strong value proposition and low cost of ownership.  Hosted systems come out of operating costs rather than capital expenditure – which means they are budget friendly.

New generation services offer complete control, choice and intelligence, and some even offer future-proof technology without additional cost to provide new functions and to maintain regulatory standards.

A successful network solution should offer everything you could achieve with customer premises equipment (CPE), yet be available on a flexible pay-as-you-go basis, be totally scalable up/down, be reliable, and offer easily-added functionality when required.

While these already offer some inherent benefits provided by their design, such as simpler disaster recovery planning, providers also should offer functionality and managed services that would not be possible with CPE.

A good provider will offer advice on the use, management and configuration, and help monitor the centre results achieved using their services.  As the supplier/manufacturer, they should be best placed to supply answers/support/advice on the best configurations of the dialler to maximise performance.

My company provides such services, supported by an experienced team of dialler managers and we work in partnership with clients to ensure that their business is successful and remove the barriers to using contact centre technology.

The typical cost per agent is £220 per agent per month, including telecoms, service, full functions, voice recording and scripting.

 

Joanne Hatherley, Ultra Communications; Joanne.Hatherley@UltraASP.net