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Setting up dialling & managing calls

Predictive dialling, recordings and respondent appointments

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    Predictive Dialing FAQ

    I see long waiting times for my agents, what can I do?

      Select your list and click right > Telephony > No calls?

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    If something structural is causing the long waiting times, this will be mentioned in a message box that pops up.

    If the ‘no calls?’ message box mentions “no problem”, it could be possible that the pace is low due to limiting parameters of the predictive dialling.

    You can check these values in the ‘lists monitor’ interface. For instance, if the nuisance percentage is reached, the algorithm will reduce the speed of dialling, probably resulting in higher waiting times.

    If this is the case, you could set the parameter to a higher value to push the algorithm to a higher speed.

    If these 2 checks above are not the cause of longer waiting times, please check the alarms in Supervisor. Is there a problem with the distribution of the numbers? Are there ISDN lines / SIP channels with alarms?

     

    Why are my agents faster for outbound calls in progressive mode than in predictive mode?

    In progressive dialling mode, a contact will be assigned to an agent before this contact gets called.

    As a result, the agent is already in an outbound call state when the calling starts. However, that doesn’t mean that the agent already has someone on the other end of the line. The waiting time will still be added until there is an actual “connect” on the ISDN line/SIP Channel.

    In predictive dialling mode, the agent remains in the ready state, while calls are being started in the background by the system. The waiting time is added until a contact picks up the phone and starts talking. Only at this very moment, the call will be passed on to the agent. On agent side, the ringing sound stops and the task pops up. On Supervisor you can see the agent state in outbound call.

    So the outbound call status:

    Predictive dialling Progressive dialling
    Speech Could be speech or ringing

     

    I have defined 1% of nuisance calls, but when I take a look at the report for yesterday I see only 0.6% of nuisance calls. Why?

    This can be caused by two different reasons:

    • The first possibility is that you have a high quality sample, which means the dialler doesn’t need to be that aggressive to reach them.
    • Another reason can be that the algorithm does not execute the calculation on a daily basis. By default, the predictive algorithm uses the last 25 connected calls and not the statistics for a whole day. This has proven to be a safer method, with less impact on productivity.

     

    Why do some agents have to wait longer for new calls than others?

    This can be caused by several reasons . . . 

    • The first reason is the most obvious one: by coincidence, contacts selected for agent 1 can pick up the phone faster than the ones for agent 2.
    • An agent could be working on more personal appointments than the other one (thus impacting the dialling rate).
    • Because of different skill definitions, an agent could be working on a target that is harder to reach.
    • An agent could be part of a group with specific dialling parameters (progressive or less aggressive predictive).

     

    Where do I set my trigger? Do I need one or more triggers in my Askia survey?

    We recommend setting a trigger two or three questions before the end of the interview. But it will depend on the average amount of waiting time the system is working with. As an example, if the waiting time is 20 seconds and we estimate 10 seconds per question at the end of the survey, then setting a trigger two questions before the end sounds right. And this assume that the trigger is set on a question that everyone sees.

    If you have different exit points in your survey, we recommend setting multiple triggers (of course limited to one per exit point).

     

    What is the impact on the predictive algorithm of list results (such as percentage no answer, busy, wrong number, etc)?

    Your dialling performance will be higher when compared to progressive or preview dialling, thus resulting in more outgoing calls within the same amount of time. However, when compared to progressive dialling, this will not impact the percentage of wrong numbers, no answer, etc. You will get the same percentage of wrong numbers compared to progressive dialling – but you will get to this result more quickly. Therefore, we recommend validating that you have enough numbers/sample left before the start of each shift.

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