While outbound IVR systems are being widely used now a days for many promotional activities, but outbound IVR potential as smart predictive dialer is still to be tapped.

While many acknowledge that, outbound IVR has many advantages over predictive dialer, call centers still deploy predictive dialer for making outbound calls and then transferring the calls to human agents.

History of predictive dialer shows, it came to be used in call centers for increase efficiency of human agents, as well as effective monitoring by supervises. Predictive dialer increase productivity by automating the dialing, then detecting answering machine, FAX tone or human answering and then connecting to human agent. Any outbound IVR with small computation power using CPA ( Call Progress Analysis) can achieve these and much more!

Another major advantage of outbound IVR ( or any IVR for that matter) is its availability in both on-premise and hosted environment. Hosted environment provides many advantages like low initial cost as well as sudden spike in call volume! Predictive dialer are normally on premise and sudden spike of calls can only be served by increasing number of ports in it.

So, why call center owners are still having separate predictive dialer and not using their inbound IVR as predictive dialer in outbound IVR configuration ?

As I had interacted some call center owners as well as few vendors for call center industry, I think, in India, only two reasons for not using outbound IVR as predictive dialer :-

1. Lack of information
Not many people are aware that IVR can be used for making outbound calls and then transferring it to human agent along with call whispering or agent pop up with the connected call. Many call center owners include inbound IVR, but they are not aware or made aware that the same IVR could be used for making outbound calls as well as it can eliminate predictive dialer all together.
IVR being based on a PC, it has many options for monitoring, accessing data from various sources as well as present status of calls and activity of human agents.

2. Lack of confidence in IVR applications
While predictive dialer is a proven product, but many consider IVR applications to be just add-on and stand-by arrangement in India. Most probably, this has to do with technology adoption problem! Also, many people cite example of ‘hard coded’ IVR applications and lack of support and maintenance by IVR companies. Most of the IVR companies in India uses CTI boards APIs to develop IVR applications instead of open standards or tools. It may create problem in upgrading the application as well as maintenance.

So, it looks like outbound IVR will not be able to replace predictive dialer as preferred ‘smart dialer’ in call center in near future in India.

What is Click To Call ?
“Click To Call” normally refers to a website feature where an website visitor asks to talk to webmaster or website representative ( may be even call center) by entering his phone number. So, this Click to Call facility in a website mainly involves establishing a call between a website visitor and a representative or customer service agent. It may involve monitoring of website visitors in real time and dialing the phone number entered by the visitor manually. But using an IVR ( Interactive Voice Response), this process can be automated as well as many intelligence could be put to use!

There are many benefits of having Click To Call feature in an website in its contact us page or any page where a website visitor may need any further assistance ( for example, in e-commerce website while checking out, restaurant site for reservation enquiry etc.). Click to Call facility may reduce call waiting time for both the visitor and website representative as they are called/connected when both are free to talk on phone.

Another advantage of having Click To Call feature is privacy of telephone numbers. Company executives may not need to put their numbers on website. Since Click to Call normally calls both the parties and connect them, company executive may not give out his numbers. Conversation on phone also provides option to discuss customised pricing as well as it may increase visitor confidence.

These in turn may increase lead conversion with better online marketing analysis report.

Click to Call and IVR:

Click to Call feature in website can be thought of outbound IVR which transfers the call to another number as per some configuration.

Here is the flow, how outbound IVR may turn into Click to Call engine for any website, either onsite or hosted.

• Check if any new request from visitor for Click To Call feature. If any new request with valid phone number has arrived, go to step below.
• Check if the website representative or customer service agent is free, then call the visitor number.
• Call the website representative number.
• Connect both the calls.

One may use either call transfer or call bridging for connecting both the calls. In an on premise implementation, call transfer may work during office hours, but in case of hosted IVR platform, it will always be call bridging.

So, if you have already IVR system in your office, you might as well have Click To Call feature for your website which can be used to customer service, enquiry generation and conversion an online marketing analysis.

What is hosted outbound IVR service ?
Hosted outbound IVR service can be defined as a service provided by a IVR Service provider using which one can make outgoing calls to large telephone numbers and play a recorded voice as soon as the called party picks up the call. Calls could be scheduled by the client who is availing the outbound IVR service through either an web-based interface, or API ( Application Programming Interface) or URL link.

Recently, there has been few companies in India, which have started providing hosted outbound IVR services. It has become a good tools for marketing along with SMS(Short Messaging Services), Email alerts.

Usage of Outbound IVR Service:

There are many usage of outbound IVR services. It can be used to for the following :-

1. Promotional Campaigns
Any marketing agencies build up large number of telephone numbers of their clients over a period of time. So, when they want to launch or announce a new product in short period of time, automated outbound call is one option. Outbound IVR will dial out the numbers and play the audio clip announcing the new service, product and discount/sale.
This type of promotional campaign can be conducted along with SMS, email campaigns.

2. Public awareness campaign
Various public awareness campaigns like AIDS, Road Safety Week etc. could be organised using hosted auto dialer application. Now a days, during election campaign, most of the political parties use outbound IVR services to send out voice messages from the candidates to the masses in short span of time.

3. E-Governance
Recently, e-governance has been a buzz word in India where many public utility services have been made available in internet as well as in electronic format making access to many government schemes easier. Hosted outbound IVR service can be used for alerting a person with the status of their applications by various government departments.

4. Medical Services
Outbound IVR services can be used as reminder services for visiting hospital for patient check ups. Hospitals can use outbound IVR service for discounted health checkups, free medical checkups etc.

5. Polls
Various telephonic polls could be conducted using a hosted IVR service. People could be asked some questions and their reply could be recorded either in voice or DTMF digits. This would be cast effective and it could be conducted in a short span of time. Various TV channels could use this for any recent events, news to get public opinion.

Enhancements
Hosted IVR service can be enhanced with some advanced features which will increase utility of hosted outbound services.

1. Option to transfer the promotional call to a live agent
For example, while making promotional voice call to a person, option should be given to the called party to speak to a live agent if she is interested in the product/service and wants to learn more about it. This may convert to sales immediately.

2. Option to record voice
Hosted IVR service could give called party an option to record their message as feedback.

3. Option to finalise an appointment
Any remainder or alert voice call by hosted IVR service should have option to confirm an appointment by pressing a key or by voice. For example, in a medical check up, car servicing alert etc.

So, hosted auto dialer application can become a very useful marketing tool in line with SMS, e-mailers.

The biggest reason why people hate IVR is for the following scenario :-

User calls to IVR number and he gets to hear an welcome message and asked few options. After that the user is put on hold saying ‘All our customer care officers are busy, Your call is important to us, we will transfer the call to a customer care executive as soon as free. Thank you’ and this continue for 10 minutes, may be more! End result, caller disconnect, after few curse may be.

Most probably, many of us has faced this situation while dialing to Telecom customer care numbers (specially in India). But this kind of irritation and frustration can be reduced considerably by using a simple predictive dialer! Yes, instead of keeping the caller on old for many minutes, he should be given a simple option to press a number,saying press 2 if you want our executive to call you back as soon as they are free! Thank you!’ And let predictive dialer take care of the rest!

One must, specially call center owners, realise that people calling their call center or customer care, are also busy and need a quick solution to their problems. They should not be kept on hold for 10 odd minutes by playing messages informng how important their calls are! Better, they give him a call back. The customer care executive should have all the information which the caller entered in his previous IVR call. These features can be implemented using smart IVR software with built in predictive dialer.

How can an IVR application help ?
IVR can be used as very smart predictive dialer as I have posted earlier. Now same IVR can open a new thread or process which will get activated as soon a request for a call back by a caller is registered. This process will start monitoring any free customer care executive as when it finds one, it will immediately occupy seize the line and dial out the previous caller mobile.
As soon as the previous caller picks the phone, it will connect to the customer care officer and pop up the caller details as per his chosen options in his previous IVR call.

Advantages of this arrangement:

1. This will surely improve only customer satisfaction. Customer will not require to hold the line frustratingly.

2. This will increase efficiency of customer care executives as well as throughput of the call center.

3. Customer will be less irritated as they are no longer kept on hold for long time. Customer care exceutive will be less stressful as they will face less number irate customer.

4. Toll free numbers are paid by the call centers as per usage basis. While keeping a caller on hold, the minutes of usage increases for the call center organization. Even if the call center may belong to a telecom company, it still uses up precious finite resources, voice channels and decrease utilisation. So, IVR with predictive dialer can reduce cost of running call center.

Few enhancements :

An automatic SMS could be sent to the caller if he called form a mobile number informing he would receive a call from customer care with approximate time. Caller may be presented a request ID for the call back request.

I believe, this kind of a smart IVR with built int intelligent auto dialer feature will enhance customer experience of IVR and will help reduce hatred towards IVR.

Implementing traditional voice mail using analog CTI boards is quite tricky. If the switch of EPABX does not support certain features, than it is almost impossible to implement traditional voice mail system with traditional operation. The major issue is finding out information of caller ID.

In a traditional voice mail system as I explained in the previous post, Voice Mail System and Answering Machine, it becomes difficult to provide two caller ID to the voice mail system. For example, C is the extension line to which voice mail system connected. Now if A calls B, B does not pick up so needs to transfer the call to C. So now C needs both caller ID, A and B, in order to store voice mails of B from A.

Voice Mail System using analog CTI board:

Voice mail systems are built in with EPABX or telephone exchanges. One can build a Voice Mail System using a simple 4-port analog CTI board and a PC. To build voice mail system, one will need the following hardware:-
1. A PC with one PCI slot free to install the analog CTI board.
2. Operating System to be installed on the PC as per driver availability for the CTI board. I think, only Dialogic provides driver for multiple or all operating systems for its CTI boards.
3. A database. Microsoft Access is a good option for Windows based PC and smaller voice mail systems. For large voice mail systems, either MS SQL or Oracle is recommended.
4. One 4 port CTI board
5. Four telephone lines of extension lines of EPABX
5. VMS software
VMS software is nothing but an IVR application which will record voice with caller ID and time stamp. And it will also playback the recorded voice messages as per owner or recipient of the voice mail messages over telephone. The recipient of the voice mail can also manage his messages like delete, purge etc.

Now, how to solve the the caller ID problem ?
The simplest way is to program the EPABX such a way that, when B ( as per above scenario) dos not reply, call A should be forwarded to C with caller ID of both A and B clubbed together with # as separator between the two! But, does the EPABX support this kind of intelligent programming ? If it does not, than most probably, you can not implement a voice mail system using analog card. You will have to use a digital CTI board where you will get these information easily. SS7 is the best as you get maximum information about the call.

There are few work around. For example :-

1. To ask the caller enter his number using DTMF. It may be little difficult for the caller and time consuming, but it is good option.

2. Map every voice mail account to every port of the analog CTI board. For example, port 1 of the CTI board will record messages only for B as in example above. This will requre some programming in the EPABX, but this is workable solution. The only problem will be future increase of number of users! But if number of voice mail users is large, one should never opt for analog CTI board!

Actually, implementing voice mail system using CTI board and IVR software has many advantages over built in VMS in the EPABX. For example :-

1. Customisation
Customization of voice mail system become much easier. New prompts, call flow of voice mail can be changed, upgraded much easier and quicker.

2. Many enhancements and features
Many enhancements and features could be added to voice mail system. For example, as soon as a voice mail is received for particular VMS user, SMS alert can be sent to him. Email alert along with the voice message itself could be sent to him immediately. In fact, it can be integrated with outbound IVR System which will dial out to the voice mail user, play the mail, give options to reply! This kind of simple application was marketed in India as voice SMS quite successfully by many mobile operators!

3. Stored voice mail can be hard by local LAN as well as remotely over telephone. Better MIS and usability can be increased.

So, voice mail system with CTI board and smart IVR application can add many enhancements, killer features to any voice mail system. UMS ( Unified messaging system) is an example of such application.

Predictive dialer can be termed as smart auto-dialer.  Auto dialer dial out telephone number and handover or transfer the call to human agent in a call center.  Once the dialed number answers, the call agent or telemarketer starts speaking as per the outbound call center function.

Now there can be many situations where the process as described above may not go as expected. For example,

1. The dialed number may be busy. In that case, call agent will hear busy tone and disconnects wasting precious time of the call agent who is paid by the hour.

2. The dialed number simply does no reply. Poor call agent will listen the dialed number ringing and listening it over! Wasting precious time as well as patience.Though now a days, the dialed number may play a hit number of the season thanks to CRBT ( Caller Ring Back Tone), but that is not why a call agent is employed.

3. The dialed number turns out to be a FAX or a voice mail! Another miss!

4. The dialed number simply choose to disconnect the call. Yes, if the dialed number is a mobile number, they can disconnect a call and it was not possible for land line number though! Another miss by call agent!

5. What if auto-dialer dials out a number successfully, but no call agent to take to call ? This time the cursing will come from the dialed number.

6. With NDNC ( National Do Not Call) registry in place in almost every country ( even in India) in the world by now, one can not dial out to any telephone number! What happens if the dialed number is listed NDNC ? Hefty fine as well as few curse from the dialed number.

Predictive dialer tries to solve all the above problems! This obviously will increase call time by call agents or tele-marketer in a call center manifold! This will increase efficiency as well as profitability of the call center.

So, predictive dialer is the smart auto-dialer which can increase agent talk time thereby increasing productivity as well as efficiency. It allows higher utilization of resources in call center and higher profit.

Now, how about an IVR system for smart auto dialing job ? have a look at the call flow attached below :-

IVR as Smart Auto Dialer or Predictive dialer

I am pretty sure this ( outbound IVR) can replace traditional predictive dialer or auto dialer which will be much cheaper, feature rich as well as scalable.

Few enhancements:-
1. Once call is connected, it can announce to the caller in the sweetest voice possible, what is the call is about and ask if s/he is interested to know more and then transfer the call to telemarketer or call agent. I am sure it will screen dialed person and increase conversion ratio!
2. Outbound IVR as predictive dialer can also get feedback.

Finally, I would say, it is time for you to switch to outbound IVR from your predictive dialer. Or, if you were a call center owner and wanted to have a predictive dialer, re-think and seriously evaluate outbound IVR. you may contact me.