What is predictive dialer and what is Click To Call ?

Predictive dialer is such smart automatic telephone dialer system which dials out a telephone number from a list of telephone numbers in order to reduce holding time for both agent in call center as well as the person who is called from it. Though there are various techniques to implement predictive dialer, the basic aims remains same :-
1. Called party should not kept on hold;
2. Agent in call center should not waste time in hearing RBT ( Ring Back Tone) of the called number.

Click To Call and Predictive Dialer

Click To Call Service is a one to one conference where the called party ( as in above Predictive Dialer Definition) initiates the call and speaks to human agent immediately! So the immediate purpose of reducing wait period for both called party and agent is automatically achieved!

Now, does that mean that Click To Call service would (should) replace predictive dialer in order to maximize use of finite and costly resource like outbound telephone call charges as well as time of human agent ?

The first consideration is predictive dialer is not used just as a call back service where some user or web visitor will register their phone number (submit their phone number by filling up a form) expecting a call back from the website or some call center of the company who owns the web site.

Also, predictive dialer can dial from any phone list, not necessarily gathered from web site visitors, but also from off-line registrations, manual phone number collection, collecting phone numbers by door to door marketing etc., not to mention collecting of phone numbers when a user provides his phone number when registers for service, like a DTH ( Direct to Home) TV service, registering for credit card, bank account etc.

While click to call service essentially collects numbers from website visitors only. Apart from traditional Click To Call service, now a days, smart implementation of click to call where a call is imitated as soon as a web form is submitted website visitor, which acts as an additional feature of immediate call back service on an existing registration form! ( Niche Tech Service private Limited provides such customised Click To Call service. )

So, most probably, it will not be possible that Click To Call Service would replace predictive dialer!

Both Predictive Dialer and Click To call service can have options to choose the time when a person expects the call back from the website or call center.

Predictive dialer is also used to make scheduled outgoing calls which is not either standard function in a Click To Call service or available only at extra cost or when a Click To call service with IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) functionality! But now a days, many Click to Call service providers can provide complete IVR functionality or solution in a Click To Call service too.

So, a click to call system, along with smart and customizable IVR at the back end of it, can be surely a next generation of Predictive Dialer and can potentially dethrone it from future call center!

Another important point to consider is, predictive dialer can no longer be used to blast out calls to random numbers after strict implementation of “National Do No Call registry” ( NDNC) in order to stop unsolicited calls. Click To Call service facility eliminates the requirement NDNC registry before making calls. But then, spammers can surely misuse Click To Call!

I had posted about possibility of replacing predictive dialer with outbound IVR, and now I feel, and and IVR system with outbound feature and Click To Call functionality can surely replace aging predictive dialer and bring in cost saving as well as ‘Cloud Telephony’ in Call Center world!

Happy holidays season and Happy New year 2010 to all readers in general and visitors to IVR Blog during this holiday season in particular.

In case you wanted to read few useful articles about interactive voice response (IVR) system, here is a list of recommended articles :-

1. IVR as CRBT(Caller Ring Back Tone).
2. Choosing a CTI board for your IVR.
3. Choosing right IVR development tool .
4. Usability Tips for IVR Software.
5. Predictive Dialer and IVR.
6. Using Predictive Dialer smartly in Call Center.
7. List of RAD tools for IVR development.
8. IVR for making money .
9. Technical challenges in voice portal.
10. Use IVR as e-commerce portal.

I hope these articles will keep you busy while I will be back next year, 2010!

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.

Recently, there has been news about growth of outbound IVR systems everywhere in the world. I have also experienced people preferring outbound IVR over inbound IVR. Outbound IVR systems are being preferred in those kind of application where some customer authentication or verification like credit card authorisaton, phone banking, voice alerts are required or in IVR applications like appeal for voting in election campaign apart from traditional usage of outbound IVR as predictive auto dialer in call center or contact center.

Difference between Inbound IVR and Outbound IVR systems

Technically speaking, there is not difference between inbound IVR systems and outbound IVR systems. Though in outbound system, few extra tasks by IVR software needs to perform like Call Progress Analysis (CPA). Apart form that, there is minor difference in call flow only. There is no hardware difference.

But there is a huge difference between inbound IVRS and outbound IVRS commercially. The major difference is, apart from IVR systems on toll free numbers, caller has to pay for calling to IVR number for per minute of usage as per tariff plan subscribed by the caller from a Telecom operator. But in outbound IVR, the called party or the user of the IVR system is not charged!

In inbound IVR, user dial in to the IVR number while in outbound IVR, the IVR calls out to the user. Once call is connected, the IVR operation remains the same.

In real world, outbound IVR faces many problems like detecting reason for connection of the call. Because call may be connected due to called party picking up the phone, called party transferring the call to its voice mailbox, answering machine etc. While these may cause problems, but with CTI boards offering advanced features for call progress analysis, outbound IVR software can detect these different types of connections though not with 100% accuracy all the time.

Why Outbound IVR is growing ?

1. IVR being increasing used as utility services
Outbound IVR is majorly growing as IVR is becoming increasingly a public utility service. If any public utility services to be successful, it should always be offered “free” to the actual users! Recently, people are increasingly using IVR for various public utility services like flight status alert, news alerts, remainder services etc.

2. Security reasons
In a any verification, it is always more secure if the call is originated from the verification agencies. I hope some fraud can be eliminated if the call is originated from verification agency. Verification calls or credit card authentication calls can be scheduled after some time consuming manual or automated checks about the credentials before asking an user for authentication.

3. Growth of Service Industry
Service industry has been growing anywhere in the world and more in India. It has increased in many call centers, tele-marketers which has increased requirement of outbound IVR systems. Many call centers use outbound IVR as predictive dialer, automated payment remainders, payment acknowledgment.

4. Innovation in IVR Systems
With advent of Hosted IVR solutions, the cost and implementation time of IVR systems has gone down and many smaller companies have started availing IVR services for various purpose. With falling telephone charge per minute, it has become more affordable by many smaller companies for whom outbound IVR was not affordable earlier.

I think, in days to come, outbound IVR will continue to grow.

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.

Both outbound and inbound IVR Application can be used as advertising tools. It can be quite effective as it can be really interactive with quick response unlike print or visual advertising.

Using Inbound IVRS as Marketing tools:
Inbound IVRS is those kind of IVRS where user calls to IVRS. Normally this kind of IVRS uses a toll free number. Else most probably, now a days nobody will make an outgoing call and listen to advertisements!

Voice Portals are such inbound IVRS where advertisement can be inserted. Voice Portal normally has many applications. Each application can have different advertisements. For example, if a voice portal has Music Application where user listens to songs, one can insert advertisements of upcoming music releases as well as movies. This kind of relevant advertisements will not irritate the caller much.
These advertisements can be interactive. For example, one can play promo of a movie, and ask people to rate the film. Same way for a song! This kind of facility is unique in IVRS.
Telecom companies can provide new schemes, services on their customer care number! This we may have experienced quite a time now!

Using Outbound IVRS
Outbound IVRS are those which make outbound calls to a person and provide some information as well as can get some feedback. Predictive dialer, Automatic Dialer are few such IVR Applications.
Using outbound IVRS as advertising tools has been there for quite some time now! Predictive Dialer is a kind of IVRS which is connected to a telephone database and it retrieves telephone number from this and makes outgoing calls. It tries to gather few information from the called person before it transfers the call to a live agent. Outbound IVRS can advertise the following way

1. Advertise about product after the connection. Give the called person option to rate the product, to give feedback in voice, to record if he is interested in the product and know further. Depending on the customer’s choice, IVRS can either transfer the call to a live agent or store the number is prospective client.

2. During election, candidate can make a “Vote for me” appeal on phone!

3. Various queries, opinion polls can be conducted.

4. Telecom companies can announce new services, schemes and prompt subscribers to avail them.

5. In medical industries, outbound IVRS can be used to advertise new drugs, its feedback. It can also prompt patients about daily medicines.

6. Many campaigners like awareness program can be undertaken effectively. For example, AIDS awareness, Pulse Polio Drops, Road Safety etc.