REVISITING DIALER PERFORMANCE IN COLLECTIONS

THE BACKGROUND

We talk about Generative AI, chatbots, text messaging, Direct Drop voice mail, and e-mail. What happened to phone calls? Landlines are being phased out and may be mostly gone by 2027, but what about dialing cell phones you have consent to call? Phone calls will make a comeback, because the young and old will soon be carrying a cell phone wherever they go.

When you have 2,000 cell phone numbers with consent, that can be called, how do you dial them? Predictively, with a dialer that does not abandon too many calls (cancels calls before the consumer has had the time to answer the call, or does not have an agent available soon after the call is answered). And we are back to that age old problem. To reduce wait times, dialers launch many more calls than they have agents available, but that causes abandoned calls that upset your consumers, the phone companies and regulators. And remember, an abandoned call must now be counted as an attempt for Regulation F.

HOW PREDICTIVE DIALERS PACE THEMSELVES

The answer is probably "No one really knows". With proprietary algorithms, dialer companies will only admit that they consider the number of agents (often recommending at least 6 agents for good predictive performance), talk times, wrap times, the numbers of busy's, no answers, bad numbers etc. to adjust the pacing of the dialer and how many calls they dial at any time, to produce the shortest wait times. Because pacing could not accurately be managed by 'automated dialers' (think about that one), most systems allow you to control their dialer's pacing. That's like asking us to manage the fuel efficiency of our cars. It does not work.

HOW DOES QUANTRAX MANAGE PREDICTIVE DIALERS AND COMPLIANCE?

Predictive dialers were almost banned in the United States 20 years ago because of high abandoned rates (the ratio of abandoned calls to launched calls). Because of regulations in Europe, this problem had already been encountered and addressed in Europe, and Quantrax created an integration with the leading UK dialer company, Sytel. Their approach to predictive dialer pacing and performance was significantly different from the other companies, and we were able to obtain low wait times at abandoned rates under 3%.

What about today, with Reg F's call frequency limits, significantly lower contact rates, and small campaigns with a few agents? What type of predictive performance can we expect? We recently analyzed the performance in a small campaign with 4 agents on Sytel's hosted dialer and were very surprised with the results.

For the charts below, here are some definitions.

Here are the results we obtained.

THE ANALYSIS

• The number of agents on this campaign was only 4, which is much lower that the recommended number for a predictive campaign.
• The abandoned rate was under 10%. We believe that similar performance could have been obtained with lower target abandoned rates.
• Average wait time was 30 seconds. This means that after an agent had "Wrapped up" their last call and were ready for another call, they would get that next call within 30 seconds.
• The average 'Time to answer" was about 9 seconds, and that is what can be expected expected calling cell phones and a smaller number of land lines.
• The percentage of live connects was only about 20%. That means 80% of the calls could not be transferred to an agent, which makes the short wait time of 30 seconds even more remarkable.
• Average talk and wrap time was around a minute to a minute and a half, which is consistent with some campaigns in medical collections, where this sample was taken from. With our collection software, agents point and click to indicate call outcomes, resulting in very short wrap times.
• At any time, one or two agents were waiting for a call. This is also consistent with a campaign of short duration calls.

These results were obtained with Sytel's new hosted dialer. The analysis was particularly interesting because the very short wait times were very surprising based on the small number of agents and low abandoned rate.

WHAT CAN WE TAKE AWAY?

Disappearing land lines, changing consumer behavior, Reg F, compliance requirements, and falling contact rates have changed outbound dialing. In addition to digital options, we will have to call consumers and predictive dialing for cell phones will make a comeback sooner than later.

It will require :

• Real-time identification and management of cell phone numbers,
• Predictive dialers that manage pacing without the the need for manual adjustments (changing the number of trunk lines allocated to dial more calls per agent),
• Dialers that can deliver under strict compliance requirements and meet high performance standards - Short wait times without a large numbers of canceled calls or delays in getting agents on live calls. Unfortunately, that's easier said that done!

Review the graphs or numbers from your own dialer campaigns. What is your abandoned rate? Remember it is abandoned calls divided by launched calls (not connected calls). Can you keep it at 3 to 5 percent and get good wait times? That is what we just showed you.

As it obtains consent to call more cell numbers, the industry must make sure that it dials compliantly. Irresponsible predictive dialing will quickly poke the bear, and it won't be long before states look for ways to address consumer complaints related to "nuisance calls" from collection agencies. It can be avoided and must be addressed, because you will run the risk being on the wrong side of 7-in-7 or perhaps, 3-in-7 rules for different states or cities!

Quantrax Corporation is a technology company that created an intelligent collection platform over 25 years ago. They believe that the ARM industry has been poorly served by collection technology that has not evolved or kept up with the great potential of computing power, or challenging industry changes. Self-funded, Quantrax has continued to successfully develop and deploy technology that offers modern solutions to old problems.

www.quantrax.com – (301) 657-2084