Which dialer fits your team?

Choose by what an answered call is worth

If you run an outbound call center, your dialer decides how many of the people your reps call hear that gap after hello, and how many say "Hello?" to no one at all. Whichever way you set it, you are trading the minutes your reps sit with no one on the line against the people on your list who pick up and hear silence.

A predictive dialer cuts the time your reps wait between conversations, but some of the people who answer find no rep on the line. With a power dialer there is a rep ready for everyone who picks up, and your reps spend longer waiting.

So choose for each list by what one answered call on it is worth to you, today and the next time you call. The more it is worth and the smaller the list, the less silence you can afford, and the more a power or preview dialer makes sense. Then measure both sides every week: conversations and idle minutes per rep hour, and dropped calls and people who hung up in the gap, each out of answered calls.

What does each dialer do?

With a preview dialer, your rep sees the next record on screen first, reads the company, the last order and the notes, and starts the call when they are ready. The person who picks up hears a rep who already knows who they are talking to. Your reps make the fewest calls this way, and every one of them is prepared.

A power dialer does the dialing for your reps. As soon as a rep finishes wrap-up after the last call and is free again, it calls the next number on the list, one number for each free rep. When someone answers, that rep is already waiting, so nobody is dropped. The rep, though, sits through every ring that nobody answers, and over a day those minutes add up.

A predictive dialer calls several numbers for each free rep, betting that most of them will not answer. How many it calls depends on its forecast of who will pick up and when a rep will be free. On a good day your reps go from one conversation to the next with hardly a pause. But when more people answer than there are free reps, someone says "Hello?" and no rep is free.

Vendors don't all use these names the same way, and some call a power dialer a progressive dialer. Whatever the name, ask how many numbers per free rep the dialer calls in each mode.

What does the person you call hear?

Follow a dropped call from the other end of the line. The person picks up, says "Hello?" and hears nothing, because no rep is free. Then the dialer hangs up or plays a recorded message. Your report counts an answered call, and the person remembers a number that called them and had nothing to say.

The gap after hello is easier to miss, and it happens on many more calls. With a power dialer it is short, because a rep is already waiting and the dialer only has to put the call through. With a predictive dialer it is longer, because the dialer starts looking for a free rep only once the person has answered, and the person listens to silence while it looks.

People know that silence from their own phones, and plenty of them hang up in the gap before a rep says a word. On a list you call week after week, such as your own customers, you will be calling those same people again, and over time more of them stop picking up.

What your rep says once they speak is covered in our post on how to open a cold call. The dialer decides whether the person is still there to hear it.

What did the busier day cost?

Take [company], which sells business broadband. The company, the people, the list and the two days are an example, not real data. Nora leads its outbound team of 10 reps, who call small shops whose contract ends in the next two months to offer the renewal. These are [company]'s own customers. The team calls 6 hours a day, so a day is 60 rep hours.

One Tuesday the dialer ran in predictive mode, and the next Tuesday, on the other half of the same renewal list, it ran in power mode. On both days about one call in five was answered, an average conversation took 4 minutes and wrap-up took 2 minutes.

Start with the reps. On the predictive Tuesday the team had 540 conversations in its 60 rep hours, 9 per rep hour. At 4 minutes of talking and 2 of wrap-up for each, a rep hour held 36 minutes talking, 18 minutes of wrap-up and 6 idle minutes. On the power Tuesday the team had 360 conversations, 6 per rep hour, and a rep hour held 24 minutes talking, 12 minutes of wrap-up and 24 idle minutes, most of them spent waiting through rings that nobody answered.

Now the other end of the line. On the predictive Tuesday 660 people answered. Of those, 540 had a conversation, 60 were dropped and 60 hung up in the gap, so 120 of them never heard a rep at all. The gap after hello averaged about 2 seconds that day.

One of the 60 who hung up in the gap was Mr. Wood, who runs one of the shops on the renewal list. He picked up and said "Hello? ... Hello?", heard two seconds of nothing and hung up. The dialer recorded an answered call with no conversation, and nothing more happened to him that day. His contract still ends soon, and he is still on Nora's list.

On the power Tuesday 380 people answered, and 360 of them had a conversation. Nobody was dropped. The gap was under a second, and 20 people still hung up in it.

Side by side, the predictive Tuesday gave the team 180 more conversations, 540 against 360. That is 3 more per rep hour, 9 against 6, and each rep hour had 6 idle minutes instead of 24. [company]'s own customers paid for that. Of the 660 who answered, 120 heard silence or a recorded message instead of a rep, against 20 of the 380 on the power Tuesday.

Nora chose power for the renewal list. These are customers the company wants to keep, and people her team will call again before their contract ends. For her, 120 of them a day picking up and hearing no rep is too many, even if it brings 180 more conversations.

Which dialer for which list?

Nora asked two questions about her renewal list, and you can ask the same two about every list your team calls. What is one answered call worth, and will you call these people again?

Use a predictive dialer only on a large list where each short conversation is worth little. There the idle minutes it saves add up over thousands of numbers, and the person who hears silence is not a customer whose renewal you are waiting for. On a small list every person counts, and each dropped call is a real share of the people you can reach.

Even on the right list, set a cap on dropped calls for each campaign and each day, and have the dialer slow down or stop when it gets close. Without one, a busy hour in which more people answer than the forecast expected turns into a run of dropped calls, and you find out from the report the next morning.

What should you ask a dialer vendor?

When you compare outbound call center software, vendors like to show you how many minutes an hour your reps could spend talking. Spend as much of the meeting on what the person you call hears. Nora could compare her two Tuesdays only because her dialer counted the dropped calls and the people who hung up in the gap, so make sure yours does too.

• How many numbers does it call for each free rep, and can we set that per campaign?
• What does the person hear when they answer and no rep is free: silence, a recorded message, or a hang-up?
• Can we cap dropped calls per campaign per day, and does the dialer slow down by itself when it gets close?
• How long is the gap after hello on our own calls, and can we see it per call?
• How does it tell a person from an answering machine, and what happens when it guesses wrong?

Some countries set rules for dropped calls and recorded messages, so check the rule in each country you call.

What should you measure each week?

Every week, look at each list the way Nora looked at her two Tuesdays, from both ends of the line. For your reps, that means conversations and idle minutes per rep hour. For the people you call, it means dropped calls and people who hung up in the gap, each counted out of answered calls, so you can compare a busy week with a quiet one.

Then listen to ten calls from each list, starting at the moment the person answers. You will hear the gap after hello for yourself, and you will know whether it is too short to notice or long enough for people to recognize it.

On a list you call again and again, like Nora's renewal list, watch one more number week by week, the share of calls that are answered. If it falls, look back at how many people on that list were dropped or hung up in the gap in the weeks before. The numbers nobody answered follow your retry rules, a subject of its own in our post on when to call again, and when to stop.

Where does DRING come in?

With DRING, the AI agent makes the call itself and talks to the person who answers, so the call does not wait for a free rep. DRING runs the outbound campaigns you plan, calls inside your calling windows, retries by outcome and writes every result to your CRM. Reach, the calling engine behind every campaign, follows each person on the list from the first attempt to an outcome your CRM can act on.

Your reps get the people who qualified: a meeting on the rep's Google Calendar, or a live transfer to the rep with the summary attached. If you use live transfer, part of the dialer question comes back. A rep has to be free when the agent hands over, so plan your reps around the transfers.