Telephone Line estimates

Noojee Campaigner includes a variety of diallers that need varing numbers of telephony lines depending on how they are configured.

For technical clarity the correct term is 'channel' rather than line. For example a single ISDN Primary rate telephone 'line' supports up to 30 channels which means you can make 30 concurrent calls over the one 'line'.

This page is intended provide some guidance on the number of channels required for each dialer mode.

It should be noted that these estimates can only be used as a rule of thumb as the exact number of channels is dependant on a number of factors including quality of the leads handed to the dialer.

Preview Dialer

The preview dialer is the simplest of the dialers. The Preview dialler works by displaying a lead to the Agent and then dialing the number. As such the Preview Dialer needs at most 1 channel for each agent. In reality it would be rare to get more than 60% of the staff on the phone at once but it can happen.

Recommendation: 1 channel per agent

Predictive/Pooled Dialer

The Pooled and Predictive Dialers operates on an 'overdial' basis in that it will dial more numbers than you have agents avaialble. 

The overdial ratio is a key indicator of the number of channels that will be needed to service the dialer.

A typical overdial ratio is 3, which means that for every three available agents three channels will be consumed.

So if you have 5 staff talking to customers and 5 staff waiting for a call the dialer would be consuming a total of 20 channels. The 20 channels is calculated  from:

5 staff on calls: requires 5 channels

5 staff waiting on calls: requires 3 x 5 channels = 15 channels.

In theory it is possible for the dialer to consume up to 30 channels (10 staff all waiting for calls). In reality this would rarely happen but it is possible.

The predictive dialer will some times spike to even higher over dial ratios. This is particularly true if have a high number of disconnected numbers or are working in an area where no-one is answering their phone (e.g. dialing in a mortgage belt at 9:00am in the morning).

Recommendation: 2.5 channels per agent (assuming an overdial ratio of 3).