Dialer

When dialing a lead the call may not be answered before the dialer gives up due to the 'Dial Timeout', this is treated as a No Answer. When a call attempt fails due to a 'No Answer', the dialler will automatically reschedule the lead for a callback. The 'No Answer Retry Limit' is used to control the maximum number of times the Dialer will attempt to re-dial the number. Once the retry limit is reached the lead will be closed. The Retry Limit is critical in ensuring that the Dialer doesn't harass customers.

To be clear if the Limit is set to '5' then a total of 6 call attempts will be made. The Initial call plus 5 retries.

Note: Turning this value up too high (5 or above) can significantly impair dialer performance towards the end of a campaign. The issue is that if a customer hasn't answered a call after 3 or 4 call attempts then they probably will never answer the call. The result is that towards the end of the campaign you get left with all of the leads that never answer calls, so you affectively starve the dialer. The Preview and Pooled dialers suffer greatly from this problem, the Predictive dialer will do a better job as it can ramp up the overdial rate to compensate.

Controls the number of times a lead is dialled with a result of 'No Answer' when the lead is marked as a 'Client Approved' callback. A lead is marked as 'Client Approved' by setting the flag 'Client Approved callback' for a disposition.

 The amount of time the dialer will wait for a call to be answered before it considers it a No Answer.
Be careful not to set this value too low particularly if you are dialling mobile numbers as often the call setup time can be quite long. The result is that every call becomes a No Answer as you haven't allowed the person enough time to answer the call. Generally the timeout should be no less than 12 seconds.
Recommended value: 20

By default, the dialer will dial leads with a higher priority before leads with a lower priority. In the default configuration, leads set as Callback have a higher priority then fresh leads.

This option allows for modification of this behaviour. By changing the mode to BALANCED a slider will appear allowing for adjustment of the ratio of fresh leads vs callbacks to be adjusted.

Note: when using the balanced mode you probably don't want a 50/50 split.

You need to understand that the dialer runs in cycles of about 2 minutes. At each cycle it looks for fresh leads and callbacks and selects a small no. of leads based on the ratio.

The problem is that there are far more callbacks then than fresh leads! If you have a No Answer retry limit of 4 then there are 4 callbacks in the system for every fresh lead. So in this case if you want a true balance between fresh leads and callbacks across the life of the campaign then the ratio should be 20/80 not 50/50.

The maximum number of times any of the Pool/Predictive Dialers will ring a single phone number and hangup a 'connected' call without connecting them to an Agent.

This is a critical number and should be kept low (2-3). This is where a customer answers a call but we don't have an agent ready to take the call, so we simply hangup. Customers take a very dim view of these types of calls.

When a no. reaches its Pool dial abort limit the system will switch to Single Dial mode the next time it attempts to dial that no.

For Single dial mode to work you need to make certain that the No Answer retry limit is greater than the Pool dial abort limit as an Pool dial abort is counted as a No Answer.

Refer to the Dial Mode for additional details.

Controls how leads with multiple Phone Numbers are dialed. If Chain Dial is selected then each Phone Number associated with a lead will be dialed in turn one immediately after the other until a call is answered. If Chain Dial is disabled then the dialer will dial each number in turn but the interval between each attempt will be defined by the disposition type. e.g. if dialed number is not answered and the answer retry interval is three hours then the next number associated with the lead will be dialed in three hours.

When using Chain Dial the retry limit counters act as if only a single call has been made, regardless of the no. of phone no.s actually dialed for the lead.

Use this option carefully. When the dialer is in multi-dial mode it will sometimes connect to a customer when no agents are available. Normally the dialer instantly hangs up on the customer and marks the call as abandoned. If this option is selected the call will be held open hoping that an agent becomes available before the customer hangs up. The customer will be played music on hold whilst they wait.