How helpful is an auto dialer in an outbound call center?

Very - it would save you time so you can make more calls. They can also make it so as soon as an agent hangs up, it will dial again. Then again - it depends how small you are talking, but generally, it will save you time, and have the people working for you constantly on calls - who wouldn't want that?

You can make more calls, but the success of it would depend upon the cost and efficiencies established.

I would suggest testing a few vendors to see how much of an increase it would mean to your call center. If a vendor is not willing to give you a trial of their services at no charge for a test, I would be a bit concerned. Once you do this, you can evaluate the output of your team a bit easier to see how effective it works for you.

I think it depends on the volume of leads you are calling and the nature of the sale you are trying to make.

Auto-diallers are an essential part of running an efficient call centre for high volume lead pursuit, but... they also do leave customers with dead lines (to maximise agent efficiency) which can be hard to manage in some countries legal frameworks (it's prosecutable in the UK to have excessive autodialler hang ups for example) and that runs the risk of annoyed prospects.

It definitely does improve agent efficiency but the introduction of a dialler needs to be handled carefully or agents may resent the increased work load it brings (you need to show the potential for increased rewards/comissions due to higher productivity for example).

But if you have any slack in your system at the moment, e.g. fewer leads than agents have time, it can cause issues around job security too.

The important thing with all methodologies for calling is that potential client data is handled in the best possible manner for your prospects.

I agree with Nik.
Be careful I personally don´t like predictive dialing unless you are trying to recover debts :).

But there are many options on the way between manual dialling and predictive dialling.

And as Nik states be careful with regulations as automatic machine calling is ilegal here in Spain for example.

If you have CTI and a software like a CRM you will have a nice work done and you wont have spent a lot of money.
But all will depend on the numbers as all the prior answers have mentioned.

What kind of campaigns do you handle? how many operators are involved? how long does an average successful call lasts? how many calls are you supposed to make daily?

Think about this things and your probably get the answer or near it yourself at least you will know much better how much is it worth

I am with Eduardo on this one. I dislike predictive dialling unless it is under the control of the Agent.

I would recommend a dialler that uses a CTI link from your software (CRM or other) that allows the Agent to control when the call is dialled. In the UK Swan's Callview system is good value for money and can link to numerous phone systems as well as in-house or proprietary software applications.

Predictive dialers are terrific for productivity but not so good for customer experience. They keep your agents busy and online, but at the cost of causing pauses and lags for the customers answering the phone.

So if customer experience is important - which in your case I'd suggest is absolutely true - I would agree with those who suggested CTI integration as an alternative.

If you do decide to go with a dialer, most if not all of them can be adjusted in terms of their parameters - by using them less aggressively you can reduce some of the lag/wait time between when a call recipient picks up and when an agent can be on the line.

Language zar :(

I understand your frustration but unfortunately TPS only works if companies use it and the unscrupulous ones don't.

I am not a fan of auto diallers that force feeds calls to agents that are making cold sales calls.

Outbound dialers does of course work, somewhat. On pure dialing speed you probably save a few seconds per call and if you use the predictive dialer you can gain a bit more. The largest gains still most likely comes from having a good list to target in the first place and the information you need for the call available to you. Those areas are normally a larger struggle than the call time. If you get hugely efficient you probably have to give the tele marketing/sales staff breaks to recover anyway, so that reduces the effect!
What is your own experience?