These silent calls are increasing due to the proliferation of predictive diallers deployed by contact centres. In a typical telemarketing operation, where the agents dial out from a list, only about 20%-30% of their time is spent talking to customers or prospects. The rest is spent dialling and waiting. The main problem is the fact that depending on the time of day only 20%-40% of calls get connected to the right person. The rest are either not answered or busy or an answering machine.
Predictive diallers automatically dial and only present the agents with live, connected calls. This typically increases the talk time to 70%-90% as a proportion of the agent's total working time.
These systems predict how many agents will become available within the next few seconds and what the likelihood is that any call made will be connected to a human. It then takes these predictions and decides how many calls to place. It's an informed gamble, usually based on an analysis of historical information. The system will calculate an average of call durations for each individual campaign and then assume that future calls will not deviate too much from that average. But, whatever the level of mathematical wizardry, a prediction is just a prediction.
Silent calls are the result of these predictions going slightly wrong. The fact that the average call duration for a campaign is three minutes does not mean that all calls are three minutes long. Indeed, the truth may be that about half of the calls are 10 seconds long and the other half six minutes long, and so on.
So, when these complex probabilistic calculations go wrong two things can happen. Agents can become available before there is a call for them. So they wait until the dialler manages to deliver a connected call. This means that productivity is reduced and the company doesn't get the entire potential benefit from the dialler.
In the second case, and this is what causes silent calls, a call is connected but there is no free agent to take it. The dialler has no choice but to "drop" the call, ie leave the person who picked up the phone at the other end with a period of silence followed by a dialling tone.
It is in the interest of call centres to minimise the number of silent calls made. Any person that is finally contacted following any number of silent calls is likely to be less receptive. This means that even though the call centre is very efficient, the conversion rate of the campaign is degraded. In other words it's better to be inefficient but effective than efficient and ineffective.
The only absolute guarantee that no silent calls are made is not to use predictive diallers. The next best thing is to adjust the technology so that the minimum amount of silent calls is made. Most diallers will allow call centre managers to adjust their dialling parameters so that the "nuisance rate" or the percentage of silent calls out of all calls dialled is kept under a certain limit. The problem with this is that it has a detrimental effect on the performance of most diallers, resulting in a significant degradation in productivity.
Recent developments in predictive dialling technologies are going some way towards addressing this problem. The idea is to reduce the reliance of the dialler on probabilistic prediction and base more decisions on hard facts. One way of doing this is by integrating the dialler closely with the software that agents are using.
Most call centres use some form of call scripting software that guides the agent through the conversation and assists them in capturing data. The advantage that these types of applications have is that the position of an agent within the call script is a strong indication of the time left before the call is likely to end.
Integrating call scripting software with a predictive dialler in such a way that the dialler is constantly aware of the agent's current position within the call script can eliminate a major element of guesswork. The net result is that the dialler can base its prediction on the number of agents likely to become available on facts rather than averages and other complex mathematical artifices.
As a consequence of this new idea, silent calls can be reduced without having a dramatic impact on the performance of the dialler. This means that telemarketers can begin to realise the savings derived from the use of diallers without having to alienate their potential customers in the process.
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