Predictive dialer software is a useful productivity tool in outbound call centres to make outbound calls to your prospects and to ensure that all agents are occupied on calls the maximum amount of time.

When an agent has to manually dial each prospect, wait for someone to answer, if they do, listen to an answering machine message, the amount of time that an agent can be productive actually talking to a prospect is estimated to be only 15 minutes in the hour.

Predictive dialer software will make multiple calls simultaneously on the principle that not everyone will answer the call, then detect whether the number is ringing out, whether it is voicemail, or whether a human, and only connect prospects to agents when they answer the call.

The “Predictive” part of a Predictive Dialer is to be able to vary the number of calls made depending on the number of agents available, so that prospects do not get calls where there are no agents to take the call, or worse, leaving the prospect you have called on hold in a queue.

It is estimated that predictive dialer software will enable agents to speak to prospects for upwards of 45 minutes in the hour compared to 15 minutes in the hour manual dialing, which has the same effect as having 3 times the number of agents for the same staffing costs.