Teleplex in Outbound Call Center Applications

Teleplex allows you to greatly increase staff productivity in outbound telemarketing applications with Predictive, Progressive, and Preview Dialing.

To begin, you create a telemarketing "campaign". The campaign consists of a list of telephone numbers, and usually basic contact information such as name and address. The data may also include historical information (purchase, voting, or donation history) and other demographics that might be helpful when an agent makes contact. A campaign typically involve thousands or tens of thousands of calls.

Agents then login to the campaign to start the dialing process as described below.

Three Flavors of Dialing

1. Preview Dialing. Prior to calling, the agent is presented with the contact data from the database. The agent can study the data, and then click a button, and Teleplex will start calling. Preview dialing is a good way to make business-to-business contacts for a "monthly call", or when introducing a new product or service to a fairly captive audience. Preview Dialing is also appropriate when working with volunteers in a political campaign or for a school or church fund-raising campaign because the volunteers can work at their own pace.
   
2. Progressive Dialing. This is the same as Preview Dialing except that the study time is limited by the campaign settings.  The agent can click a button at any time to start the call, or if the time limit is reached the call will be started automatically. Naturally, this puts a little pressure on the agent to handle a certain number of contacts per hour.
   
   With either Preview or Progressive dialing, calls might not get connected because the called number is busy or there is no answer, but this rate will probably be very low when contacting other businesses.
   
3. Predictive Dialing. This type of dialing is a great way to cold-contact a large number of people either to take a survey, or to introduce a new product or service. The main differences compared to Preview and Progressive Dialing are:

• When a call connects, Teleplex performs an instantaneous "screen pop" of the detailed customer contact information on the agent's desktop screen, and then immediately connects the call to the agent.
• The agent is not bothered with "failed calls" (busy, no answer, etc.).  Therefore, the agent hasn't wasted 20 to 30 seconds waiting for a no-answer, and the agent is much more productive by spending the better part of each hour talking to customers.  Failed calls can either recycled, or re-queued for later retry.

At the end of a call, the agent registers the call outcome and any associated data, and is then ready to take another call. Outcome codes can be things like "Not Interested", "Made the sale" and the order data, or perhaps a callback schedule. The outcome data all depends on your application, but is easy to set up and customize for your requirements.

Typically, about 50% of the calls do not connect. For predictive dialing, Teleplex knows everything happening in the campaign such as connection rate, average call setup time, average talk time, number of active agents, and so on. Teleplex is therefore able to initiate more calls than there are agents (a technique known as "over-dialing") because it can predict when an agent should be available. To handle over-dialing, a predictive dialer usually has about 1.5 to 2 trunks per agent, dedicated for dialer use (or for when the dialer is in use).

Compliant. Sometimes the prediction fails, however, and a call has to be dropped.  (This is known as an "abandoned call"). Laws in the United States and the United Kingdom limit how much you can do this, and it is a bad business practice abandoning a lot of calls anyway. Teleplex is fully compliant with these restrictions, and limits the abandoned call rate to only a few percent. Teleplex can even play an apology to called party as required in the United States.

Additionally, Teleplex provides the features necessary to comply with national or local Do Not Call registries.

Aggressive, but Kind. Teleplex can also retry an abandoned call immediately, but on the second try will guarantee that an agent will be available. In this case, the agent is informed by a message on the screen that says this is an abandoned retry (so please be extra nice!), and then, the agent can try for the sale.

Automatic Fine Tuning. While other predictive dialers require constant fine tuning in order to maintain compliance standards, Teleplex continuously and automatically does its own fine tuning. Therefore, you do not need to dedicate someone to operate the dialer.

Fast, Customizable Screen Pops. Teleplex can display any data that you want on the agent's screen such as name, address, order history, and so on, and screen pop are instantaneous. You decide what to display depending on the campaign requirements.

Agent Scripts. Screens can show a script to assist the agent through a conversation with a customer. The script is personalized for each call, so the agent can carry on a professional and friendly conversation with the customer, and remind the agent of all of your sales points. Please refer to Teleplex CallBrowser for details.

Ad Hoc Campaigns Made Easy. Many companies have to deal with Ad Hoc campaign requests that need to display and/or collect some kind of custom data. Please refer to our Teleplex PageBuilder and Teleplex CallBrowser products, which allow you to create such custom applications in 15 minutes.

Run Multiple Campaigns with any Number Of Agents. You can create and run as many campaigns as you'd like with any number of agents in each campaign. For Predictive Dialing, the more agents per campaign, the better, because the dialer can take advantage of over-dialing, and work through the campaign faster, freeing the staff for other work.

We Measure, You Manage. As mentioned, Teleplex stores the call outcome and associated data.

Additionally, Teleplex collects detailed call and agent statistics that can be viewed in real-time by supervisors, managers, and IT staff to gauge call and agent activity, and the boss can just look at the wallboard screen to see today's sales level. The same data can be used later in historical reports to help identify trends, determine staffing requirements, and to evaluate individual, team, and overall agent performance.

Finally, detailed call logs let you analyze your campaign and dial list performance. Teleplex will even calculate custom call charges if you have a special discount package with your carrier, or need to do this for an outsourcing project. Teleplex comes with a number of standard reports, and it is easy to create custom reports.

Flexible. Agents can be connected directly to Teleplex, through a legacy PBX, or remotely via the Internet or a private network from home or a branch office. Campaigns and other system settings can be changed at any time using intuitive, easy-to-use configuration and management screens as your needs change.