Ask the Experts: Effectiveness of Dialer Campaigns

Question: How can I gauge the effectiveness of my dialer campaigns?

Answer: (from Louis Summe, CEO of LiveVox)

The recession has forced credit and collection organizations to review all technology and processes. Dialers are no exception.  Recently, several publicly traded debt buyers announced they were able to increase collections during a down economy by doing just that. 

Tracking system productivity:

Post-campaign analysis of dollars collected is the traditional way of measuring performance.  Better performance can and is being realized through dynamic tuning of dialer campaigns. Right-party connects per agent per hour coupled with talk time indicate that the dialer is running well.  Dollars collected per agent is a measure of personnel quality.  Collection organizations should be shooting for a ratio of 60/20/20 — 60% of an agent’s time on a dialer should be speaking with consumers only, not machines, compared with 20% or so of wrap-up time and 20% or less of actual waiting/ready time.

Answering machine strategies:

Answering machines make up about half of all calls and 70% to 80% of all billable calls. Some agencies might believe agents are talking all day, when in reality, they spend most of their time leaving messages on machines.  Agents need to talk to consumers. Let machines talk to machines. 

Otherwise, this costs an agency twice.  First, agents cost about $0.30 a minute, and automated systems can leave these messages for less than a nickel.  For every 10,000 messages left by agents, an agency has overpaid by at least $2,500. Secondly, this is time agents aren’t speaking to consumers. In the 10,000 message example, you’ve lost more than 160 hours of true agent productivity.

Capacity requirements and cost:

Because consumers are harder to reach on the phone, dialers with fixed telephony can be less effective. LiveVox analyzed the connected call data of collection industry clients and found they need on average 7-10 lines (sometimes less, sometimes much more depending on portfolio or time of day) or they won’t hit talk time of 60% without processing machines.

If your agency is off that mark, calculate the total cost of expansion, including seat licenses, maintenance and telephony infrastructure like T1s/DS3s and compare the total with other solutions.

Telecom fees:

Telecom costs come right out of the bottom line. Review your detailed bills to check if you’re unknowingly paying minimum durations or short duration charges. You should see calls of 0.1 minutes on the itemized call portion of your bill and per call charges of 10% of your variable rate. If your lowest durations is 0.3 or more, or if your carrier has a minimum charge of one cent per call, as many do, your telecom bills are needlessly inflated.

Louis Summe, after a career of developing and managing communication technology, co-founded and is the current CEO of LiveVox, a leading provider of hosted dialing services to the credit and collections industry.