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An auto dialer features intelligent calling, dramatically increases ROI from phone calls, and lowers overall costs. Is it any wonder that the auto dialer market will reach $500 million in 2024?
I’m sure you clicked on this article because you wonder if an auto dialer fits you and, if so, what features you should look out for. This blog covers all essential auto dialer features and answers some fundamental questions and doubts about auto dialers in general.
First things first – what is an auto dialer?
What is an auto dialer?
When you have contact lists with tens of thousands of names and only a few days to get through them all, it is not feasible to make one call at a time, see if the call connects, listen to the ring tone if it does until someone answers, check if they wish to speak to you or leave a message if it is an answering machine, and then move on to the next one.
You would never get through the list in time, so you have to compromise and try to maximize the number of people your agents speaks to, even if you end up ‘skipping’ thousands of numbers on the list.
Automated dialers speed up this process tenfold, providing you with several features (which we will discuss later). Some of those features include:
- Dial multiple numbers simultaneously when you have a low answer rate for faster dialing and efficient connection.
- Skip unanswered calls automatically so agents don’t have to wait.
- Automatically leave a message if it connects to an answering machine.
- Provide your agents a smooth system to add notes, tags, or survey questions to contacts after each call.
Agents need not manually dial numbers, nor do they intervene in dialing a number. They simply indicate they are ready for the next call by ending the current one, hence the ‘auto’ dialer.
There is often confusion about auto dialers, since the term ‘auto dialer’ also has a legal defintion, which is not always inline with how the term is used generically in the market.
As of 2024, TCPA regulations define an auto dialer as a system that allows you to make calls without human intervention and the contact’s consent – by generating the numbers automatically. The Supreme Court also recently defined ‘human intervention’ as including choosing and sorting the contact list.
Specifically, an auto dialer is banned if it can:
- Dial numbers sequentially: Start from 000000001 and dial every number till 999999999
- Generate random numbers and dial them: Just create a random number and call
- Automatically sort and dial any list of contacts
However, storing numbers and calling numbers during business hours (after obtaining consent) using automated software to make the calls is legal.
Here at CallHub, our auto dialer is fully compliant with the law. Here’s how:
- As per the Supreme Court, merely using the dialer to make calls does not make it illegal if you choose and sort the contacts to be called, which you should do just before the start of any campaign in CallHub.
- CallHub’s dialers cannot create or generate numbers automatically. All contacts must be added via csv files, individually or by syncing from your database.
It is legal automated dialing software that optimizes your calling campaigns to reduce costs, increase agent productivity, and boost ROI.
How many types of dialers are there?
As we mentioned earlier, auto dialers give you certain features. While some features are universal to all auto dialers (like queueing up calls, skipping unaswered calls, or displaying scripts), ultimately, every dialer requires you to choose the pace of your calling campaign and how many contacts you are willing to ‘skip’ to get through the list.
Specifically:
- Do you need to call every number on a list one after the other? (For example, survey every contact who consented to your call.)
- Do you want to have long conversations with contacts who already know who you are, only dialing the next number after the conversation is done? (for example, asking for donations from a small pool of VIP donors.)
- Do you want your agents to speak to the maximum number of people possible within a time frame? (For example, try to call every registered voter in a district in three days?)
So, depending on goals, you will have to pick a dialer that will maximize the calling campaign for you. There are three main dialers you can consider:
Auto dialer
As a campaign manager, you can decide the speed of your calling campaign based on how many agents you have and set the ‘pace’ of the campaign – fast or slow. The Auto Dialer lets you choose the calling ratio (1:1 to 1:3 for number of dials for every initiation)- number of calls to be placed for each free agent – and dials out as per your preference.
Predictive dialer
If you want your calling campaign to have a dynamic pace – where the calling ratios are adjusted automatically as the calls happen, the Predictive Dialer is one to go for. You can make up to 110 calls per hour using this dialer.
The Predictive Dialer is good for campaign events like Get Out The Vote (GOTV), voting day reminders, mass surveys, etc.
How does a Predictive Dialer work?
An algorithm calculates the ‘dialing ratio’ based on data like answered calls, dropped calls, and the number of active agents. The ratio being the number of calls dialed for every free agent.
Based on the contact rate in your previous iteration (or round of calling) and number of available agents, the algorithm decides the total numbers to be dialed per agent. For instance, if you got a 50% answer rate in the previous round, and you have 10 agents free, the algorithm will dial 20 calls (to ensure all 10 agents are connected).
By tracking the number of free agents at all times, the system chooses whether to dial up to ten numbers simultaneously – so at least one dialed contact is ready to speak to an agent at all times during the calling campaign.
This calculation is dynamic and done per iteration, differentiating the Predictive Dialer from the Auto Dialer where the manager sets the dial ratio before starting the campaign.
If more than one contact answers the phone simultaneously, the dialer lets you choose to hang up or play an answering machine message for one while connecting the other to the agent.
The dialer ensures that some contact has been connected at all times, but the system allows the contact to be ‘waiting’ to speak an agent only for a few seconds.
Power dialer
If you have a ‘warm’ contact list which relatively fewer contacts on it, most of whom will probably answer your call – then your priority is to speak to as many contacts as possible, no matter how long it takes. The power dialer will be your choice here.
The Power dialer calls one contact at a time and allows agents to complete a conversation, fill in any surveys, or add notes each time before dialing the next one. Unlike the auto and predictive dialers, the power dialer will only dial one number when an agent indicates they are free for a call.
You can make an estimated 60-80 calls per hour with a Power Dialer.
A Power dialer is a great tool for fundraising, voter identification, voter persuasion, sales calls, event invitations, and use cases with a high-quality and high-value contact list.
Essential auto dialer features
1. TCPA compliance
The TCPA regulations are intended to protect citizens from spam calls made by robots at random times, from companies or organizations that citizens are not familiar with and when they did not consent to recieve such calls.
Every step of this broad statement is legislated and has rules that your dialer must comply with. Things like – having human intervention when calling mobile phones, or ensuring the numbers are not auto-generated when calling landlines, or only calling during specific times, and respecting ‘Do Not Call’ lists at all times.
TCPA Compliance Checklist: The Do’s, Don’ts, and Tools That Help You With Compliance
2. Branching scripts
Auto dialers will often allow you to upload a script that your agents can refer to. What these scripts miss, however, is the many turns or ‘branches’ that a conversation might take, forcing agents to go back and forth hunting for an appropriate response in a text document.
While this is happening in the background, their loss of confidence is evident to the contact on the line.
CallHub dialers feature branching scripts to solve this problem. Campaign managers fill out different turns the conversation might take and accommodate responses for each. The agent clicks on the responses as they get them and is directed to the saved answer. This way, the conversation remains on track.
Crafting Effective Cold Calling Scripts: Strategies & Tips
3. Choice of dial rates
Dialers should let you choose the ‘pace’ of the calling campaign, ensuring you can complete your calling goals with as low a ‘retry’ rate as possible while equally ensuring that your agents’ time is utilized to the maximum.
CallHub allows you a great deal of flexiblity in this feature by providing you with three different kind of dialers to use, as per your use case.
4. Integrations with popular CRMs
While the auto dialer is a critical part of your calling campaign, ultimately it is just one tool in a vast array of software you will need to keep track of your campaign goals or your work as an organization as a whole.
These tools are very cross-functional. For example, turf cutting tools for canvassing, email automation tools, voter registration tools, fundraising software, voter databases etc. should all be connected to one central point. CallHub is not that. But we integrate seamlessly with popular customer relationship management tools (CRMs) like NGPVan, NationBuilder, Salesforce, etc.
A two-way sync ensures all the existing information on a contact is available to agents when they start calling. Moreover, all updated information on a contact (e.g., notes, survey responses) sync, keeping you updated on the contacts for future touchpoints.
Ensure all your activity and data within CallHub is synced back to your CRM
5. Spam Label Shield
Every calling campaign uses a batch of numbers for their outgoing calls. If enough people mark any particular number as spam, or the same number is used to make too many calls in a time period, that number is marked as ‘spam’ by telecom carriers, diminishing your chances of connecting to a person manifold
The Ultimate Guide to STIR/SHAKEN: What You Need to Know to Avoid Spam Labels
CallHub offers a Spam Label Shield, which addresses these two issues at the same time.
Our system flags any number that has been marked as spam and replaces it automatically in the backend, while also ensuring that each individual number avoids reaching the ‘spam’ threshold for as long as possible.
Spam Shield checks against databases of telephone carriers, FTC, and third-party call-blocking applications to quickly identify flagged numbers.
6. Dynamic caller ID
People are more likely to answer numbers that originate from their local area. And ensuring your outgoing number switches to one that is ‘local’ to the contact being dialed is a major game changer.
You can establish a local presence simply by switching on the ‘dynamic caller ID’. CallHub will show a caller ID from the state OR capital OR the largest city of each individual contact, helping you boost your answer rates.
Using CallHub, you can combine dynamic caller ID with the Spam Label Shield to boost your call answer rates exponentially and speed up the calling campaign.
7. Call dispositions
It is very important to track how your contacts reacted to your call so that you can take active steps to improve your messaging, remove them from your calling list, or perhaps get an idea that your campaign is not going as you thought it would.
Your dailer must give you the ability to label every call with a ‘disposition’ at the end of a call. Ideally, These labels should be synced back to your CRM for future action.
CallHub disposition tags include ‘do not call’, ‘bad number’, ‘no answer’, etc. You can even set up custom disposition tags for your calling campaigns. Dispositions not only indicate how the call went (answered, busy, positive sentiment, etc.) but also indicate future actions to be taken – like retry, or add to DNC.
8. Patch-through calling
Patching a contact’s call through to a representative is a critical use case for political campaigns, advocacies, and nonprofits. You can direct thousands of citizens to elected representatives or decision-makers using the auto dialer feature of patch-through calling.
Agents share information with contacts, convincing them of the importance of talking directly with authority. When a contact agrees, they can patch the call directly to their office, turning citizens into actively participating activists!
A Quick Guide To Patch Through Calling For Advocacy Campaigns
9. List scrubbing
Of course, you are expected to check through your contact lists and remove any numbers you shouldn’t be calling, either due to earlier call dispositions or because of TCPA regulations. No one is perfect, and your dialer needs to back you up.
Serial plaintiffs and ‘lawsuit mill’ litigators often file lawsuits against calling campaigns for calling them using auto dialers. These (usually) frivolous lawsuits can still cost you money and time to get dismissed.
To avoid this, call center tools like CallHub offer litigator scrubbing facilities. We allow you to skip registered and known numbers of litigators and their friends and family, ensuring your security from frivolous charges.
CallHub dialers also keep you legally compliant by allowing you to skip mobile phone numbers (for which you need active consent before calling) and flagging bad dispositions from previous campaigns.
10. Timezone based calling
The TCPA mandates that telemarketing and auto dialer-initiated calls be made only between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. Some states have even stricter rules (e.g., 9 a.m.–9 p.m. are permissible timings). These timings should be followed at the recipient’s end, not the campaign.
A timezone-based calling auto dialer feature thus comes in handy when your contact list spans multiple states (or if your agents operate from a different timezone than your contacts). The feature ensures that a campaign can only make calls during legal hours.
11. Call recording and monitoring
Call recording and monitoring are essential autodialer features for quality assurance. Campaign managers must be able to record and shadow a call when needed.
Monitors can help agents with a conversation without the contact person’s knowledge. This helps, especially when an agent is new to the game or encounters a challenging contact.
12. SHAKEN/STIR registration
To reduce spam and spoof calls, carriers now validate and attest numbers before connecting a call. Depending on the usage, your number may be labeled as ‘caller verified’ or ‘potential spam.’ Carriers block potential spammers using these methods, ensuring only ‘attested’ numbers pass through.
CallHub has a SHAKEN/STIR compliance to ensure your calls get through to your contacts and are not marked as potential spam.
Register for a STIR/SHAKEN attestation on CallHub (including identifiers like your EIN number) and contact details. CallHub will submit this information to the carriers and get your number attested.
You must look out for this essential auto dialer feature before finalizing the tool.
13. Merge tags and personalization
Merge tags are one of the most basic and essential auto dialer features. They let you personalize conversations by adding personal details of the contact (their first name, age, or location, etc.) without manual effort.
Add the merge tags to your script, and the tool will replace the placeholders with actual values when an agent gets on call.
Moreover, you can sync survey and custom tags from your database for further personalization, like segmenting lists or creating custom asks for each person.
14. Inbound “calling
40% of your calls will not be answered, and 15-20% of those people will call you back. An auto dialer that allows inbound calls ensures you don’t miss out on those leads.
CallHub allows inbound calls and even ensures inbound calls are tagged separately so agents can follow the right script (not the one for outbound calling).
Reaching out to someone, speaking to them for a few minutes, and collecting their responses has been the bedrock of collective action and change for nearly a century. It has lasted because it works.
If you want to ensure that these game-changing methods continue into the next century, you need to upgrade your efforts with the right auto dialer, which will take you beyond making phone calls and straight into making real change.
At CallHub, we strive to build features that make your job easier. It’s no wonder we are trusted and used by 3000+ organizations.
Want to try our tool for free? Book a call with our experts here.
