Good Calls,
Bad Calls.
A 2026 calling benchmark built for organizers, phonebankers, advocates and union members, not another business call center report.
Calling benchmarks built for call centers don't tell you anything about your campaign.
Every calling benchmark on the internet is written for sales floors and support desks. None of them say a word about voter contact, canvassing follow-up, donor calls or shop-floor organizing, where the goal, the audience and the legal calling hours all look completely different. This is the first benchmark built entirely from that kind of calling.
- Built from sales and support call center data
- Benchmark against quota-driven cold calling
- Ignore TCPA calling-hour and consent rules
- Say nothing about volunteers, phonebankers or organizers
- Built from 83 million real outbound dials on CallHub
- Benchmarks political, advocacy, nonprofit and union calling
- Every window checked against calling-hour compliance
- Written for organizers, phonebankers, advocates and union members
Four findings, one question. Where does your campaign stand?
Find yourself on the board
Three tiers, three numbers. See exactly where the median operator, the top 25%, and the elite top 10% land, and how far the climb to the top really is.
The hidden connect-rate tax
Connection rate falls as dial volume climbs, but it isn't a law. See how the best large operators beat the curve without dialing less.
There's no best time, only a best time per audience
Most campaigns dial the coldest hours on the board. The window that actually connects flips by vertical, and by country.
The first 3 dials do the real work
The steepest drop happens between the first and second attempt. After that, retries keep paying off, just at a gentler decline.
A first of its kind, at a scale no one has published before.
Quick answers before you read the full report.
What is a good connection rate for phone banking or outbound calling?
It depends on what you compare against. The report sorts operators into three tiers — median, top 25%, and elite — using connection rate data from 83 million dials, so you can see exactly where a good rate starts for your kind of calling program.
Does connection rate change based on how many calls a campaign makes?
Generally yes. Scale and connection rate tend to move in opposite directions. How large that effect is, and which operators manage to beat it, is exactly what the benchmark measures across four dial-volume tiers.
What is the best time to call for political, advocacy, nonprofit, or union outreach?
It depends on the audience. The report maps connection rates by day and hour for each vertical, since the strongest calling window for a union list looks nothing like the strongest window for a political list.
How many times should you call the same contact?
The value of a retry drops off sharply, though not evenly across attempts. The report charts connection rate attempt by attempt so you can see exactly where retries stop paying for themselves.
Who is the Good Calls, Bad Calls benchmark report for?
The report is built for organizers, phonebankers, advocates, and union members running political, advocacy, nonprofit, or workplace organizing calling programs.
See where your calling program actually stands.
Twelve minutes of reading against 83 million dials of context. Compare your own numbers against the benchmark on page one.
Good Calls, Bad Calls: The 2026 Outreach Calling Benchmark
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