Algorithm Adjustment
At the start of a campaign
At the start of a campaign, the dialing algorithms will be acquiring information on which to begin their calculations. Within several minutes only, the impact of this will normally be seen, as the algorithms kick into life, and start to reduce wait times between calls.
We have considered carefully the merits of allowing users to specify a wide range of statistics at the start of the campaign, to allow the algorithms to kick in immediately, but the benefits of doing so are insufficient to compensate for the attention to detail required on the part of supervisors/ administrators running campaigns and the opportunity for error that this would create.
There are however some parameters that may be preset as listed below:
1) Abandon Target (AT)
The Abandon Target (AT) parameter in the Overdial Tuning [OT] message allows supervisors, if they wish, to set the maximum abandon rate to be used for the campaign. The target abandon rate must be within the limits allowed by the legislation of the country being dialed. See Dialing Rules for details.
2) Estimated Talk (ET)
The Estimate Talk (ET) parameter in the Overdial Tuning [OT] message allows supervisors, if they wish, to make an estimate of the average talk time, for 'right party' calls. This time is then used by Softdial CallGem™'s algorithms, from the first minute of the shift.
'Right party' calls are essentially all connected calls other than short talks e.g. when either the called party has no interest in a dialogue, or an arrangement is made to call back at a later date. The average time for 'right party' calls may range from 1 to 20 minutes, and has a default value of 5 minutes.
If the average value of right party calls is less than 5 minutes, then if supervisors choose not to overwrite the default value, the algorithms may be slightly slower than otherwise at getting up to speed.
If the average value of 'right party' calls is expected to be a lot greater than 5 minutes, as is likely for example in market research campaigns, the default value should be replaced by this average value, otherwise there is a risk of unwanted abandoned calls.
Some readers may wonder why we have chosen to provide an initial talk time setting but not provide initial settings for call outcome distributions (live calls, no answers etc.) at the start of a campaign, particularly given our comments about the inefficacy of algorithms which base themselves principally on talk times. The reason for this is that, properly used, talk times play a key part in overdial algorithms however whereas the call outcome distribution at the start of a campaign can usually be predicted with sufficient accuracy by the dialing algorithms in several minutes, talk time distributions may take many minutes to analyse.
3) Abandon Delay (DE)
The Abandon Delay (DE) parameter in the Overdial Tuning [OT] message allows supervisors, if they wish, to make set the delay before a call is abandoned. The abandon delay value must be within the limits allowed by the legislation of the country being dialed. See the Dialing Rules page for details.
4) Ring Timeout (RI)
The Ring Timeout (RI) parameter in the Overdial Tuning [OT] message allows supervisors, if they wish, to make set the delay before a ringing call is dropped and classified as a No Answer. The Ring Timeout (RI) value must be greater than the minimum ring time allowed by the legislation of the country being dialed. See Dialing Rules page for details.
Although there are no published guidelines on maximum ring time, Sytel has found that in general, ring times above 22 seconds do nothing to improve contact ratios and will negatively impact campaign efficiency. The setting in Softdial Campaign Manager™ client is therefore limited to 22 secs. Users with particular business reasons for going above this level can implement a special configuration to enable this. See Softdial CallGem™ Registry Settings, MaxRNATime.
During a campaign
Softdial CallGem™ will perform best when data in calling lists is sorted. However, even if calling lists are unsorted, Softdial CallGem™ will still give very satisfactory performance under most conditions. By this we mean keeping wait times as low as possible by maintaining its dialing rate, and yet not producing lots of unwanted abandoned calls.
Those integrators who have studied Oceanic® (Sytel's outbound planing tool) will have noticed that the predictive algorithms used there produce an abandoned call performance which homes in very quickly on the set target. This is due to the quality of the algorithms we have engineered, but also reflects the fact, that unlike real life, the distribution characteristics of the data that is being used to predict with, are all known. In real life, all we know is the distribution characteristics of the numbers that have been called, not those of the numbers we are about to call. (For those with access to the Oceanic® help site, refer to the Uncertainty topic in the for more information).
To ensure that predictive capability is optimum, users need to make calling lists as uniform as possible. One way of doing this is by sorting lists before presenting them to Softdial CallGem™. Depending on how lists are compiled this may not always be necessary. For example, a cold calling list based on a specific postal district.
If a calling list is made up of batches of numbers in sequence where the call outcome expectations change markedly from one batch to the next, Softdial CallGem™ will tend to either underdial or overdial, and user action may be required to prevent this.
Underdialing
This will occur when a batch with a high percentage of live calls is followed by a batch, or group of numbers, for which the expectation of a live call is substantially lower.
Until Softdial CallGem™ samples enough calls to know that call outcomes have changed, it will be underdialing. This is likely to take several minutes only on most campaigns. During this time wait times between calls will be higher than need be (i.e. if the correct dialing rate were being applied), and abandoned call performance will tend to undershoot the set target. The extent of such effects on the vast majority of campaigns will be temporary therefore no action needs to be taken.
Overdialing
This will occur when a batch with a low percentage of live calls is followed by a batch, or group of numbers, for which the expectation of a live call is substantially higher.
The impact on campaign results will be the reverse of what happens in the case of underdialing, but with the key difference that unwanted abandoned calls will almost certainly occur. As soon as Softdial CallGem™ detects this it will apply mild smoothing to compensate. What it doesn't do is to make a drastic cut in the dialing rate. The reason for this is that unlike most other dialers, Softdial CallGem™ is continually calculating and recalculating the precise dialing rate required, given that the predictive data it is using, for calls just made, reflect the kind of calls that are about to be made on the campaign.
Provided that overdialing situations on campaigns are limited in number, then the mild smoothing Softdial CallGem™ employs will usually be sufficient to bring abandoned calls into line with the target. When this is not the case, then the only way to keep abandoned call performance under control is
- for Softdial CallGem™ to apply stronger smoothing, or
- for the user to tell Softdial CallGem™ what is happening, using the Reset Vectors [RV] message
The best solution is the second of these two options and it is described below.
Reset of algorithms during a campaign
The Reset Vectors [RV] message allows end-users to intervene in a campaign, advise of a change of batch, and avoid excessive abandoned calls. This message will be attractive to the more experienced integrators and their users.
For those users not interested in doing this fine-tuning, Softdial CallGem™ has been designed to cope with any kind of data in calling lists, and will take any remedial action required to keep abandoned calls under control.
As part of its own support programs, Sytel discusses these issues in more depth with each Softdial business partner.