Sunderland call centre uses Outbound Dialler to reduce Agent Idle Time

A Sunderland call centre has implemented a Noetica Script Aware Predictive Dialler which has reduced agent idle time.

“The reduction in agent idle time and increased number of calls made, has resulted in at least a 20% increase in productivity and an approximate saving of 450k per year, delivering return on investment of the Noetica Script Aware Predictive Dialler in under two months,” said IT Director at 2Touch, Neil Rushton.

In the call centre, agents sitting idle not taking or receiving calls costs money. When you need to complete an average of 250,000 outbound calls per week, using a team of 250 agents across 136 seats, the performance of the predictive dialler becomes fundamental to agent productivity and meeting call targets for your clients.

With a predictive dialling system that had an inclination to crash and failure to effectively integrate with the call centre’s other systems, the Acxiom company, 2Touch – a leading provider of customer management services including contact centre, fulfilment & response handling and data management services – required a robust and reliable new system that would reduce agent idle time whilst ensuring silent calls were kept to an absolute minimum. A typical outbound campaign managed by would involve approaching existing customers, with a view to up-selling, cross-selling, or targeted direct marketing such as energy-saving offers from electricity suppliers. Using the previous dialler these calls were often under threat by the unreliability of the dialling system.

“Compatibility was a huge issue,” explains IT Director, Neil Rushton. “Our old dialler was unreliable and integration with other systems and software was limited. It had a tendency to go down and of course without a dialler the running outbound campaigns were seriously affected.”  2Touch had also found that agent idle times were averaging at an alarming 50 seconds and sometimes reaching in excess of a minute, restricted by the dialler not presenting agents who had been idle for a predetermined period of time during inbound operations with an outbound call to make.

This lull in agent productivity meant that their service quality was threatened as they grew. Rushton explains, “A replacement was needed to improve reliability, deliver full integration across the contact centre, seamlessly blend inbound and outbound calls and increase overall agent efficiency.”  At its call centre in Sunderland, the company was already receiving the benefits from Noetica’s customer interaction management software Synthesys. Rushton explains, “Our experience using Noetica Synthesys to manage our contact centre operations, made Noetica’s Script-Aware predictive dialler the first choice when we started to evaluate diallers to replace our existing system.” “Synthesys is fast, flexible and easy-to-use and we expected the same qualities from Noetica’s predictive dialler,” says Rushton. “We needed to surpass our previous dialler with a solution that would handle the multi-channel environment and give us much more functionality, such as different dialling modes. We recognised that the Noetica Script-Aware predictive dialler could meet the existing and future requirements in our contact centre.”  Noetica’s patented Script-Aware predictive dialler is designed to reduce agent idle times and also the much publicised and problematic silent calls caused by the over-dialling of predictive diallers on outbound campaigns. Silent calls are the result of agents being presented with more calls than there are agents to take them, meaning recipients get silence once the call is answered.

Managing Director of Noetica, Danny Singer explains, “Whilst many diallers still make average guesses on when an agent is finished with a call before presenting them with a new one to make, Noetica’s Script-Aware predictive dialler analyses agent movement through the call script and only considers dialling when an appropriate point is reached.” As a result of this, the number of silent calls is reduced without affecting the performance of the dialler and there is significantly less idle time between each call for the agent. The contact centre agents were already fully familiar with Noetica Synthesys, so the training requirement was minimal, although Noetica were always available to provide support and advice during implementation. “The installation was smooth and almost seamless in transition, as the dialler works as an integrated module of Synthesys. It was a virtually perfect integration and was handling multiple campaigns very quickly,” says Rushton. “We have experienced noticeable productivity increases across many aspects of the contact centre since implementing the new dialler,” says Rushton. “On an average week, the dialler now attempts in excess 300,000 calls. We always fully comply to DMA regulations, but we have also reduced silent calls partly through the dialler’s technology that communicates the script position of an agent to the dialler’s module in Synthesys.” Crucially, the reliability of Noetica’s Script-Aware predictive dialler is a complete turnaround from the weaknesses of their previous dialler.

“The extra functionality has enabled us to become more flexible in the outbound campaigns, so we can now execute different dialling modes such as preview, which enables an agent to view customer information including previous contact before making the call. This enables us to react to short-notice client requests in a far more measured and controlled manner. Call blending also works with fluctuations on the inbound campaigns and presents idle agents with outbound calls, increasing agent productivity,” says Rushton. “The average agent idle time has been significantly reduced to an average of five seconds from the previous average of 50 seconds, due to call blending and the intelligent technology of Noetica’s dialler that determines when an agent is presented with a call.”

2Touch has also saved on maintenance costs because the system manages itself, delivering the 100% uptime needed to achieve maximum contact centre productivity. Rushton adds, “Noetica provides a high level of customer service and support when necessary to provide a personal and fast response.”

“The reduction in agent idle time and increased number of calls made, has resulted in at least a 20% increase in productivity and an approximate saving of 450k per year, delivering a return on investment of the Noetica Script Aware Predictive Dialler in under two months,” concludes Rushton.

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