What is a Progressive Dialer

Progressive Dialing covers the “middle ground” between manual dialing, and the more advanced Predictive Dialer solutions.

A Progressive Dialer, just like a Predictive Dialer, is implemented to avoid agents having to manually dial customer phone numbers to make outbound calls. Progressive Dialers are used in any vertical, for customer service, sales, telemarketing, collections and any other environment that requires making outbound calls from a list and does not want to saddle their call center agents with the actual dialing.

A Progressive Dialer will wait for an agent to finish their current call before it dials the next number on the list, and it will only dial one number per agent. That makes it different from a Predictive Dialer that will dial multiple numbers for every agent and use call center data to determine how many outbound calls are executed for each available call center agent.

This means that progressive dialing is a very customer friendly approach: the dialer ensures that an agent is available immediately to handle the interaction as soon as the customer picks up the phone; therefore, abandoned calls are not likely. However, this approach also means that compared to Power and Predictive Dialers, a Progressive Dialer will be less effective in terms of increasing agent productivity. With the typical success rate of consumer outbound calling at 30% or less, the agent typically will work through 3 calls to get one live call to talk to.   This mode is typically used for Business to Business calling where the answer rates are over 80%.  Agent productivity with a progressive dialer is lower, when compared to Predictive and Power Dialers.

NICE CXone Personal Connection supports both progressive and predictive modes.  Our predictive mode combines the customer friendly approach where every caller is immediately greeted by a call center agent when they pick up the phone, while still placing several calls at a time per agent, which solves the issue of reduced agent productivity that is inherent in progressive dialing. Personal Connection uses call success rates and number of agents available to determine the dialing aggressiveness. It then constantly monitors system status to ensure maximum agent productivity, and uses a patented delivery method to ensure every caller is immediately greeted by an agent when they answer their phone.

For more information on Personal Connection and the positive impact on the customer experience, increased agent satisfaction, as well as higher first attempt connect rates please click here.