Predictive Dialing and Cell Phones – A Way Forward

March, 2023

In the US, predictive dialing (of a sort) has made a comeback for calling cell phones. But will the regulator, the Federal Trade Commission (FCC), go along with this?

As most of our readers will know, Sytel has played a major part over the years in helping to develop sensible legislation for the use of predictive dialers, especially in the US and the UK.

When we first got involved a couple of decades ago(!) calling conditions were kind to dialers, with around 1 in 3 calls resulting in a live call. An over-zealous use of dialers during this time has, unsurprisingly, frightened many consumers away. They just don’t pick up any more and live call rates can be below 1 in 10. And, guess what, this has intensified the use of predictive dialers in many markets, chasing the few who do answer the phone, and leading to high levels of nuisance calls.

Unfortunately, regulation has been too limited in scope and enforcement to prevent outbound markets in many countries shrinking in response to such abuse.

In the US, to stamp out abuse, the FCC decided to be draconian and brought in a blanket ban in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) on using predictive dialers to dial cell phones without the agreement of the consumer. It did so by ruling out the use of dialing technology and replacing it with humans. The idea is that humans click on a single number and it gets dialed.

The only problem with this is that at low levels of live calls it’s pretty darned hard to run a profitable business. So, it’s hardly surprising that the folk who make a business out of running outbound campaigns, have found creative alternatives, such as:

  • agents dialing multiple numbers in an attempt to function as a predictive dialer, where the agent tries to limit abandoned calls
  • agents passing a bunch of numbers to an auto dialer for dialing, where the dialer tries to limit abandoned calls.

In a nutshell, predictive dialing now reigns again for dialing cell phones, as legal interpretations of the TCPA give dialers a new lease of life.

The big question is: will the FCC go along with this, or stick with their original intent which was to limit or stop all nuisance calls to cell phones?

Our own view is that unrestricted use of predictive dialers to dial cell phones in the US probably has a limited life, but there is no need to ban the use of predictive dialers.

We have charted a way ahead that we think could be a good compromise for all interested parties. To find out more, go to https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10224108907813/1

If you have any questions or would like to book in a demo of the Sytel Ai Dialer, just talk to us

What We Offer

Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) - multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.

Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.

All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.

Flexible Contact Center Software

Softdial Contact Center™ - rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale
  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

    CCaaS for subscribers - global service​, with no upfront costs

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

  • Contact Center Platform – Enterprise

    High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid

Blended Media Desktop

Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace

Work Anywhere

Browser-based tools, no software installation required

Customise, Localise, White Label

Design all user interfaces to individual requirements

Integration via APIs

‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps

World Class Development

Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries

Capabilities

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.

All Media Channels

Voice, chat, email, social, etc - fully integrated and blended

Agent Multi-Tasking

Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel

Dynamic Workforce Management

Automated, ‘best available’ decisions to manage agents and balance work load, across all media channels

Predictive Dialing

Best-of-breed performance under compliance

Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and 'best-available' decisions to drive great customer service

Agent Scripts

Help agents achieve and maintain excellence

Voice and Screen Recording

See and hear exactly how agents are interacting

Analytics and Data Feeds

Measure and evaluate performance at every level

IVR, Bots & Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

Customer Journey Tracking

Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations

Modules

Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance

Softdial One™

Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators

Softdial Scripter™

Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications

Sytel AI Dialer™

Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules

Softdial Pathfinder™

Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection

Softdial Media Server™

Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls

Softdial Reporter™ 5

Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels

Softdial Publisher™

Comprehensive data output to build your own reports

Softdial Recording Monitor™

Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards

Softdial Campaign Manager™

Automation to optimise any outreach strategy

Softdial Repository™

Central storage and configuration of common resources

Sytel Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer

Solutions

Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications

By Business Type

Enterprise

A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale

Small/ Medium Business

Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves

By Industry

Customer Service

Connect quickly to well equipped agents

Market Research

Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration

Debt Collection

Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app

Sales & Telemarketing

Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing

Healthcare

Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care