A mobile carrier got more productive calls and less agent idle time

The starting point

A carrier has a huge subscriber base and constant outbound campaigns: new plans and services, reminders, surveys. While numbers were dialed by hand, an agent's day looked like this: dial, listen to it ring, hit a busy signal, then an answering machine, dial the next one. Less than half of the workday went to actually talking to people.

What it costs

You pay agents for the whole workday, not just the minutes on a call. With manual dialing, it takes about five attempts to get one completed conversation. Together with the conversation itself, that is about 6.4 minutes, or about 9 conversations an hour. One conversation costs about $0.64.

A campaign of 10,000 conversations costs about $6,400 in agent time, and more than half of that money goes to ringing and waiting.

What we did

Working with CONTACT.WORK, the carrier moved its outbound campaigns to automatic dialing:

• The system dials numbers from the campaign list automatically and ahead of time – based on how many agents are about to be free
• Answering machines and voicemail are screened out before a call reaches an agent
• A call with a live subscriber goes straight to a free agent
• Reports show how many conversations and no-answers there were and what each agent is doing

What changed

• More productive calls: agents talk to subscribers instead of listening to ringing
• Less idle time between conversations
• Managers see in reports how many conversations each hour of work brings and how much of the list has already been called

You can estimate the savings with our model. In predictive mode, an agent spends about 82% of the time talking and handles 16 conversations an hour instead of 9. A conversation gets cheaper, from $0.64 to $0.37, and a 10,000-conversation campaign drops from $6,400 to $3,700. We walk through the math in our article on auto dialer modes.

“Together with CONTACT.WORK, we built an automated call center that increased our productive calls and cut agent idle time.”

Who this approach suits

Teams with large lists and regular outbound campaigns: telecom, banks, insurers, retail, and service companies. Predictive mode needs at least 30 agents on one campaign. For a smaller team, power mode works and still eliminates manual dialing. In the US, sales calls must respect consent rules under the TCPA and the National Do Not Call Registry – the dialer works with your consent and DNC lists.

We do not name the client – our contract says so. Details and a reference contact are available on request.