Outbound campaign provisioning and management are pre-integrated components of the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere solution. Managers use the same type of menu-driven tools as when they set up inbound contact handling. Through pre-integration of the preview and predictive dialers, the system can use agent resources more efficiently by allowing a blended call environment to operate at maximum efficiency. It automatically triggers outbound calls when inbound call volumes fall below preset thresholds. You can extend outbound dialing capabilities to remote agents working from satellite offices or even from home. Contact Center Anywhere gives remote agents the same capabilities as local agents, for both inbound and outbound campaigns. With the solution’s menu-driven provisioning interface, you can create and modify outbound campaigns in a matter of minutes, so your call center can adapt quickly to changes in call volumes and campaign demands.

Contact Center Anywhere lets you use a pacing algorithm or a fixed dialing ratio schedule based on time of day. The system automatically calculates call pacing based on agent availability and average call length. These calculations minimize agent idle time by filtering out busy signals, no answers, and answering machines.
Contact Center Anywhere’s network-based architecture supports centralized or geographically dispersed contact centers. Campaign “predictions” are based on a comprehensive sample of data from all the dialing nodes, making them more accurate than dialers that rely on multi-server integration at the user-interface level.

Studies show that agents spend only 20 to 30 minutes of each hour talking to customers in a manual outbound call center. But agents in centers using a predictive dialer spend 45 to 50 minutes each hour talking to live customers, a 100 percent increase in productivity. Outbound campaigns reduce the time and overall cost of reaching customers. Using automated dialing and voice detection tools, the system connects only live, answered calls to an agent. Agents spend time talking to customers, not listening to ringing phones, busy signals, and answering machines. This results in direct savings and increased profits by allowing call centers to connect more calls each day with the same (or a reduced) number of agents.

Contact Center Anywhere’s seamless call blending capabilities allow agents to simultaneously work on both inbound and outbound campaigns, shifting automatically in response to current call center traffic patterns. As a result, agent idle time is decreased, agents stay productive, and instances of abandoned calls are dramatically reduced. Whether you are using preview or predictive dialing, synchronized screen pops follow the connected call to the local or remote agent’s user interface. Then system then presents agents with customer contact information and campaign-specific scripts, allowing them to personalize the call.

New regulations introduced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have presented challenges for the teleservices community. The Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) legislation includes requirements to provide positive and meaningful call identification, reduce “dead air,” minimize abandoned calls, and comply with the National Do Not Call Registry. When properly configured, you can rest assured that your outbound campaigns meet all government requirements.

Contact Center Anywhere’s unique pacing algorithm leverages dynamic systemwide statistical sampling, even across multiple dialing nodes. This minimizes the number of abandoned calls while maximizing agent talk time. The system also provides the option of a fixed agent-to-call dialing ratio to ensure compliance with state laws that have strict guidelines regarding call ratios at various times of day. An internal “do not call” list feature allows agents to quickly add contacts to a “do not call” database, and records the date and agent’s name for future referral.

Predictive dialers forecast how many outbound calls are required to reach a live person, and calculate when the next agent will become available based on statistical patterns. The larger the sample size, the more accurate the patterns and predictions will be. Traditional predictive dialers are limited to analyzing the data from their own section, and can’t aggregate data from multiple sections into a unified sample for use by all dialers. With Contact Center Anywhere, all agents and all calls leverage a common pacing algorithm based on systemwide data, making the statistical pattern more accurate.

U.S. federal legislation requires dialers to automatically slow down to maintain a dropped call rate of no more than three percent. As a result, if a dialer incorrectly predicted how many people to call and more than three percent of calls were dropped because there weren’t enough agents available to talk to everyone who answered the phone, the dialer would have to slow to a crawl until the dropped call rate fell below three percent. Sharing a common pacing algorithm across all nodes empowers Contact Center Anywhere’s outbound dialer to use the largest possible statistical sample to stay below the three percent mandate most of the time, increasing both productivity and revenue production.

Through the Supervision Manager interface in Oracle’s Contact Center Anywhere, supervisors have world-class tools for monitoring and managing campaigns, including real-time access to predictive call statistics and real-time monitoring and coaching capabilities. The system displays dynamically updated reports in graphical format for easy comprehension during campaigns. You can also see preformatted historical reports on overall campaign statistics, and you can use the campaign data stored in the system’s Open Database Connectivity-compliant database to produce custom reports.

The Predictive Summary Report provides at a glance an overview of outbound predictive campaigns, indicating the percentage of calls that were connected to an agent or had an alternative outcome.