What to Use and When

A couple of decades ago, anybody who had a career in sales knew how hard it was to sit and cold call a long list of prospects all day from their office land phones. But not anymore.

Cold calling potential customers have become much more comfortable and efficient now because of the integration between telecommunications and technology. 

Today, you can reach a lot more people in just a couple of minutes at once and organize your call prospects in a jiffy, without any unnecessary effort and fatigue that resulted from traditional hard sales. Sales operations have streamlined with computers, internet, routers, etc., and the dialing became possible online to manage the lengthy lists of numbers.

The two primary options that are opted when it comes to dialing technologies are power dialers and predictive dialers. But to get the most business from your calling operations, you need to choose the right one from these two to optimize your overall strategies.

In this blog, we will showcase various factors in power dialer vs. predictive dialer to help make a better choice. Hopefully, by the time you finish reading this article, you’ll be able to pick your winner.

But first, let’s take a brief look at what both of these dialers are precise.

Brief on Power Dialer

A power dialer dials a contact number from the numbers list instantaneously after a call session ends, which also makes it be called a rapid dialer. A contact list is fed into the power dialer through which it makes sure that you don’t waste time looking for names and numbers to get on with the next call.

If a number comes busy, gets unattended, or disconnects on its own, the power dialer moves on to the next number in the list. Hence, an agent is connected to the call only when the receiver picks up the call, thus saving the time of each agent. Power dialers connected with your CTI will display the history of the person at the receiving end to the agent.

Brief on Predictive Dialer

A predictive dialer works in a little advanced way than a power dialer. Its dialing system is automated to call several numbers at once while the agent waits for a good connection. This frees up the agents from listening to or going through unanswered calls, disconnected phones, busy lines, etc., and ultimately increase the number of live connections you can reach dramatically.

Predictive dialers work on advanced algorithms, which helps them predict an agent’s availability and average out the swiftness of an agent’s ability to take calls. Once enough data is accumulated from each agent by the predictive dialer system, it anticipates an agent’s availability and adjusts its dialing rate according to the agent.

While both these dialers help sales associates with their productivity and efficiency, they have quite remarkable with minute different aspects. Read on further to know the difference and what type of dialer to use and when for your operations. 

Predictive Dialers Vs. Power Dialers – Major Differences

Basic difference: Power dialers are less complicated.

A predictive dialer calls several numbers instantaneously from a contact list database fed into its system depending upon the agent’s caliber to receive calls. It calculates average estimates of the agent from factors like average talk time, agents available to take calls, etc.

On the contrary, a power dialer works by dialing one number at a time for each agent available sequentially. It doesn’t have work through complicated algorithms but instead gives one phone number to each agent.

Efficiency: The winners are predictive dialers in productivity.

Predictive dialers work in a way to prioritize the agent’s time as it lowers idleness and increases productivity in talk time. These dialers are capable of increasing the productivity of your agents by 80% or even higher because they automatically dial another number even before the agent finished the previous call to save the ringing time. This helps in completing targets faster.

Power dialers, on the other hand, are progressive as well and help utilize 60% or even higher efficiency of an agent’s time. The only thing is that it doesn’t cut down the dialing time the way predictive dialers do, thus lagging in the completion of targets as effectively.

Call Quality: Power dialers are better in customer experience.

With predictive dialers, agents are connected after the call receiver answers the call, which means that a customer might hear an awkward 2-second silence, hold-music, or even a ringing tone until the agent connects. It usually irritates the prospects and hence disconnects even before an agent connects.

Contrarily, in the power dialers, an agent is connected before even the call connects. This means that the ringing would be heard by the agent and not by prospect making it likely to become a conversation the moment a caller receives to answer.

Training: Predictive dialers needs exhaustive training.

Since predictive dialers use complex algorithms and are far more complicated to be understood, the manager/ administrator needs to learn how to tweak the settings to get the best results.

However, power dialers work on a straightforward concept and come with an easy-to-use interface that requires no training to adopt.

Voicemail: Power dialers gives you an option.

Since call centers have long lists to go through, agents are bound to get voice mails often when dialing manually. But in our case of power dialer vs. predictive dialer, collecting voicemails is distinctive from one another.

Predictive dialers often drop the calls that lead to answering machines and move on to the next number, whereas, in power dialers, agents have an option to leave automated voice messages to the answering devices while they are on the other line. This gives the agents a chance to get back the lost prospects.

Power dialer vs. Predictive dialer: What One to Choose & When?

Both dialers have distinct properties, and none can be tagged as either better or worse than the other. But you can choose a dialer based on these criteria:

Choose a predictive dialer if your data quality is low, and the connect ratio is less than 20-30%. With a connecting rate above 50%, pick on a power dialer for high-quality conversation.

If you take more than 1000 calls per day or assign more than 300 calls per agent every day, predictive dialers will be highly efficient. To reach a target of fewer than 1000 calls a day or agents managing a maximum of 100-200 calls each, power dialer is your winner.

If an agent’s efficiency is your priority, then predictive dialers work the best as they deliver 80% or higher productivity of an agent. If customer experience is your priority then choose to pick power dialers blindly.

With a standardized product value, the cost of each call will be lower as well; hence, using predictive dialers will make sense. But with a premium product, power dialers is the right choice to convert prospects into customer faster.

Final Thoughts

Selecting the right automated dialer can help you devise smarter strategies to close a deal from your call center. Depending upon your business requirements, there is no need to stick to manual dialing processes. So, get to make an informed choice this power dialer vs. predictive dialer article and climb to success faster.