vicidial.org

I was advised that ViciDial Predictive dialer works by making an initial call and once the phone is connected to the customer, it will trigger an agent with "READY" status will make another call.

In which there will be 2 CONCURRENT CALLS, which resulted in extra cost for the company in telephone charges. Is this correct?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Kinda wrong...

There is no second call in these terms.

When agents login they are placed in meetme(conference) rooms. Dialer makes calls and bridges live calls to the agents marked as ready in the corresponding meetme room. There is no second call to the client at all, unless you dial it twice

I bet the person who told you that is trying to SELL you another system?

Vicidial DOES have two calls (one to the agent and one to the Prospect). Obviously the prospect call is ultimately on a PSTN and costs money ... but:

vicidial's initial call is to the agent through a SIP phone or through another FREE phone call method.

If your agents are in the same building as the vicidial system, it could be a PBX-type internal call. If your agents are not in the same building as the vicidial system, the call to the agent can be any call-type that Asterisk can handle. This could be SIP or IAX or SPEEX or any other form of call (including, of course, an actual PSTN chargeable call).

The only people who use PSTN chargeable calls to call their agents are technicians who are testing, startup rooms who have NO INTERNET YET, and amateurs who have no idea what they are doing.

The person you talked to sounds as if he either falls into the last category or you misunderstood what he was saying.
_______

It goes like this:

1) Agent logs into his PHONE (telling Vicidial where to reach him, allowing for hot-seat, agents can be ANYWHERE). (two fields!)

2) Agent logs in as his USER (allowing vicidial to know who he is, giving appropriate access to campaigns, etc). (two fields!)

3) Agent chooses his campaign (pick from a dropdown)

4) Agent's phone rings, agent answers and is notified audibly that he is logged in. (The phone is normally a FREE soft phone and the call is normally a FREE SIP call directly from Vicidial to the Agent over the local network or the internet).

5) Agent pushes "Resume" on his screen, and Vicidial begins dialing for that agent and allows that agent to receive calls as part of the group of agents on that campaign.

During the entire scenario, the manager has had no involvement other than the setup which may have occurred months ago. Vicidial is fully automated and requires no babysitting when set up properly.