Improved Speed of Transferring Calls to Agents after connect

[jkidd]

Hi, I'm a huge advocate of the system as I say every time, thanks again!

I really notice that manual dial works better for data penetration and I think this is because when using ratio the half a second delay to connect an agent to the call that's answered puts people off or some hang up quickly.

I'm interested in what people think I could do to reduce this time to the absolute lowest possible? Sometimes I think it's nearly a second because it connects and I'm not using AMD. Test it yourself by calling your phone. Is there a way I can measure it to see if it's improving after I make network changes etc?

Would love ideas and suggestions!

VERSION: 2.8-436a
BUILD: 140425-0906
Asterisk 1.8.23.0-vici
Suse 4.2.42(1)

[bobchaos]

If you're not using AMD, this delay should be very minimal. It cannot be done away with altogether (a flaw shared by all dialers I've ever worked with), but can be minimized by tweaking your campaign settings according to your list quality and campaign parameters. Basically you want to make sure you always have an agent available. As far as networking is concerned, I doubt you could do much on that level to improve the delay. Maybe shave off a few milliseconds of latency? Nothing significant.

Keep in mind, the system has some serious data crunching to do when making the decision to pass a call to an agent. Look up channel data, see who's available, determine who's the most appropriate amongst those, etc... Unless you're hiding a quantum processor and associated coding libraries in your closet, it won't ever be perfect Any improvements to this delay would likely happen at that level, improving the code and making it more efficient.

Another thing to keep in mind, if list penetration is your main KPI or if you have a really tight target, preview dialing will always be the way to go. Predictive dialers are at their best in quantity over quality type scenarios because that half second of silence is a dead giveaway that your agent is in a call center. That's just how things are, can't be helped.

[jkidd]

Thanks for your reply bobchaos. I was hoping for a miracle answer, but I think everyone is in the same boat. Penetration in manual far exceeds that when you are using predictive and I think this is the main reason why. I think the delay without AMD is nearly 1 second, I wish there was a way to make it faster

[mflorell]

This depends a lot on your carrier as well as the speed of your database. Sometimes the Answer signal is late, which means that the whole routing process to an agent can't begin until the Answer signal is received.

[jkidd]

Thanks Matt, I found that the time from answer to connect to an agent is 0.7 seconds. Do you think that's about what you would expect? Do you think doing a cluster and setting up the SQL database on SSD would help much?

[mflorell]

I know it is possible to make the routing go a little faster than that, but only you can decide if a slight improvement in speed is worth the cost of new hardware.

It also helps to keep your database tables at a manageable size, including the vicidial_list and all of the log tables. Our largest clients use the archive logs script with the --daily option to help with that.

[jkidd]

Thanks again Matt. I think anything that reduces this is worth it after seeing the penetration difference we achieve when manually dialling.

I'll take a look at the database management script, we're only working with 50k records at anyone time really

[williamconley]

I also note that you're on CentOS and not using Vicibox. It could well be that your configuration is the reason your time is a bit higher than most clients time to agent-connect.

Also: "Ding" in the agent AND client ear simultaneously sends a clear message to your prospect that there is a telemarketing aspect to the call PLUS "agent-impression" by which I mean, the agent who pushed that dial button will approach the call very differently than the agent who waited for 26 seconds, then heard "bing" and says .... (wait for it) ... "Um ...hello?" instead of "Hi, Mary!" and jumps right into the pitch.

Often perception is broadcast to the prospect FROM the agent, and there's no way to fix that with technology. If the agent does not have his first six words Memorized (with the proper MUSIC IN THE VOICE), there's just no way to resolve that issue with a faster server.

But that same agent, who read the information about the client on the preview screen and then dials ... behaves Quite Differently. Since this is a phone call, your agent only has a few seconds to make that first impression. Which can be "I'm a sales rep! ... in a Call Center! ... Probably 6,000 miles away! ..." or it can be something completely different.

Listen to the calls. Objectively. Or have someone else do it that does NOT know which are auto vs manual. Perhaps it'll help.

[jkidd]

Thanks William, not sure how I missed your reply. I couldn't agree more with how agents treat the start of a call. Thanks very much