Discussion: Relating to Predictive Dialing

[d001]

Hello, I hope you are all doing well.

For the past three months, we decided to use Vicidial for outbound and inbound calls. Initially, I had no knowledge about Vicidial, but I learned the basics through manuals and forums. I am pretty sure I still have much more to learn.

Our infrastructure is set up on a local server, specifically an HP Z620:

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vicidial11:~ #  lscpu
Architecture:             x86_64
  CPU op-mode(s):         32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:          46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:             Little Endian
CPU(s):                   12
  On-line CPU(s) list:    0-11
Vendor ID:                GenuineIntel
  BIOS Vendor ID:         Intel
  Model name:             Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
    BIOS Model name:      Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 @ 2.00GHz
    CPU family:           6
    Model:                45
    Thread(s) per core:   2
    Core(s) per socket:   6
    Socket(s):            1


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vicidial11:~ # free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            31Gi       4.4Gi        23Gi       636Mi       4.5Gi        26Gi


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vicidial11:~ # lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0     2M  0 part
├─sda2   8:2    0    20M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3   8:3    0     4G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda4   8:4    0 461.7G  0 part /
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom


We now want to use predictive dialing.

Here are some campaign details: I have configured a predictive campaign according to the manager manual:

Dial method: ADAPT_TAPERED
Auto Dial Level: 1.00
ADAPT OVERRIDE: Checked
Adapt Intensity Modifier: -2 (Less Intense)
Available Only Tally: Y
Available Only Threshold: NON-PAUSED_AGENTS
Available Only Time: 2100

It works okay; the dial plan is fine, and the logs are normal. However, the predictive calls are coming in very slowly. My agents have been logged in since 09:00 AM, and now it’s 11:00 AM, and they have only taken 34 calls.

In the CLI, I can see the calls being processed quickly: CALLS TODAY: 565. I have reduced the number of passing calls because two days ago, the calls were moving too fast, which is why I set the Adapt Intensity Modifier to -2 (Less Intense). This slowed things down a bit, but not significantly.

My manager believes it’s a server issue, but from what I see in the logs, it doesn’t seem to be.

I have read a lot, and the manual mentions that predictive dialing should be used with a large number of agents. Currently, we only have 3 agents, and I believe this is the root cause of the issue.

I’m posting this in the discussion section because I want to learn more about Vicidial from different perspectives, not just the development side.

Thanks in advance, and regards to all.

[carpenox]

Good day, I would start with the common issues for call connectivity. Are the DID's good? Are the leads good? Have you enabled carrier stats on the real time report? Lets start there and see where we can take it from the responses. You can also contact me thru any method below in my signature to work on the details and we can post the results back here to share with the community.

Chris

[d001]

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your response, I really appreciate it, and I apologize for the delayed reply as I haven't checked the forum.

The leads look fine, they are active, and I have active leads in my campaign. The DID seems fine as well, but I have only one active DID, which is connected to my user group, and the campaign is also linked to the user group. However, my campaign is set only for predictive and manual calls, so the DID is not being used.

Additionally, I enabled the carrier stats in the real-time report https://ibb.co/X2pWP18 and noticed that many of my lead numbers were showing as Busy or Congestion. We tried calling many of them manually, but they were unreachable, and the calls failed. I believe this issue stems from the leads our client provided.

I'll stay in touch with you if this issue occurs with our other leads.

I really appreciate your help.

Have a great day!

Denalda

[carpenox]

Well it could very well be carrier related but this statement makes me believe otherwise:

"However, my campaign is set only for predictive and manual calls, so the DID is not being used."

You say you only have one DID which does stand for Direct Inward Dial however, you also need DID's( Caller ID's) to be displayed to your customers as you are calling predictively or manually, so not having a wide range of DID's to be used for your outbound calling will 100% block most of your traffic if not all.

Chris

[d001]

Do you mean I should have several DIDs? Because I only have one, which is the number I received from the internet provider.

Regards!

[carpenox]

yes you should absolutely have many did's, you want to keep daily calls on each did below 100 calls if possible, buy enough dids to accommodate this, at least if you are in the USA or Canada

Chris

[d001]

I understood, thanks! I'll take care of this.

Actually, we are in Albania. I initially thought it wasn’t necessary because, as far as I know, the number we got from our internet provider can handle at least eight calls at the same time.

However, I'll make the changes and see how it works with multiple DIDs.

Thanks a lot, Chris.

Best regards!

[carpenox]

Yea the idea I mentioned is based for North American calling, you may be right with Albania, I am honestly not sure, I have never dialed to/from that area.

[d001]

I understood, but I'll keep an eye on it because I've studied this a bit and talked with our internet provider. We are now considering the option of separating the channels for each SIP. If this turns out to be the solution, I'll come back to post it. Thanks!

[williamconley]

1) This is not "general discussion". It's a support request. Moving to the support forum!

2) Available Only Tally: Y

This is NOT predictive mode. Available only tally turns off dialing entirely when all agents are busy.

Auto Dial Level: 1.00
Dial method: ADAPT_TAPERED

Um ... 1:1 dialing? Is this because you dropped calls? Or is that your ... wait! You did not provide the settings for Maximum Adapt Dial Level. Or the Drop Percentage limit (nor what your present drop percentage is on the campaign when calls are "slow".

ADAPT OVERRIDE: Checked

How many agents Logged in and READY (or IN CALL, but not paused)?

Adapt Intensity Modifier: -2 (Less Intense)

Actually, I like that, it shows some understanding.

Available Only Threshold: NON-PAUSED_AGENTS

Um: "agents: 0"? But really this makes no difference, since you're in "Available only tally: Y" mode anyway. Even in-call agents are ignored statistically.

Available Only Time: 2100

This setting does not exist.

_______

Let's try this from the beginning: Autodial is "there are four agents, two are READY and two are in calls, autodial level is set to 2, so there are four calls ringing until another agent gets a call or hangs up". Simple math. Two available agents (READY) * 2:1 dialing = 4 calls.

But Predictive is a completely different monkey and takes into account some serious metrics. It's entire goal is to end your day with a Drop Call Percentage at the level you set, and no higher. This ONLY works if the system has enough data to predict the likely length of calls and is allowed to calculate that based on INCALL and READY, both. It is also required that there be enough agents to make up for minor faults (drops, specifically) without the stats being so skewed that 1:1 dialing is immediately required to get your drop percentage back where it belongs.

Thus using predictive mode (adapt method + available only tally N) allows Vicidial's algorithm (any of the Adapt settings) to use all agents in this campaign to calculate the autodial level constantly. This uses a lot of CPU power, but additionally (and most importantly?) will drop the autodial level to "1" instantly any time your drop call percentage exceeds the limit if you do not have enough agents (like: 10 minimum, better with 25 or above).

Alternately, you can set the dial method to Ratio and set the auto-dial level to a number that keeps your agents busy as best you can, but you'll need to adjust that all shift long unless your system has enough data to support Predictive.

We have a feature that we can install in your system that simulates a human watching the real time and Slowly adjusts the autodial level all day long by "0.1" up or down once per minute based on what happened in the last minute (eg: No dropped calls? Excessive wait time?, etc).

______

If you were to post the total agents (In Call and Ready) and everything in the Green section of the Detail screen (perhaps omit some obvious unrelated items, but simpler to just post them all) we could possibly help. Just know that if you have less than 25 agents, it may not be time to use Adapt yet and if you have less than 10, it's definitely not time to use adapt yet. IMHO.

Welcome to the Party!

[d001]

Hello everyone,

First, thanks for moving this issue to support, and I apologize for any confusion.

Second, I’m a bit confused. We’ve added channels to our SIP setup, so now each agent has their own channel, meaning each SIP can handle two concurrent calls (one active and one waiting). We also added another agent, so we now have a total of four agents and one SIP account with four channels.

In previous lists, the call rates were similar to what I explained before, but in this campaign/list, performance has improved. The agents logged into the campaign at 08:00, and it’s now 10:13. They have handled around 210 answered calls and processed approximately 1,248 cases, of which 862 were Busy Auto calls.

2) Available Only Tally: Y

This is NOT predictive mode. Available only tally turns off dialing entirely when all agents are busy.

Lastly, I set Available Only Tally to "Y" because, as you mentioned, when my agents were paused or on calls, the number of busy and dropped calls was very high. I also read about it in the manual, but maybe I misunderstood something—should I leave it set to "N"?

Um ... 1:1 dialing? Is this because you dropped calls? Or is that your ... wait! You did not provide the settings for Maximum Adapt Dial Level. Or the Drop Percentage limit (nor what your present drop percentage is on the campaign when calls are "slow".

The Auto Dial Level theoretically sets how many lines VICIdial should use per active agent. I had a large number of dropped calls, so I set it to 1. However, in my current campaign, I set it to 3, and things are running better. The maximum Adapt Dial Level in this campaign is 3.0, while in previous campaigns, it was set to 1.1.

How many agents Logged in and READY (or IN CALL, but not paused)?

Now, I only have four agents.

.
.
.
Alternately, you can set the dial method to Ratio and set the auto-dial level to a number that keeps your agents busy as best you can, but you'll need to adjust that all shift long unless your system has enough data to support Predictive.

We have a feature that we can install in your system that simulates a human watching the real time and Slowly adjusts the autodial level all day long by "0.1" up or down once per minute based on what happened in the last minute (eg: No dropped calls? Excessive wait time?, etc).

Thanks for the advice! I'm following your recommendations regarding Predictive mode and the autodial settings. I'll keep you updated on how it works out.


Yes, I’m sharing a screenshot of my real-time report in the link below:
https://ibb.co/H7VXh5Y

Thank you for your support!

[carpenox]

great post back!

[dennis]

yes you should absolutely have many did's, you want to keep daily calls on each did below 100 calls if possible, buy enough dids to accommodate this, at least if you are in the USA or Canada

Chris

Good day,

This means that I need a number of DID equal to the agent if I use predictive method? But I used only outgoing campaign, will this apply?

Thank you

[williamconley]

when you use a DID as the CID on an outbound campaign, you must own the DID. So: Yes.

[dennis]

when you use a DID as the CID on an outbound campaign, you must own the DID. So: Yes.

So it depends? If you are not using a CID, it is ok not to have a DID? It will still function as predictive?

[williamconley]

If you are not using a CID, it is ok not to have a DID? It will still function as predictive?

If you attempt to make an outbound call (in the USA) without a Caller ID, you'll likely have a very low connection rate, if any calls even go through. The CallerID field is pretty much required at this point.

It's not technially required to own any DIDs (which is another way to say "Phone Numbers"), but if you do not own them and you use them for outbound calling anyway, you're breaking the law and your carrier will frown on the practice (because the FCC will eventually be a problem for this behavior) and they will Grade your outbound calls very low ... which is another way to say "dramatically reduce your connection percentage". Lower graded calls are blocked by some carriers (especially wireless) and often show up as "Spam!" for other carriers.

As far as "predictive": The word predictive simply means that an algorithm is in place to "guess" how many calls to dial to keep the agents busy. Without the algorithm, you would ordinarily just choose a number of lines to dial for each available agent: This is known as "Autodialing". NEITHER of these is related to whether you have an outbound Caller ID on each call or whether you send the calls as "Private" instead or simply without a callerID (or with a caller ID of "0000000000").

In Vicidial: Dial Method "Ratio" is Autodialing. You then choose the dial ratio in the field below the dial method. If you choose one of the Adapt settings for Dial Method: There are several other fields to set as well (predictive dialing is complex and generally requires more than 10 agents all dialing at the same time on the same campaign sharing leads ... preferably more than 20 agents).

[dennis]

It's not technially required to own any DIDs (which is another way to say "Phone Numbers"), but if you do not own them and you use them for outbound calling anyway, you're breaking the law and your carrier will frown on the practice (because the FCC will eventually be a problem for this behavior) and they will Grade your outbound calls very low ... which is another way to say "dramatically reduce your connection percentage". Lower graded calls are blocked by some carriers (especially wireless) and often show up as "Spam!" for other carriers.

I will look on this. Here in Philippines, I think there is no law regarding that CID. The counter part of your FCC here in the Philippines is the NTC, National Telecommunications Commission. Somehow, I cannot find an article regarding the CID.

Thank you very much for your time

[williamconley]

if you are in an area where there are no laws and noone enforces the "own the DID for any CID you use outbound, then you can certainly use any number or no number for your outbound CID.

NONE of that (as mentioned earlier) is related to whether you can use Predictive(Adapt) or Autodial (ratio) modes. The ability to connect the calls, however, depends on the rules of those carriers.

[dennis]

Thank you very much