Predictive dial for market research call center

[Carlos]

I am looking for a predictive dialer for a market research call center (outbound), which is very different from telemarketing. I'm wondering if anyone here has done a project for this type of application with either Vicidial or another dialer. We already run Asterisk and do station-based dialing which of course is very inefficient.

[mflorell]

I had a client that did surveys for market research. They had their own web-based survey system that they used, but it really wasn't very difficult to use that with VICIDIAL. Just using the SCRIPT tab with an IFRAME is all it took.

[Carlos]

In this application we will need to make the dialer integrate with a Windows application that has no web-based front end. I can't tell from what I've read so far if that will be possible at all. There's budget for custom programming, but not sure if this is feasible to do with Vicidial. The integration is actually rather minimal; just use the connected phone number to do a record lookup and then let the in-house app handle it from there.

[Carlos]

Oh, and were you able to achieve zero or near-zero call drops and no annoying delays? This is critical for researchers, they don't want to annoy the people they are calling.

[Trying]

Maybe Limesurvey is a good option for you to use with VICIDIAL.

[Carlos]

The existing application cannot be changed. Anything we do must be an add-on.

[mflorell]

The only way to achieve zero dropped calls on any calling platform is to dial manually or one-call-at-a-time which VICIDIAL can do.

As for integration, does this windows app have any API or documented method for interfacing with it?

[Carlos]

The app doesn't have a published API, but the vendor and user have a close relationship and we can get them to help with the specific functions we need.

As far as the dropped calls, does Vicidial scale down it's calling based on available agents, or will it always dial a certain ratio? It seems like we could dial 200 calls if there are 50 agents free, but maybe only 15 if there are 10 free, then 5 if there are 5 free, etc... The goal is to improve productivity (currently only productive for 22 minutes/hour) even if we don't totally maximize productivity.

[mflorell]

Yes, VICIDIAL does scale the calling according the available agents as well as the contact rate and several other factors including some of which you can define per campaign.