Pros and Cons of a Progressive Dialer

Imagine showing up to a restaurant in time for your reservation, only to be left waiting because your friends haven’t arrived. You call them, but after 30 seconds of ringing, you’re sent to voicemail. You leave a message and try another call, only to face the same issue. Five minutes later, you’ve spent all your time waiting on ring, reaching no one, and growing increasingly worried that you’ll lose your reservation. What a waste.

For call center agents, this scenario is a daily reality. Most leads they call either hang up or never pick up, leaving agents stuck in a repetitive loop of listening to ringing phones, reaching voicemails, and leaving messages. This routine is not only frustrating but a misuse of their skillset: Sales agents are trained to have meaningful conversations – qualifying leads, understanding their needs, and assisting with high-value, sometimes complex, purchase decisions. On a large scale, wasting their time is not only inefficient but costly. Luckily, there is a better way.

What is a progressive dialer?

A progressive dialer is designed to increase the efficiency of high-volume outbound outreach by maximizing the time agents spend having conversations. The dialer places calls on behalf of available agents behind the scenes and uses an advanced answering machine detection algorithm to categorize calls as answered or unanswered by a human. Unanswered calls are automatically handled on behalf of agents, and answered calls are connected to them immediately. Since most calls are unanswered, the dialer can afford to place multiple calls in parallel on behalf of each agent, multiplying the reach of a power dialer or preview dialer with the same number of agents. 

What are the benefits of progressive dialer? 

More Conversations 

By bypassing unanswered calls, a progressive dialer campaign can complete many more calls and dedicate more agent time to answered calls, increasing the number of conversations and conversions. At Regal, we've seen brands dial 5x more calls and achieve 3x more live conversations with progressive dialers compared to power dialers. The lower the answer rate, the more dials can be placed per available agent, leading to greater efficiency gains.

Happier Agents

Agents spend less time waiting for customers to pick up and more time having quality conversations that lead to conversions. Less wasted time leads to greater agent satisfaction and success, allowing them to achieve their call volume and conversion goals faster.

What are the risks of progressive dialers? 

Progressive dialer campaigns are ultra efficient. However, the gains come with some investment and risk – these campaigns are subject to compliance regulations and require frequent oversight. Since the dialer can place multiple calls on behalf of each available agent, if multiple contacts pick up at a time, it’s likely that some of them will be abandoned (not connected to an agent). 

The FTC has a call abandonment rule that requires no more than 3% of calls answered by a live person can be abandoned over a rolling 30-day period. If your campaign’s answer rate is too high or not predictably distributed, you can be at risk of passing this threshold.

A Progressive Dialer isn’t right for all use cases and campaigns. See Power Dialer vs. Progressive Dialer vs. Predictive Dialer – Which Auto Dialer is Right for My Team?

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Dial Up Your Conversion

Experience the benefits of Regal’s Progressive Dialer, equipped with advanced answering machine detection, event-based calling, customizable calls-to-agent ratios, live abandon rate monitoring to keep your abandon rate low, and more!

Ready to put the progress in progressive dialer? Request a demo today.

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