To put it simply, a dialer is a piece of code that dials a number automatically.
The goal of the dialer can differ with requirements. As an example, consider that Jane wants to call all her friends to invite them for dinner. She will do this in her own leisure and will call all the numbers sequentially, repeating them until she has called them all. This is what 3CLogic calls a Power Dialer.
Now consider that she has 10000 guests to call. She will definitely need to hire some help, let’s call him George, to call on her behalf and let him make the calls. Since she is paying George per hour, she will like to make sure that her hire reaches the maximum number of guests possible in an hour(That’s being Scrooge). If I assume that some of these 10000 guests must have their phones sending calls directly to automated answering machines, Jane will be paying George to identify her guests on answering machines. What if most of her guests do not pick up, sending George directly to their answering machines? This would really hit Jane where it hurts; her wallet. All of these calls being sent to answering machines will cause Jane to be doubly poor because she is paying George for all the time he spends. One of the obvious goals for the dialer is to identify if the number is on an answering machine using standard heuristics called Answering Machine Detection. When the dialer detects answering machines before handing off the call to George, he can skip that call and move on to the next guest. 3CLogic calls this type of dialer, the Rapid Dialer.
Now let’s add in the fact that Jane only has one day to complete the calls. By golly, she will have to hire Sally to work with George. Now Jane has hired two representatives and still is pressed on time issues. This makes the dialer a bit more interesting, because now the dialer applies artificial intelligence to determine when her hire is going to put the receiver down so it can start dialing a little earlier than that.
During your own personal phone calls you may have noticed:
• There is some time consumed in dialing
• There is some initial silence, while your call is being connected
• There is some ringing before the caller picks up the call
If the dialer saves time for Sally and George, they are likely to make more calls per hour and will be more likely to complete the calls in a day. This is what we at 3CLogic call, the Predictive Dialer.
Now poses the real question: How is a server based central dialer different from a distributed 3CLogic dialer? To start with, it saves Jane the cost of the central server which amounts up to thousands of dollars. The 3CLogic dialer also uses free computation cycles that Sally and George have on their laptops. This saves her greenbacks on power requirements. The 3CLogic dialer uses heuristics and algorithms which outdo even the best central dialers available in the market today. This all helps Jane save a few hours, and a few bucks- on commissions.
To give you an overview of why the 3CLogic dialer works better than a central dialer, let me expand the number of hires to a bigger value, say 64 agents are hired and the calls to be made are racking up to a few million. Now imagine how many quad core central servers will need to compete to make this raw power available. Did you say 16? Well, you have just made a point why distributing the calls on the 3CLogic dialer makes the most sense.
If this does not satisfy your ‘technical urges’, let me make another point. Every call that is made, requires a little RAM, a little of CPU cycles and a little of bandwidth (Is this technical?). Well, yes, if you know that there is limit to the amount of RAM you can have on a single server and the cost of high end CPU. To make matters worse, suppose your hires are distributed across the world, you will be paying double for the bandwidth requirements. Now who says that saving your bandwidth is futile? Not Jane Of course!!