How to Create a Progressive Dialer Campaign

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 on answered calls, and reducing time spent on unanswered calls. Calls are placed on behalf of available agents behind the scenes and categorized as answered/unanswered by a detection algorithm. If a call is classified as answered, it'll automatically get connected to an agent. If a call is classified as unanswered, the system will drop a voicemail and wrap the task, bypassing an agent altogether.

Regal's dialer supports parallel dialing and can place multiple calls at a time on behalf of each available agent.

Which dialer should I use for my campaign?

Consider these 3 factors when picking a dialer for your campaign:

1. Campaign strategy: Progressive dialers are built for high volume campaigns with low answer rates. They are subject to additional FTC regulations and require frequent oversight. To keep abandon rate within legal limits, it's recommended to staff progressive dialer campaigns with 10+ agents at a time. Preview and power dialers are thus better suited for low-medium volume campaigns with flexible staffing.
2. Lead value & complexity: Power and progressive dialers increase efficiency by connecting calls to agents automatically, eliminating the agent step of accepting a call. This approach is well suited for campaigns with low-value or simple leads that agents can speak to with no prep. For high-value leads that require more informed and personalized talk tracks, preview dial gives agents the time to review contact info and conversation history ahead of the call.
3. Agent workflow: While agents are staffed to handle progressive dialer calls, they may be served outbound calls back-to-back in a short timeframe, and are not simultaneously able to handle manual tasks, asynchronous tasks, or other types of calls (e.g. preview calls, inbound calls, callbacks). Preview and power dialers are a better fit for teams where agents are jumping between different types of work (e.g. sending an SMS, scheduling callbacks) all day.

How do I leverage progressive dialer?

Follow the steps below to make the most of progressive dialer!

⚙️ Step 1: Configure your campaign

1. In the Campaigns page, click 'Create New Campaign'

2. Fill in a name and optionally, a description.

3. In the Channel field, select "Phone".

4. Select a FROM number.

5. Input campaign priority. If you have multiple progressive dialer campaigns, the priority will determine which calls are placed first. Higher numbers indicate higher priority. Priority must not exceed 1000.

6. In the Dialing Mode field, select "Progressive Dialer".

7. Select a target queue. You can either select from existing queues or create a new one by clicking the link underneath the dropdown. If creating a new queue, include current_status == "Progressive Dialer Mode" in the target worker expression.

8. Input a calls/agent ratio. This is the number of calls that will be placed in parallel for every eligible agent. An agent is eligible for a progressive dialer campaign call if they are in the target queue for that campaign, are set to the 'Progressive Dialer Mode' status, and are not already handling a call task. The ratio must not exceed 10.

9. Specify the action to take between the contact's greeting and the agent connecting to the call if there is a delay. By default, the dialer will play silence. You can instead play a recording for the contact to minimize the perceived delay of getting connected to the agent and reduce the chance of hang-up. Greeting recordings can be uploaded via the Recordings page in Settings.

10. Input a campaign friendly name and goal.

11. Select instructions for abandoned calls, calls where the customer picks up and no agent is available to connect with them. You can choose to disconnect the call or drop a recording. Abandoned call recordings can be uploaded via the Recordings page in Settings. If you would like to give customers an option to unsubscribe from future calls, note in the recording that they can press 1 to do so.

12. Select voicemail instructions. Voicemails are automatically dropped on calls that the detection algorithm classifies as unanswered, and can also be manually dropped by agents on calls routed to them. You can select from existing voicemail recordings or upload a new one via the Recordings page in Settings.

13. Optionally include a conversion event. When this event is hit for a contact, the contact will be removed from the campaign.

14. Click on the buttons at the bottom of the page to save your campaign as draft or as ready.

Progressive Dialer campaigns can always be edited or deleted directly from the Campaigns page.

🚀 Step 2: Trigger calls with a journey

In your journey, after setting up a trigger and optional conditional nodes or A/B experiments, add a call task node.

Then select the progressive dialer campaign from the dropdown and save.

📊 Step 3: Monitor the Results

Keep track of essential metrics such as call completion rate, abandon rate, and answer rate in the Campaign Reporting Dashboard.

For both abandon rate and answer rate, Regal relies on agent determination of whether a call was answered when possible, and the detection algorithm's determination when not possible.

Note any undesirable or unexpected increases in abandon rate for a given campaign. Lowering the calls/agent ratio for the campaign is a common strategy for decreasing a campaign's abandon rate.

System Dispositions

In the case that a call is not connected to an agent, the system will automatically wrap the call with a disposition so you can track and analyze the outcome. System dispositions are listed below.