Dialler Efficiency: The Importance of Network Quality

There are lots of factors that contribute to the success of an outbound campaign, and each call centre will take a slightly different approach. But for those who use an outbound dialler, its efficiency is an important consideration. After all, if a dialler is not working at its optimum, even the most sophisticated campaign will suffer, because less calls will be connected.

There are a number of factors that affect dialler efficiency, such as the quality of your call data, or the number you choose to display to recipients. But in many ways the buck stops at the network level, because if the network you are routing your calls through is unable to handle your call frequency, it simply won’t connect all of the calls. The fact is that many call providers are not designed to handle the kind of call traffic typically generated by diallers, so it’s important to know your provider’s capability with respect to your traffic profile.

Why would dialler traffic be a problem?

This depends on the provider. Many call carriers impose CAPS limits (Call Attempts Per Second) to the call traffic that comes from their customers, and can even cut customers off if they go above these limits. This is usually because these networks are not designed to handle the high volume, short duration calls that are typically produced by diallers.

If your organisation runs outbound calling campaigns, it’s important that your voice network provider has the capacity to handle your traffic, so that your campaign can be as productive as possible.

Which factors determine the capacity of a network?

Whether a call provider can handle large volumes of outbound calls will depend on the quality of the infrastructure, and what it’s specialised for. Each network will have different systems in place to process the call requests that it receives, and these will usually differ based on the kind of call traffic the network is built for. For high volume, short duration (HVSD) traffic (often created by outbound call centres), the network will require extremely effective call processing capabilities, and will need the ability to handle the spikes in traffic that a dialler can produce. In a network built for this environment, high CAPS call servers are a must, together with the ability to handle the call attempts across many customer connections, prior to Session Border Controllers then taking the shaped traffic on to carrier gateways, and ultimately the Public Switched Telephone Network.

What should you do if you think your calls are being blocked due to network limits?

One option to prevent your whole campaign being limited by your carrier, is to spread your traffic out among distinct call providers. But you will still need make sure that you’re always within each providers traffic limit, even during peak hours. It’s worth noting that some carriers impose much more strict limits on call frequency than others. In fact, some carriers will only impose soft limits, working with customers to ensure that their diallers are not hindered. If you only use one carrier and find that they are placing a hard limit on your CAPS, you may need to reconsider your provider to maximise dialler efficiency.

As a provider of voice and data connectivity for call centres and other outbound calling organisations, Nexbridge has been built from the ground up to deal with dialler traffic, whilst encouraging and supporting compliance with marketing regulations. Nexbridge works closely with its customers to agree expected traffic profiles and does not impose hard limits on customers’ traffic.