Hosted Dialers

[hogosuru]

What are some of the things that you look for in a dialer system, as far as reports and features?

 

[djs]

Start with describing what you want it to do for you.
Do you need reports?
Do you need multi-line dialing?

Are you using it to call current clients or to cold-call a prospect list?

Are you calling businesses or calling residences?

 

[Josh]

A bunch of things:

-Multi-line dialing
-Backend reporting
-Ability to create multiple campaigns
-Ability to broadcast the caller ID I ask it to
-Bonus points if it can record calls
-Log the number of times a lead has been called and when
-Show me the breakdown of the results of calls
-Custom dispositions

That's a start, but what prompts the question? What you're using it for makes a big difference.

 

[hogosuru]

B2B cold calling for major medical. Josh, I run a couple of open source systems in a massive cluster (2208 voice channels) that do everything on your list, but I want to expand on the reporting and features at the agent level. I'm thinking about splitting my cluster, and renting out a dialer, considering I'm not using it at anywhere near capacity. I have 65 in-house telemarketers on the phones at any given time, with another 120 or so remote agents. But the predictive dialing algorithm averages a 2:1 dialing ratio (3:1 in brutal areas, or where my list needs to be refreshed), so I'm using 600 lines out of 2200!! I built the system with a 5:1 dialing ratio in mind for up to 300 agents, but the list updates from InfoUSA turned out to be gold, and with all of this extra capacity my system is incredibly underutilized. If you have an idea of what reports and features you would want for major medical B2B at the agent level (I think the management reports are sufficient, but who knows!) , I will write or re-write the programs and release a custom dialer and management interface for agents on the board. Thanks for your replies!

 

[Josh]

Are you sure that renting out seats isn't a violation of the user license?

What are you basing the 2200 lines on?

Feel free to email me with more info.

 

[hogosuru]

No, these are open source systems based on asterisk, with a lot of the programming done by me. The 2200 lines come from a combination of physical (PRI/T1) and SIP trunks. I have 8 servers with 2x 4 port cards, each port handles 23 channels (24 but one is data). The other 4 servers are all SIP based, and can actually handle many many more channels, but currently only configured with a limited amount due to bandwidth.
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Additionally, I'm contractually tied up by the telco on all the extra T1's. So I'm paying for something I'm not using! I may offer unlimited dialing at $50/month, to recover at least part of those fees. All the additional minutes should be marginal at this level, anyhow. $50/month, unlimited dialing, unlimited list. You can build your own campaigns with a custom campaign builder and use any of the records in one of my databases, free of charge. I paid close to $60k for the best info out there, with unlimited updates. I have the entire USA B2B, but no B2C list. Josh, you offer B2C list right? Perhaps we can make a deal if any agents want to run a B2C campaign! Anyhow, does this sound like something agents here would be interested in?

 

[csmith2]

A bunch of things:

-Multi-line dialing
-Backend reporting
-Ability to create multiple campaigns
-Ability to broadcast the caller ID I ask it to
-Bonus points if it can record calls
-Log the number of times a lead has been called and when
-Show me the breakdown of the results of calls
-Custom dispositions

This at a minimum would be what I would look for