What Is An Autodialer?

The following definition for Autodialer appears on Wikipedia.

• '"An autodialer is an electronic device that can automatically dial telephone numbers to communicate between any two points in the telephone, mobile phone and pager networks. Once the call has been established (through the telephone exchange) the autodialer will announce verbal messages or transmit digital data (like SMS messages) to the called party."'

Autodialing Techniques

Autodialing can take on many forms including connecting calls to agents versus simply playing a recorded message. The following Auto Dialer Types are from Database Systems Corp.:

• Voice Broadcasting delivers a pre-recorded message to live answers and answering machines. If another call status is detected (busy, etc.), the phone systems can reschedule the call for a later time. Simple messages can be delivered or the call recipient can be presented with an IVR script that accepts touch phone responses.

• Preview Dialer allows a phone agents to view the call information prior to the call being placed. The agent can decide not to initiate the call.

• Progressive Dialer passes the call information to the agent at the same time the number is being dialed by the phone dialer. The agent usually has a few seconds to view the call information, but cannot stop the call process. Often referred to as Forced Preview Dialing.

• Predictive Dialer is more sophisticated because the phone dialer automatically calls several numbers and only passes a call to an agent when a person has been contacted. This eliminates busy signals, answering machines, etc.

• Smart Predictive Dialer places calls, plays recorded messages and prompts, and passes the calls to agents only when the called individual requests a contact. "

Autodialing Equipment

Autodialers are usually desktop computers equiped with either special telephony voice boards or off-the-shelf voice modems. Traditionally, voice modems lack many of the features telephony boards offer. For example, call progress detection, call transfer, etc. However, with the ever improvement in today's computer speed, many of the telephony board features are implemented in software, which drastically reduces the cost and improves flexibility. The best example is Voicent BroadcastByPhone Autodialers, which offers all features offered by telephony board based autodialer systems and many more.

Another advantage of using a voice modem based system is that it can turn a laptop computer to an autodialing system. There are good quality USB based voice modems, such as those from Creative Lab and Zoom.

Traditional autodialers are hard to setup and difficult to use, some of them still have the DOS or Windows 3.0 look and feel. Improvements have been made in the user interface. Autodialer from Voicent provides a spreadsheet user interface and graphical Message Designer for ease-of-use.

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See Also

• Predictive dialers from Database Systems Corp. - Plus autodialer and voice broadcasting features.
• The Centcom Predictive Dialer / Virtual Call Center from CCDS
• Autodialer from Database Systems Corp. includes IVR and ACD features
• Autodialers from Voicent Communications
• Predictive Dialers from Voicent Communications
• PBX Features