A telephone auto dialer, or automatic call unit, is an electronic instrument that automatically dials phone numbers in order to communicate between any two points in the network that includes phones, mobile phones, and pagers. When the call has been established, the telephone auto dialer will make an announcement or transmit a digital text message to the party who was called. In the U.S., calls received from telephone auto dialers are sometimes called “robocalls.” The machines are sometimes called predictive phone dialers.
Telemarketing and other companies use predictive phone dialers in their outbound call center. The dialer listens for a human voice, a busy signal, or a fax pick-up. If a human is reached, the telephone auto dialer transfers the call to a live customer agent then repeats the process over and over. When a telephone auto dialer encounters a busy signal, fax machine, or voice mail, it can take different actions (like leaving a voice mail message) if it has been programmed to do so.
The reason businesses use telephone auto dialers is to increase the efficiency of call center agents. If a machine is checking numbers for human contact, then passing only those calls to live agents, that means that the agents don’t spend a lot of time dialing numbers and finding busy signals, voice mail, or fax pick-ups. Such machines are often used for cold calling leads.
Telephone auto dialers can be programmed to try calls that reached busy signals again in a few minutes. They can also be programmed to leave a call back number or a voice mail message when they encounter voice mailboxes or answering machines. Telephone auto dialers have to be programmed to comply with the state and federal “do not call” lists and time zones. They can be used to gauge the average length of outbound calls. When the predictive phone dialer “knows” how many live representatives are available, the number of representatives answering live calls goes way up.
Telephone auto dialer – VoIP
One of the newer variations on the predictive phone dialer is their use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. These systems are known to transfer calls to agents more quickly than with traditional telephone auto dialers so that fewer potential customers have time to hang up before the agent comes on the line. Hosted predictive phone dialers do not involve any equipment or phone line purchase at all: they can be made to connect over an internet broadband connection. Some of these systems will let you try them out before buying the service to compare with other predictive dialers.
If you have a business that could use a predictive phone dialer, you’ll find that the prices for the systems vary widely. Request quotes for systems that address your business’s current needs, and find out about adding services later if you should need to. Some companies have set-ups where you buy a “bundle” of services that costs less than buying the services separately. This may or may not be a good deal, depending on your needs. Often, there is some degree of flexibility in which services you choose to bundle together.
The key to a telephone auto dialer’s usefulness is its ability to “hear” answering machines or live humans. Autodialers have to analyze incoming audio signals to correctly (mostly) predict whether it has encountered a machine or a person. No system at this time is 100% accurate in predicting whether it has connected with an answering machine or a person.
Turn a computer into a telephone auto dialer
It is possible to turn a regular desktop or laptop computer into a telephone auto dialer using a modem or a telephony board. Software packages set up telephone auto dialer functions over existing telephone lines. There exist very inexpensive internet based telephone auto dialers that don’t require a modem or telephone line, but rather use VoIP technology to make calls. Telephony boards have the advantage over modems that they can detect touch tones and transfer calls directly.
Touch tones, call progress detection, detection of answering machines and voice mail, call transfer, and other features now are standard with many modem-based telephone auto dialer systems. If your business only needs a simple telephone auto dialer and only a few phone lines per computer, telephony boards are probably the best bet. Additionally, with single systems that must initiate large numbers of calls at the same time, telephony boards can perform most of the telephone functions, such as playing “hold” music, detecting answering machines, and determining call status, without help from the PC.
A “smart” telephone auto dialer can personalize messages, and it can collect speech feedback and touch tones. A speech engine is a part of the system, and is used to convert text to speech and recognize speech over a phone line. Custom messages are made with the use of a message template that contains variables that the phone system user can replace, such as the ac tual time a call is placed. There are also semi-automatic telephone auto dialers in which the functions (playing a message, recording, dialing) are all initiated by a human operator with one keystroke.
Large scale auto dialers
A large scale telephone auto dialer has to have two main capabilities: it has to be able to make thousands of simultaneous phone calls, and it has to provide a so-called application programming interface for systems integration. Most large scale telephone auto dialers use computer networking technology. Voice boards can only be scaled up so far, and computer networking makes more sense for large volume calling.
There are even telephone auto dialers that consist of independent dialers that are linked via internet and controlled by phone call dispatching software. These systems can be scaled up with virtually no limit. Distributed dialers like these can be remotely accessed, and with sp ecialized programming, companies have been able to handle 2000 calls at the same time using one server and one 100 mbit internet connection.
None of this matters if a business misuses its telephone auto dialer equipment and runs afoul of the law. In 1991 the Telephone Consumer Protection Act was signed into law to put some restrictions on telephone auto dialer systems and to amend the Communications Act of 1934. The law puts restrictions on the use of telephone auto dialers, “robocalls,” and the use of faxes to send unsolicited advertising (so-called “junk faxes”). There are also technical requirements for telephone auto dialers that require contact and identification information of the business using the device.
These general restrictions apply in the U.S.:
- Solicitors are not allowed to call residences before 8 in the morning or after 9 at night (local time).
- Solicitors must maintain and honor their Do Not Call list for 10 years.
- They have to provide upon request, their name, the name of the entity doing the calling, and a phone number or address at which the entity may be contacted.
- Artificial voices or recordings cannot be used to solicit residences.
- Calls cannot be made with recordings or artificial voices to mobile phones (or any service where the recipient is charged for receiving a call).
- Unsolicited faxes are forbidden.
- In cases of violation of this law, individuals can collect damages from a solicitor for $500 to $1,500 per violation or recover any actual monetary loss, whichever amount is higher.
The main problem with this law was that it did not allow consumers to pre-emptively stop all unsolicited calls because he or she had to ask each telemarketer to be put on its own Do Not Call list. But in 2003, the Do-Not-Call Implementation Act established a national Do Not Call Registry that remedied this.
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