Hi guys,

I'm a dialler manager and would cite AMD detect as one of the benifits of using a predictive dialler. Recently I have read reports of Call Centres reducing the use of AMD detect and improving performance. One of the reasons they give for this are that customers get though to agent a lot quicker which helps the converstion.

This was mentioned in the last edition of CCF.

any body have any views or any figures regarding this that they would like to discuss ?

Hi Andy,

I think a lot depends on the quality of your data or the type of numbers you are calling.

For example when calling out for a mobile network provider during the day I find AMD to be a great benefit as there is a high percentage of phones going to voicemail. Without AMD the agents would be spending a significant percentage of their calls on un-productive non-live connects.

Even with the best agents in the world some will hang on these answer phones instead of dispositioning them quickly.

I can see the point raised though about the time delay as the general public are getting a lot wiser and realise straight away when they are being called by a call centre due to this delay. However one point I would make is diallers using AMD today should be connecting to an agent within 2 seconds, so delay is not as bad as it was in the past when there were no regulations and some software diallers would hold customers in an outbound hold queue for several seconds.

At the end of the day though it's down to trialling what works best on your campaign. If you see a percentage increase in sales or collections when using AMD why should anyone be telling you not to use AMD?

Cheers

John

John - "If you see a percentage increase in sales or collections when using AMD"
The suggestion is that some people are seeing improvements when they turn AMD off.

One point that's worth mentioning is that a collections call and a sales call are completely different. Whilst a delay at the beginning of the call may have an impact on a sale, it is less likely to effect a collection.

I know that Ultra communications have some positive data and I think they have/were going to release it. I'll drop them a line and find out.

I've also spoken to another dialler supplier who's seen similar things, but their concern is that a lot of customers come to them specifically because they've heard AMD can help them. If they publicise it's pitfalls then they believe it may affect their sales operations.

As I said in CCF this month AMD does raise some compliance issues. Not only are some diallers taking longer than 2 seconds to deliver/drop the call (test yours - you may be suprised) but false positives can add to your silent calls rate without you realising. In my opinion, and yours may differ, this is another reason to be wary of AMD.

Hi Darryl,

"The suggestion is that some people are seeing improvements when they turn AMD off. "

I'm not saying this is not the case as my previous point states that it is all down to the data or type of campaign you are running.

My main point was that I have experienced positive results using AMD for both sales and collections campaigns.

We use an Avaya PDS and have tested many times to ensure compliance with the two second connect rule. Being whiter than white is what we have to ensure in our sector.

You are right false positives will on occasion happen but Ofcom are of course aware of the use of AMD. In fact they actually changed their original proposal of 1 second to connect to allow for the use of AMD. So at this moment in time I have no concerns over compliance issues from using AMD.

I will just end with my original point all I am saying is just because someone says AMD is better OFF doesn't mean this is correct for you and in just the same manner you may be better not using AMD. The key is to trial on your campaigns and measure the impact.

The key is to trial on your campaigns and measure the impact.

And then post the results here.... ;-)

Ok Darryl I will post my companies campaign results on a public forum!

I dont see what your problem is here?

Andy asked for views on this subject and I have gave him my honest opinion based on my experience. I will say again in my opinion AMD works well on certain campaigns and no I will not be posting any results.

Hi Andy,

Ive been working around call center environment for few years now and i definitely agree with John as it completely depends on the data you have,let it be collections or sales. The main motive of call center business is getting as many conversations as possible everyday so using AMD definitely increases the productivity of the agent filtering the answering machines.

As John suggested the best way to find out it is by looking at the impacts of AMD and accordingly decide the level of utilisation.

Sandeep: The main motive of call center business is getting as many conversations as possible.

No, no, no. Couldn't be further from the mark. Unless you're a very bad call centre, your objective should be to get as many results as possible. This is normally "collections" or "sales" - defiantly not calls.

More conversations does not necessarily equal more sales, and that's the point here with regards to AMD. Because AMD makes it so obvious that it's a dialler call, most customers are turned off from the very beginning. Even the best agent in the would can have trouble pulling the call back on track. In this situation it's better to have less calls but with a higher conversion rate.

I do accept however that your mileage may vary and it's worth testing AMD - or possibly different configurations of AMD - with your data and seeing what brings the best results.

But please...measure it by sales per hour, not connects.

I have recently switch to the Avaya proactive soft dialler, and would like to know if I can switch AMD off. I have been using an Aspect RPM dialler which enabled you to switch AMD off easily, but there seems no obvious way of doing this on the Avaya dialler. Can anyone help?

Hi,

Not used Proactive Contact yet but assuming GUI is similar to PDS 12.

Right click on job and go into "Detection Modes" in Monitor GUI, tick AutoVoice for each phone field. This tells the dialler to pass answer machines to agents. To activate AMD again simply untick.

Cheers

Thanks John, My understading with this was that the AMD still operates when you do this, but then puts the calls through to the agent, so I think you still get the pause.

Hi Kevin,

I have had conversations around this subject in the past with an Avaya Engineer and I believe this is how it works.

ECPA is still performed but answer to connect time is still reduced. This is because the dialler is still analysing to detect live connects and filtering out busy's, invalids e.t.c. but is now passing all connects to agents so does not perform further voice recognition before passing call.

Although you will struggle to find any Avaya documentation around this but you may want to join Avaya's Developer Connect program and log a question there.

Cheers

Hi Andy

We encourage all of our customers to turn off AMD on their outbound campaigns as we strongly believe that it improves conversion rates and long-term customer loyalty.

A successful example of this is Excell Contact Centres who were initially worried about decreasing the volume of successful contacts made, but the results have had a positive effect on performance. The number of connected calls per hour has declined without AMD, but the success of those calls has been proportionately much higher. I might be able to arrange for you to speak to someone there if it would help?

I agree with Darryl it's counter-productive to focus simply on the volume of calls being made and as an industry we need to look at improved customer service along with the eradication of silent calls.