Contents

Dialer Architecture and Database

Introduction to Interaction Dialer

This section explains what Interaction Dialer is, and the benefits it brings to an organization. You will learn the difference between automatic and predictive dialing, and how connections are analyzed to determine whether a person answered. Modes of outbound calling are discussed, along with Dialer's client/server architecture and integration with CIC. In addition, you will learn about Dialer's Manual Calling feature.

What is Interaction Dialer?

Interaction Dialer—a key component of the multichannel outbound capability of PureConnect—is a set of client/server extensions that add predictive dialing or manual calling along with campaign management features to the Customer Interaction Center (CIC) platform. When Interaction Dialer is installed on a CIC server, that server is called either an Outbound Dialer Server (ODS) for automatic, predictive dialing or a Manual Calling Server (MCS) for manual calling. For more information, see the Automatic Dialing vs. Manual Calling topic.

Interaction Dialer conducts campaigns. During a campaign, calls are placed to contacts based upon information read from a contact list. Campaign is a generic term that describes the process of contacting a list of people according to a prescribed list of rules.

Campaigns can place outbound telephone calls, play .wav files to answering machines, send faxes to fax machines, and route calls answered by a live person to an Interaction Attendant profile or Dialer agent.

Interaction Dialer provides full control over campaign definition and execution. It provides everything a contact center needs to conduct campaigns without the expense of predictive dialer hardware.

Since Interaction Dialer is a CIC application, it uses CIC's architecture, feature set, and event processing engine. Dialing is performed by CIC subsystems. CIC provides PBX, IVR, ACD, and other services for inbound, outbound, and blended interactions.

Campaigns can scale to hundreds of agents at one site or thousands at multiple sites. Remote agents are supported. Campaigns can run simultaneously at multiple sites while being administered centrally.

Scalability

A single Interaction Dialer Outbound Dialing Server (ODS) has a throughput of approximately 180,000 calls per hour. Optimizations in Dialer to database access, database update, and placing of calls will increase this number and will be an ongoing process in new releases. It is already possible to host large outbound operations on a single Interaction Dialer ODS machine.

Advantages of all-in-one approach

Simpler to administer
Reduces contact center costs
Works with other CIC applications

Scales campaigns to meet any requirement

Hundreds of agents at one site
Thousands across multiple locations
Remote agents are fully supported