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Who needs an AutoDialer, RoboDialer, PC Dialer, Windows dialer or Predictive Dialer? |
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Any individual, SOHO (“Small Office, Home Office”), small business or large, professional or professional group, broadcast or print media companies, politician or candidate for office, local civic or community group or religious organization that must routinely call 100 or more people each month probably needs an automatic phone dialer, often reffered to as an auto dialer, robo dialer, PC dialer, Windows dialer or predictive dialer! |
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The Facts About Computer Dialing |
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This page is intended to help you. You’ll find basic, straightforward information along with analysis and suggestions that you should use to decide whether or not this emerging technology might benefit you. If you decide you do need an automatic phone dialer this page will help you identify what the minimum requirements for installation, configuration and performance must be. There's no doubt that the best way, the most effective and productive way to insure you communicate with customers, clients, patients, membership or constituents is to call them by phone with an automatic phone dialer. An auto dialer can be used by dental offices, doctors, doctor’s offices, medical groups, lawyers, attorneys, legal offices, chiropractors, beauticians, politicians, political candidates, non profit or religious and civic groups, landscape and lawn cutting services, home heating and air conditioning, heating oil companies, mortgage brokers, insurance agents, real estate agents, car dealerships, video rental, home improvement contractors, painting contractors and many others who all have a need to stay in touch with existing patients, clients, customers, voters or membership. A robo dialer should come with a free appointment book or contact management software and easily integrate with all other contact managers like Microsoft Outlook. Appointment reminder services can be very expensive, especially for small offices and organizations. Confirming appointments with appointment reminder software from your own PC using your data is a significantly more affordable and productive solution. |
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Installation! |
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You should be able to quickly and easily install automatic dialer software, voice board drivers and the voice board by yourself. The automatic phone dialer software, voice board drivers and the installation of the voice board should be “Windows Plug and Play.” Be wary of any vender that requires manual configuration of .INI files or even worse, manual entries in the Windows registry. You should be able to install the auto dialer software and voice board drivers from the same installation CD, plug the voice board into an available PCI expansion slot and have Windows configure the voice board for you completely just like installing a new sound card, fax modem or network card! You shouldn’t have to buy a computer with the robo dialer software installed for you! Be wary of any vendor that “pushes” you into purchasing a PC with the software “pre-installed” for you… This always means installing the software and voice board yourself would be difficult, if not impossible! Ask the vendor, what happens if you have a hard drive crash… Would you be able to re-install and configure by yourself? If they suggest you “ship the PC back” beware! Even shipping a brand new, fully installed and pre-configured PC to you initially is dangerous. Upwards of a third of all PC’s shipped this way will arrive with some damage. Bottom line, you should feel comfortable that you would be able to easily and quickly install the automatic phone dialer software, voice board drivers and voice board yourself, even if you’ve never done this before! |
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Multitasking and Productivity |
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You shouldn’t be forced to dedicate your PC only to autodialing! Any automatic phone dialer or predictive dialing software should run flawlessly on any Windows XP Home or better PC, whether you’re using 1 phone line or 24 phone lines. You should be able to set up calling campaigns and schedules then minimize to your taskbar and use your PC as you normally would. The only limitations should be the PC’s own physical characteristics such as the amount of RAM, CPU clock speed and hard drive capacity. You should always consider installing the maximum amount of RAM in any PC to improve overall performance but this should not be required to run autodialing software. If you’re an individual purchasing autodialer software you should have no difficulty surfing the web, handling email, using accounting software, running a word processor, spreadsheet program, appointment book, contact management software, sending and receiving faxes or what ever else you normally multitask on your PC while your robo dialer is running. It’s always a good idea to save and close software you’re not using to free up CPU capacity, but autodialing software should not require you to “dedicate” your PC so you can’t use it for anything else. Be sure to ask any auto dialer software vendor about this before you purchase. All auto dialer software companies should be able to refer you to a variety of existing customer testimonials so you can obtain realistic productivity models that you can compare to your needs. Be wary of vendors that refer you to web pages or other documents that don’t give you full names and locations of people in testimonials. You should be able to "look these people up" so you can contact them on your own. |
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Getting Started With Your First Campaign |
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Autodialing software, like any other application you’ve used for the first time will have a “learning curve.” A reputable vendor will offer a reasonable amount of support and training included with your purchase price. Better vendors will offer “real time on line” support with “PC Anywhere” (requires high speed cable or DSL Internet connection to the PC that the robo dialer application will be running from). “PC Anywhere” is very inexpensive if you don’t already have it and runs perfectly on Windows XP Home. A vendor shouldn’t force you to upgrade to Windows XP professional to get real time online support (Windows Networking only comes with XP Professional). Be wary of vendors that offer real time Internet support and training using some online web based service that you would have to pay additional recurring monthly charges for.” You should feel confident before you purchase automatic phone dialer software that you can learn how to use it by simply reading the online “Help” that comes with the application. Again, talking to other users first is a good idea… They will be able to tell you what level of PC knowledge they have and how easy or difficult they found the learning process. |
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Integration With Other Software |
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This is possibly the most important factor in deciding what autodialing software to purchase. Any auto dialing software worth purchasing and using shouldn’t “make you jump through hoops” to integrate or interface with existing appointment book, customer, client, patient, membership or constituent data. The autodialing software should come with reasonably easy to use solutions for integration and interfacing. More important… How will you get your call result data? What will it look like? Will it be difficult to read? Can this call data be quickly “merged” with existing word processor documents for direct mail? Can this call data be easily merged with email campaigns? Are a certain number of call data queries and reports pre-designed and shipped with the autodialing application? Can those pre-designed queries and reports be easily customized? Any auto dialing software worth purchasing should be directly integrated with the full Microsoft Office Suite, which includes MS Access, Excel, Outlook and Word. The overwhelming majority of home PC users already own the MS Office suite. Direct integration with MS Office means you can easily interface with non-Microsoft appointment book, contact manager, word processor programs and so forth, but it never works the other way around! This is very important! Ask the question, “How do I record and edit my scripts?” Be wary of any vendor that says “you call into the system by phone” to record your campaign scripts. That method makes it virtually impossible to edit mistakes let alone use an audio editor to “fine tune” your campaign script. Working without .wav file editing software will force you to re-record your scripts over and over again until you get it right! Be vary wary of any vendor that requires you to use the “Windows Sound Recorder” or download “freeware” or “shareware” audio recorder/editing software. Aside from the additional expense, the Windows Sound Recorder, or other “freeware, shareware” tools can’t possibly be integrated with your auto dialing software… You’ll be forced to “jump through hoops” to record and edit your campaign scripts! Your autodialing software must be integrated “directly” with an audio recorder/editor… That means, you write your scripts in one easy to use set of windows and the audio recorder/editor already “knows” what audio file that text is related to. The script text editor and audio recorder/editor should work “hand in glove” to keep track of related scripts and audio files. The “scriptwriting” window should also automatically create “system” folders for everything you do so that you don’t have to remember where you saved everything on the hard drive if you’d rather not know this! You should be able to save and re-use dozens, even hundreds (limited only by the physical capacity of you hard drive) of different campaign scripts with a few “points and clicks!” Any reputable autodialing software vendor will include a powerful audio recorder/editor program that is fully integrated with the script writing windows… You should never be charged anything extra for this! Any autodialer software vendor that doesn’t pass this simple test is really telling you they are “lazy!” You should be immediately suspect of this vendor. |
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Call Lists and “Don’t Call” Lists |
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Overall software integration is import here too! There are other caveats to consider though. Many autodialing applications choose not to be integrated with any specific proprietary database architecture. These autodialing programs instead rely solely on ASCHI “flat files” often with the .txt, .asc or .cvs file extension. The autodialing software itself may also rely entirely on old style text files with the .INI file extension to save all relevant settings for the autodialer. These .INI files are very prone to becoming “corrupt”’ and thereby unusable, which could force you to completely re-install your autodialer software and re-configure it from scratch. The worst problem though is “reports.” On screen and printed reports from these kinds of files can not be changed or customized in any way… You’re “stuck” with them forever! These developers incorrectly adhere to the philosophy that these ASCHI flat files can easily be imported to or from almost any proprietary database. This philosophy was valid 10 or 12 years ago but is no longer relevant! In today’s world all autodialing software must use MS Access and MS Sequel Server to be productive and flexible. Absolutely no other database engines or architecture will suffice in today’s world! MS Access can link to, import and export to any other database engine directly including MS Sequel Server. Developers using the outdated philosophy described above are needlessly forcing end users to “jump through hoops” again by adhering to outdated and cumbersome methods. Basically, they’re lazy! Any reputable vendor will be licensed to ship a free runtime version of MS Access with the autodialing application but would encourage you to purchase a full version of MS Access if you don’t already have it (remember, most PC owners already have the entire MS Office Suite which includes MS Access so you’re likely to already have it anyway). MS Access gives you the power to use simple “point and click” methods to accomplish a wide array of important interfacing, importing and exporting of data to and from anywhere else. MS Access also gives you the power to customize and create on your own queries and reports with a very low “learning curve.” Remember, you need to be able to view on screen and print reports for scripts and configuration information. Why should you be forced to use only the limited screens and reports based on outdated architecture? Be wary of any autodialing software vender that chooses not to “directly” integrate with MS Access and MS Sequel Server This is the most important point… Any reputable autodialing software vender should have “built in” windows that allow you to create call lists from any source with only a few points and clicks. Similarly, any reputable autodialing software vender should have built in windows that easily import any federal or state “don’t call” data that you may be required to use! This is extremely important… Real autodialing software will not require you to “scrub” a call list against don’t call data before you can begin dialing! A real auto dialer will do that work (which can take days, even weeks and involve custom programming) for you “on the fly” while you’re dialing your list! Again, failure to meet this condition shows that the developer is “lazy” and unwilling to build this programming into their system. We sincerely hope this page has been helpfull to you. Please email us any suggestions or comments! |
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