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Existing predictive dialing practices state that an "Set Stage" property must be found in the agent's script for a campaign's predictive mode to truly leverage an agent soon-to-be availability. Otherwise, it would perform similarly to Power.

In our case, our agents don't have a need to actually read from a script, but we can setup the Stage property just for the sake of it. I don't think this will do anything. Should I just stick with Power mode?

Existing predictive dialing practices state that an "Set Stage" property must be found in the agent's script for a campaign's predictive mode to truly leverage an agent soon-to-be availability. Otherwise, it would perform similarly to Power.

In our case, our agents don't have a need to actually read from a script, but we can setup the Stage property just for the sake of it. I don't think this will do anything. Should I just stick with Power mode?

Omar,

@Robert Wakefield-Carl is quite correct in saying that there is a script regardless and you are correct in saying that without a Set Stage, Predictive Dialing turns into Power.

There is a bit more to it than this, however, and much is down to misunderstanding the terms.

Firstly, a Script is not what you imply. It's not necessarily a transcript of what to say (like a movie script) however it can be, if you want. In Genesys Cloud, a Script is simply what the agent sees on the screen. This may include information about the contact, places to input data, buttons and links to perform operations, and so on. (And yes, it MAY include what to say!) So as Robert says, there is one even if you don't use it!

Secondly, you need to understand what the modes do (and what they don't), how they do it and so on.

Beginning with Predictive, the system attempts to make an educated guess (prediction) of three things:

1. How long the current call will last (or to be more precise, when it will end).
2. How many victims (sorry, contacts) need to be called in order to get a live person.
3. How long it will take that live person to answer the phone.

This means the system starts placing calls before the agent has actually finished handling their previous one. When working properly, this should mean that at the exact moment an agent becomes available, exactly one victim answers and is connected to the agent. 100% agent utilization with zero abandons.

Of course this doesn't work - only it does! It's all based on calculating averages, and if you know anything about statistics, you will know that you need a large sample size. In this case this means lots of agents and a fairly large call volume. (This isn't for you 5-Agent mom and pop shop!) With a large center, what happens is that every time the system over-predicts one of these values, it under-predicts another, so the errors cancel out. (If that isn't the case, the average will change, so....)

Which brings us to Stages. For predicting when the call will end, the system is going to look at the average call length. This will, however, be wildly inaccurate since call lengths are so variable. Essentially making this prediction at the start of the call isn't much use. For that reason, it doesn't time the overall call, but instead the stages of the call. (If you only have one stage, then it's the same thing.) What you do is to have multiple stages which the agents actions cause the system to move between (the easiest way to do it is to use Script Pages, which leads to a Dr. Seuss-like mantra, "A Stage is a Page and a Page is a Stage", however anything you can associate an action with could work.) This should result in the prediction being made "later" in the call and therefore be more accurate. (Think about predicting your arrival time on a long journey. The later you do this, the better the prediction.) 

This leads us to Power mode. This is the same, but without the time-based guesswork. The system waits for the agent to actually become available before placing calls (although it still places multiple calls.) This results in fewer abandons, but also reduces Agent Utilization. Now, without any Stages to work with, the system cannot do it's time calculations and so has to behave as a Power Dialer.

For the sake of completeness, it's worth noting that even Power Dialing has a risk of an abandon - after all it's having to guess how many calls to place! (This, by the way, is why sorting a contact list is typically a bad idea.) If you want to ensure that you will always have an agent when the contact answers (and thus avoid abandons all together) the  you need Progressive Mode. This, however will result in the lowest Agent Utilization.

As for which you should use - well it depends on what you are trying to achieve, how many agents you have and so on.

I hope that clarifies things for you, feel free to post follow-up questions, if you have any!

------------------------------
Paul Simpson
Views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Original Message:
Sent: 01-10-2024 18:35
From: Omar Torresola
Subject: Is Predictive mode any different than Power if agent doesn't use a script?

Existing predictive dialing practices state that an "Set Stage" property must be found in the agent's script for a campaign's predictive mode to truly leverage an agent soon-to-be availability. Otherwise, it would perform similarly to Power.

In our case, our agents don't have a need to actually read from a script, but we can setup the Stage property just for the sake of it. I don't think this will do anything. Should I just stick with Power mode?

#Outbound

------------------------------
Omar Torresola
Upgrade
------------------------------

Thanks @Robert Wakefield-Carl and @Paul Simpson. Let me clarify some things I didn't express well in my original message:

1. We're not a small shop so we could have the minimum agents required by Predictive mode: at start of campaign (7) and averaging 15 while it runs.
2. Assume we will have a script with page = 1. Therefore, we don't intent agent to trigger any stages.

With 1 and 2 in mind, my question is what should I expect be the delta between Power and Predictive here? Im optimizing to have my penetration list to be 100% since we have  > 100k on the list. So Predictive should be the fastest. Unclear how much fast given what I read here:

"If the agent script does not set a stage during a predictive campaign, the campaign functions like a power campaign: it waits for the agent to complete the current call before placing any calls. " (source)

Finally, I read that the way to trigger a stage transition, is by having the agent work through the pages:

"... every predictive mode script should invoke a set stage action whenever the agent transitions to a new activity within the call." (source)

In conclusion, answer is probably it will still be faster given that Predictive does not wait for agent to be available and is going to also leverage the factors Paul discussed. 

------------------------------
Omar Torresola
Upgrade

Original Message:
Sent: 01-15-2024 09:48
From: Paul Simpson
Subject: Is Predictive mode any different than Power if agent doesn't use a script?

Omar,

@Robert Wakefield-Carl is quite correct in saying that there is a script regardless and you are correct in saying that without a Set Stage, Predictive Dialing turns into Power.

There is a bit more to it than this, however, and much is down to misunderstanding the terms.

Firstly, a Script is not what you imply. It's not necessarily a transcript of what to say (like a movie script) however it can be, if you want. In Genesys Cloud, a Script is simply what the agent sees on the screen. This may include information about the contact, places to input data, buttons and links to perform operations, and so on. (And yes, it MAY include what to say!) So as Robert says, there is one even if you don't use it!

Secondly, you need to understand what the modes do (and what they don't), how they do it and so on.

Beginning with Predictive, the system attempts to make an educated guess (prediction) of three things:

1. How long the current call will last (or to be more precise, when it will end).
2. How many victims (sorry, contacts) need to be called in order to get a live person.
3. How long it will take that live person to answer the phone.

This means the system starts placing calls before the agent has actually finished handling their previous one. When working properly, this should mean that at the exact moment an agent becomes available, exactly one victim answers and is connected to the agent. 100% agent utilization with zero abandons.

Of course this doesn't work - only it does! It's all based on calculating averages, and if you know anything about statistics, you will know that you need a large sample size. In this case this means lots of agents and a fairly large call volume. (This isn't for you 5-Agent mom and pop shop!) With a large center, what happens is that every time the system over-predicts one of these values, it under-predicts another, so the errors cancel out. (If that isn't the case, the average will change, so....)

Which brings us to Stages. For predicting when the call will end, the system is going to look at the average call length. This will, however, be wildly inaccurate since call lengths are so variable. Essentially making this prediction at the start of the call isn't much use. For that reason, it doesn't time the overall call, but instead the stages of the call. (If you only have one stage, then it's the same thing.) What you do is to have multiple stages which the agents actions cause the system to move between (the easiest way to do it is to use Script Pages, which leads to a Dr. Seuss-like mantra, "A Stage is a Page and a Page is a Stage", however anything you can associate an action with could work.) This should result in the prediction being made "later" in the call and therefore be more accurate. (Think about predicting your arrival time on a long journey. The later you do this, the better the prediction.) 

This leads us to Power mode. This is the same, but without the time-based guesswork. The system waits for the agent to actually become available before placing calls (although it still places multiple calls.) This results in fewer abandons, but also reduces Agent Utilization. Now, without any Stages to work with, the system cannot do it's time calculations and so has to behave as a Power Dialer.

For the sake of completeness, it's worth noting that even Power Dialing has a risk of an abandon - after all it's having to guess how many calls to place! (This, by the way, is why sorting a contact list is typically a bad idea.) If you want to ensure that you will always have an agent when the contact answers (and thus avoid abandons all together) the  you need Progressive Mode. This, however will result in the lowest Agent Utilization.

As for which you should use - well it depends on what you are trying to achieve, how many agents you have and so on.

I hope that clarifies things for you, feel free to post follow-up questions, if you have any!

------------------------------
Paul Simpson
Views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Original Message:
Sent: 01-10-2024 18:35
From: Omar Torresola
Subject: Is Predictive mode any different than Power if agent doesn't use a script?

Existing predictive dialing practices state that an "Set Stage" property must be found in the agent's script for a campaign's predictive mode to truly leverage an agent soon-to-be availability. Otherwise, it would perform similarly to Power.

In our case, our agents don't have a need to actually read from a script, but we can setup the Stage property just for the sake of it. I don't think this will do anything. Should I just stick with Power mode?

#Outbound

------------------------------
Omar Torresola
Upgrade
------------------------------

Omar,

With those numbers, I wouldn't advise Predictive mode. Genesys recommends at least 20 agents for Predictive dialing. (See this article.) In fact, you will see from the same page, that with fewer than 10 Agents, even Power dialing isn't recommended and you should consider Progressive.

Note: This is different from the recommendation they used to give for PureConnect's Dialer. That product recommended 8-10 agents minimum for Predictive dialing, so perhaps there was some confusion there?

HTH

Thanks @Robert Wakefield-Carl and @Paul Simpson. Let me clarify some things I didn't express well in my original message:

1. We're not a small shop so we could have the minimum agents required by Predictive mode: at start of campaign (7) and averaging 15 while it runs.
2. Assume we will have a script with page = 1. Therefore, we don't intent agent to trigger any stages.

With 1 and 2 in mind, my question is what should I expect be the delta between Power and Predictive here? Im optimizing to have my penetration list to be 100% since we have  > 100k on the list. So Predictive should be the fastest. Unclear how much fast given what I read here:

"If the agent script does not set a stage during a predictive campaign, the campaign functions like a power campaign: it waits for the agent to complete the current call before placing any calls. " (source)

Finally, I read that the way to trigger a stage transition, is by having the agent work through the pages:

"... every predictive mode script should invoke a set stage action whenever the agent transitions to a new activity within the call." (source)

In conclusion, answer is probably it will still be faster given that Predictive does not wait for agent to be available and is going to also leverage the factors Paul discussed. 

------------------------------
Omar Torresola
Upgrade

Original Message:
Sent: 01-15-2024 09:48
From: Paul Simpson
Subject: Is Predictive mode any different than Power if agent doesn't use a script?

Omar,

@Robert Wakefield-Carl is quite correct in saying that there is a script regardless and you are correct in saying that without a Set Stage, Predictive Dialing turns into Power.

There is a bit more to it than this, however, and much is down to misunderstanding the terms.

Firstly, a Script is not what you imply. It's not necessarily a transcript of what to say (like a movie script) however it can be, if you want. In Genesys Cloud, a Script is simply what the agent sees on the screen. This may include information about the contact, places to input data, buttons and links to perform operations, and so on. (And yes, it MAY include what to say!) So as Robert says, there is one even if you don't use it!

Secondly, you need to understand what the modes do (and what they don't), how they do it and so on.

Beginning with Predictive, the system attempts to make an educated guess (prediction) of three things:

1. How long the current call will last (or to be more precise, when it will end).
2. How many victims (sorry, contacts) need to be called in order to get a live person.
3. How long it will take that live person to answer the phone.

This means the system starts placing calls before the agent has actually finished handling their previous one. When working properly, this should mean that at the exact moment an agent becomes available, exactly one victim answers and is connected to the agent. 100% agent utilization with zero abandons.

Of course this doesn't work - only it does! It's all based on calculating averages, and if you know anything about statistics, you will know that you need a large sample size. In this case this means lots of agents and a fairly large call volume. (This isn't for you 5-Agent mom and pop shop!) With a large center, what happens is that every time the system over-predicts one of these values, it under-predicts another, so the errors cancel out. (If that isn't the case, the average will change, so....)

Which brings us to Stages. For predicting when the call will end, the system is going to look at the average call length. This will, however, be wildly inaccurate since call lengths are so variable. Essentially making this prediction at the start of the call isn't much use. For that reason, it doesn't time the overall call, but instead the stages of the call. (If you only have one stage, then it's the same thing.) What you do is to have multiple stages which the agents actions cause the system to move between (the easiest way to do it is to use Script Pages, which leads to a Dr. Seuss-like mantra, "A Stage is a Page and a Page is a Stage", however anything you can associate an action with could work.) This should result in the prediction being made "later" in the call and therefore be more accurate. (Think about predicting your arrival time on a long journey. The later you do this, the better the prediction.) 

This leads us to Power mode. This is the same, but without the time-based guesswork. The system waits for the agent to actually become available before placing calls (although it still places multiple calls.) This results in fewer abandons, but also reduces Agent Utilization. Now, without any Stages to work with, the system cannot do it's time calculations and so has to behave as a Power Dialer.

For the sake of completeness, it's worth noting that even Power Dialing has a risk of an abandon - after all it's having to guess how many calls to place! (This, by the way, is why sorting a contact list is typically a bad idea.) If you want to ensure that you will always have an agent when the contact answers (and thus avoid abandons all together) the  you need Progressive Mode. This, however will result in the lowest Agent Utilization.

As for which you should use - well it depends on what you are trying to achieve, how many agents you have and so on.

I hope that clarifies things for you, feel free to post follow-up questions, if you have any!

------------------------------
Paul Simpson
Views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Original Message:
Sent: 01-10-2024 18:35
From: Omar Torresola
Subject: Is Predictive mode any different than Power if agent doesn't use a script?

Existing predictive dialing practices state that an "Set Stage" property must be found in the agent's script for a campaign's predictive mode to truly leverage an agent soon-to-be availability. Otherwise, it would perform similarly to Power.

In our case, our agents don't have a need to actually read from a script, but we can setup the Stage property just for the sake of it. I don't think this will do anything. Should I just stick with Power mode?

#Outbound

------------------------------
Omar Torresola
Upgrade
------------------------------