Sytel Limited, a leading vendor of contact center software, is providing the technical lead for a working party to improve the detection of answering machines (AMD) by automatic (predictive) dialers.
The working party, comprising many outbound telephony industry stakeholders, will look into setting standards for networks to provide consistent signaling, so that automatic detection can be made 100% reliable.
Detection so far has relied upon automatic dialers making an educated guess as to whether the call has been answered by a live person. If the system incorrectly classifies a live person as an answering machine (known as a ‘false positive’), the call is hung up, creating a ‘silent call’ to the consumer. Ofcom has strict rules governing silent calls, and has issued substantial fines in recent years on companies who breach them.
Digital call answering services, rapidly becoming the norm, present an opportunity for improvement. By using the digital network facilities of ISDN and SIP the network can inform the system making the call that it is being forwarded to one of these systems. If this method is adopted throughout the industry, 100% accurate results become possible without the risk of AMD false positives.
The working party has been set up to design and implement standards that allow it to be used, and to work with Ofcom and telecoms providers to promote their use.
“This initiative has been a long time coming,” commented Michael McKinlay, CEO of Sytel. “Sytel is a founder member of the working party, and have campaigned for many years on issues of responsible outbound dialing. We have always advised against the use of standard AMD because it is inherently unreliable, often causing operators to breach Ofcom rules and annoy consumers while they are doing it. Network AMD, if it is implemented properly, will be a win/ win for both operators and consumers. Sytel is fully behind this initiative and is demonstrating our commitment by seconding Garry Pearson, CTO of Sytel, as technical lead to the project.”
Further details of the Network AMD Working Party can be found at http://networkamd.org.uk/
What We Offer
Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) – multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.
Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.
All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.
Flexible Contact Center Software
Softdial Contact Center™ – rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale
-
Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)
CCaaS for subscribers – global service, with no upfront costs
-
Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners
Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software
-
Contact Center Platform – Enterprise
High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid
Blended Media Desktop
Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace
Work Anywhere
Browser-based tools, no software installation required
Customise, Localise, White Label
Design all user interfaces to individual requirements
Integration via APIs
‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps
World Class Development
Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries
Capabilities
Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.
All Media Channels
Voice, chat, email, social, etc – fully integrated and blended
Agent Multi-Tasking
Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel
Dynamic Workforce Management
Optimise agent usage and balance workloads in real-time without human intervention, across all media channels
Predictive Dialing
Best-of-breed performance under compliance
Optimised Inbound Routing
Smart rules and ‘best-available’ decisions to drive great customer service
Agent Scripts
Help agents achieve and maintain excellence
Voice and Screen Recording
See and hear exactly how agents are interacting
Analytics and Data Feeds
Measure and evaluate performance at every level
IVR, Bots & Conversational AI
Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers
Customer Journey Tracking
Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations
Modules
Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance
Softdial One™
Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators
Softdial Scripter™
Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications
Sytel AI Dialer™
Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules
Softdial Pathfinder™
Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection
Softdial Media Server™
Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls
Softdial Reporter™ 5
Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels
Softdial Publisher™
Comprehensive data output to build your own reports
Softdial Recording Monitor™
Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards
Softdial Campaign Manager™
Automation to optimise any outreach strategy
Softdial Repository™
Central storage and configuration of common resources
Sytel Global Compliance™
Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer
Solutions
Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications
By Business Type
Enterprise
A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale
Small/ Medium Business
Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves
By Industry
Customer Service
Connect quickly to well equipped agents
Market Research
Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration
Debt Collection
Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app
Sales & Telemarketing
Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing
Healthcare
Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care