New On-Demand Dialer System Designed to Replace Hardware Needs

LiveVox, an on-demand voice portal firm, today unveiled the latest version of its platform, Voice Portal 3.0, that it says enables call centers to use automated dialer features without investing in the hardware traditionally needed for such programs.

Legacy dialer systems that are used by collection firms run from $400,000 to $600,000 for each group of 100 agents, plus another 20 percent in maintenance costs, according to Louis Summe, CEO and founder of San Francisco-based LiveVox, told insideARM.com.

The LiveVox platform offers predictive dialer capabilities in the software as well as other inbound and outbound capabilities, said Summe. The on-demand model enables customers to pay for the service on a per-minute basis rather than making a big investment in hardware. The platform also enables the user to avoid long distance charges because the technology employs Voice over Internet Protocol, said Summe.

The new technology “is reasonably different” from competing VoIP offerings because the LiveVox offering enables to combine inbound and outbound campaigns on a single platform, says Keith Dawson, senior analyst for the contact center practice of Frost & Sullivan in Palo Alto, Calif. “It marks a move to more widespread adoption of inbound and outbound services and gives site reps and managers a lot of fluidity.”

LiveVox 3.0 makes it much easier for call centers to use a dispersed workforce, Dawson adds. While it is possible to use agents spread over several different sites (including home offices) with a predictive dialer, it’s much more cumbersome, Dawson explains.

Another feature allows the agent to be on the line while a call is connected, eliminating call hold times and pregnant pauses, which the company says will reduce caller abandon rates.

Summe says companies are already using the technology, and expects more to add it rather than continue to pay the annual maintenance costs for the predictive dialers.

However, Dawson expects most companies that add to technology to do so when their dialing needs grow beyond the capacity of their legacy systems. In those instances, Dawson expects firms to use the LiveVox technology in order to scale up, not to supplant the legacy dialers.