Predictive vs progressive dialer: which should your team use?
If your callers dial numbers by hand, most of their day goes to ringing phones, busy tones and switched-off numbers. An auto dialer removes that work. The two modes you will hear about are predictive and progressive, and they suit different kinds of lists.
How a progressive dialer works
A progressive dialer waits until an agent is free, then dials one number for that agent. If nobody answers it moves to the next. When someone picks up, an agent is already waiting.
Because it dials one number per free agent, every answered call reaches a person. The trade-off is that agents still wait through unanswered rings, though far less than when dialing manually.
How a predictive dialer works
A predictive dialer calls several numbers at once, ahead of agents becoming free, using the recent answer rate and call lengths to decide how many to place. Busy, unanswered and invalid numbers are filtered out, and only answered calls reach agents.
This gives much more talk time per hour. The risk is that if more people answer than there are free agents, some calls get dropped or sit in silence, which annoys the person who picked up.
Side by side
| Progressive | Predictive | |
|---|---|---|
| Numbers dialed per free agent | One | Several |
| Agent talk time | Good | Highest |
| Risk of dropped calls | Very low | Some, depending on pacing |
| Works best with | Smaller teams, warm leads | Larger teams, big fresh lists |
| Customer experience | Always a person on the line | Occasional short delay on pickup |
Which should you use?
Use predictive for large lists of fresh leads, where many will not answer and you have enough agents for the pacing to work. Cold lists from ads or purchased data are the typical case.
Use progressive when every conversation matters: free-trial clients, callbacks the lead requested, renewals and existing clients. Dropping one of those calls costs far more than a few seconds of agent waiting.
Use Click2Call for scheduled follow-ups and high-value leads, where the agent should read the notes before dialing.
A split that works for most teams
- New leads from ads: predictive dialer during peak answering hours.
- Leads who answered and showed interest: progressive dialer or Click2Call.
- Trials, renewals and existing clients: Click2Call with notes on screen.
Teams of three or four callers usually do better on progressive, because predictive pacing needs enough agents for the averages to smooth out.
JugnuCRM includes predictive, progressive and Click2Call in the same screen, with recordings and outcomes saved to each lead. See the predictive dialer page for details.