INTEGRATION WITH INTELEC  

The integration of the dialer with your collection software will define and characterize the value of the benefits you will derive from your system. The primary objectives of collection software are to manage your accounts and resources, while the the focus of the dialer is to manage both outbound and inbound calls. These are completely independent objectives that need to be carefully integrated to generate successful results with high levels of automation. The areas we are referring to as requiring integration include the following :

• Your collection system should manage the important collection activities on your accounts. This includes scheduling and sorting specific accounts for the dialer as well as determining the frequency at which those accounts should be called again, if a contact is not made. These processes should be automated with as little manual work required as possible.
  
  
• You will need to tell the dialer what numbers should be called, and in what order. Often, you will have accounts in different time zones, and calling times will have to be carefully managed based on specific rules.
  
  
• Intelec will isolate accounts with phone numbers that should not be called by a dialer (e.g. disputes). These accounts can be worked using other options such as manual dialing.
  
  
• Traditionally, collection accounts are scheduled for dialer activity after being worked by the "house" using a letter series. While this is the most common use of a dialer, Intelec will also allow automated dialer activity during the initial letter-cycle phase of collections. Not only can the number of calls and the interval between each call be defined, the 'no answers' can be retried at different intervals depending on the type of account. While a dialer can theoretically work hundreds of thousands of accounts, dialing the wrong accounts is a complete waste of technology because your collectors can only handle a limited number of accounts each day - Your collection software must therefore ensure that only the correct accounts are called each day, since overworking or underworking of accounts will result in increased costs and poor results for your clients! In an Intelec environment, the dialer management with regard to the scheduling of accounts to be worked each day can be accurately described as ''Set it up once and let it run"! The savings in valuable management time are very significant.
  
  
• You can define activity that should stop an account from being called by the dialer. As an example, if a payment was posted during the day and the account had not yet been dialed, you could easily remove the account from the dialer queues and stop any further collection activity for that day. A debtor calling you would be another reason to remove an account from the dialer.
  
  
• Once the dialer has contacted a person the collection system must very quickly display the account associated with the debtor who was called. This is sometimes referred to as the dialer performing a "screen pop".
  
  
• With collections, there is time and place for utilizing predictive, preview, power and progressive dialing modes (see link to "Other dialing options"). These options require careful integration since calls will be initiated by the agent in some of the modes, while in others such as predictive, the calls are initiated by the dialer.
  
  
• In a predictive campaign, the order in which the accounts are selected to be called is very important, since the accounts may be sorted by balance, date last worked or other management-defined criteria. With I-Tel, the dialer will call the accounts in the same order that the accounts were sorted during nightly processing. You also have the ability to define filters to manage the dialer activity within the queues. (E.g. Do not call any accounts that were worked within the last 10 days)
  
  
• Information about inbound calls is stored in the system. This information can be viewed by the agent to whom the call was transferred and the calling number can be moved into any account. The notification to the agent, of the calling party and balance (if the account can be matched to a single debtor on the system) is also the result of close integration of the collection software and the dialer.
  
  
• IVR technology can extend the levels of automation by allowing your debtors to interact with the system without the help of an agent. This can range from balance inquiries to setting up of payment arrangements. This is an area that will require customization since each company will have different objectives.
  
  
• Call recording offers many opportunities for interaction with the collection data. In its simplest form, calls are recorded by extension. In a more advanced scenario, we will be able to attach account and activity information to the recording (data tagging), giving you the ability to analyze the calls and utilize the results for statistical modeling, data mining etc.
  
  
• In the collection industry, almost all the revenue-generating work is done by your collectors. With Intelec, their work is documented and used to manage accounts based on the thinking and decision-making that has been set up within the system. It is therefore vital that collectors report their activity accurately. E.g. If an attempt was not made but a collector indicates that one was made, this would increase the number of attempts and could result in an inaccurate decision being made by the system. I-Tel will digitally timestamp every call that is initiated by an agent through the dialer (e.g. preview calls), along with the number that was called. Predictive calls are also documented along with the number that was called, if the call is connected to an agent. Since the predictive attempts that were not connected (busy's, no answers etc.) are automatically documented as defined by the management, you are now able to independently verify every telephone action that is documented by an agent! This is an invaluable tool in auditing and managing your collectors.
  
  
• In a predictive environment within the collection industry, you will probably utilize many different campaigns during the course of a day. With Intelec, you have to target specific processing types, QCat codes and time frames when a campaign is defined. With most dialers it is assumed that collectors have to be notified by management as to what campaigns they should work at different times of the day. As a part of this process, the agent has to sign into a different campaign when each campaign has been completed. With I-Tel, we will provide support for automated "campaign progression". Management will be able to define the campaign that a collector must "progress" to after one campaign has been completed. This will result in a completely automated process that will not require any management overhead to administer!
  
  
• Complete control of the dialer actions (placing calls, hanging up, requesting registration for a predictive campaign etc.) is provided though simple keystrokes.

These features will significantly enhance the productivity of your collection operation, making this advanced dialing platform a truly "integrated" component within your collection system.