In the world of outbound calling, there are fundamentally two main approaches to designing a dial cadence, or outreach strategy - Time Based, and Dial Based...
In a Time Based dial strategy, dials are planned and scheduled based on the age of the prospect, customer, or consent...and it might look something like this:
Days Old | Number of Dials | Time Between Dials |
1-3 | 2 | 3 hours |
4-10 | 5 | 6 hours |
11-20 | 10 | 8 hours |
In a Dial Based dial strategy, dials are planned and scheduled based on the number of dials that have already been placed to the prospect, customer, or consent...and it might look something like this:
Dial Number | Time Between Dials |
1-2 | 3 hours |
3-7 | 6 hours |
8-17 | 8 hours |
At first glance, these two configurations may seem relatively identical - different ways of achieving the same result...but in real life, that is not the case...and here's why...
Because in real life, no matter what's going on, "time" passes...it's relentless...
If your office is open, time passes...when your office is closed, time passes...when your dialer is fine, time passes, and when your dialer is broken, time still passes...time passes on weekends, time passes on holidays...no matter what is going on, "time" passes...
As such, a Time Based dial cadence may work perfectly for records that come in Monday morning @ 9 am...but not so good for records that come in Friday @ 8 pm, on a long holiday weekend...
Because time passes as it does, it really doesn't take much for a Time Based dial cadence to come completely off the rails, impacting your ability to contact your customer, and potentially your ability to recognize the win from your marketing spend...and, worst of all, your own system is not doing what, at the end of the day, you WANT it to be doing!
*As an aside, it's AMAZING to me how many customer we meet who are unable to make their dialer do what they want...remember, dialer admins - YOU are the alpha here, NOT your dialer platform...make the dialer bend to you, not the other way around... :-)
In a Dial Based dial cadence, conversely, "dials" do not happen on their own...
"Dials" only take place during open hours...when the dialer is functioning properly...when your agents are in the office...whether the record came in at 9 am, or at 10 pm...
As such, a new record will remain a new record until actual "dials" actually take place...
This results in a MUCH more predictable and consistent approach to contacting your customers, that respects the ebbs and flows of real life, and that ensures every record is approached identically, as intended...
Anyways, just my .02... :-)