How do you raise right-party contact rates when consumers won’t pick up?

The short answer

In our experience fewer consumers answer collection calls for four reasons: they don’t answer numbers they don’t know, the numbers pick up spam labels, the phone data is out of date, and the calls come at times they can’t talk. Each has its own fix. On top of those, the dialer mode decides how many of the calls that do get answered reach a collector, and how much of each hour collectors spend waiting. Test each change against a control group, because in our experience contact rates swing with the placements anyway.

Before you spend on contact, check whether contact is really the limit. A floor that already reaches enough people often gains more from converting the contacts it has. More right-party contacts or better RPC conversion?

Why consumers don’t pick up

• Unknown numbers. Hiya, a caller-identification company that sells branded calling, reports in its State of the Call 2026 that 86% of unknown calls go unanswered. In our experience a collection call usually arrives from a number the consumer doesn’t know.
• Labels and blocking. In its Fourth Report and Order of 29 December 2020 (FCC 20-187), the Federal Communications Commission noted that consumers are less likely to answer calls with certain labels. It declined to require a way to dispute an erroneous label, and instead encouraged phone companies and their analytics partners to work in good faith with callers to avoid erroneous labeling. For calls that are blocked outright, it required the terminating phone company to notify the caller immediately, so legitimate callers can seek redress.
• Stale phone data. In our experience numbers go out of date while accounts wait to be worked, so the accounts placed longest ago are often the hardest to reach. Agencies on our calls asked when skip tracing should start; in our view the answer is before the best accounts go quiet, not after.
• Timing. Calls must fall inside the allowed hours. In our experience some times inside those hours reach far more people than others, and the pattern differs by kind of account.

What floors test

1. How your numbers show up. Check how your outbound numbers are labelled on the main carriers and apps, and register them where you can. The FCC requires a phone company that blocks a call to notify the caller, so ask your carrier whether your numbers are being blocked and whether you receive that notice.
2. Fresh phone data, early. Check and update numbers when accounts are placed, not months later.
3. Calling times. Compare right-party contacts per attempt by hour and by kind of account, inside the allowed hours, and move attempts to the times that reach people.
4. Answering machine detection. In our experience a dialer that wrongly treats live answers as machines, or machines as people, costs contacts quietly. Check its settings against a sample of recordings.
5. Other channels. Email, text and letters carry rules of their own, and your counsel decides how they apply.

Choose the dialer mode for your contact rate

How the dialer places calls changes how many conversations a floor has each hour. The main modes, as we describe them (the 2022 Call Centre Helper article covers the same three):

Why predictive often fits when contact rates are poor

When most calls go unanswered, a collector in progressive mode spends much of each hour waiting through rings, voicemail and numbers that don’t connect. A predictive dialer places several calls for each free collector, so the collector goes from one answered call to the next.

Speaking to Call Centre Helper (2022), Ben Booth of MaxContact, a dialer company, said predictive dialing is typically used "in a low-connect-rate environment where you’re not expecting as many answers". An earlier Call Centre Helper article written with the dialer maker Sytel (2010) said the gain from predictive dialling can be very high under tough dialling conditions, such as low levels of live calls. Douglas Samuelson, who developed predictive dialing in the late 1980s using queuing models and simulation, reported that the improved systems kept operators busier and drastically reduced the calls abandoned because no operator was available (Interfaces, 1999).

In our view, on a floor where few calls reach anyone, moving the right campaigns to predictive can be a large change to how many right-party conversations collectors have each day. It doesn’t make any one consumer more likely to answer. It means collectors spend their hours talking rather than waiting, so more accounts are reached in the hours when people pick up.

The cost: dropped calls still count

A predictive dialer that places more calls than there are free collectors will sometimes reach a consumer with nobody on the line. In collections that costs twice. The consumer hears silence or a hang-up, and for a debt collector covered by Regulation F the call still counts toward the call limits: the CFPB’s official interpretation of section 1006.14 says a call connects, and so counts, if it is answered, even if it subsequently drops.

For telemarketing, the FCC sets a ceiling. Under 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(7), a telemarketer may not abandon more than three percent of calls answered live by a person, measured over 30 days for a single calling campaign, and a call is abandoned if it is not connected to a live sales representative within two seconds of the called person’s completed greeting. That rule is written for telemarketing calls. Whether it, or any state rule, reaches your collection calls is for your counsel. In our view a floor should set its own limit on dropped calls either way, and watch it by campaign.

In our view that means:

• Use predictive where answer rates are low and campaigns are large, such as older placements or accounts with poor phone data.
• Use progressive or preview where each conversation is precious, such as promises due, callbacks, high balances and accounts close to their weekly call limit.
• Keep enough collectors on each predictive campaign. In our view pacing works best with a full team; a small team on a predictive campaign tends to drop more calls.
• Check answering machine detection alongside pacing, because a live answer treated as a machine is a right-party contact lost.

Which dialer you may use, on which numbers, is a legal question as well as an operational one. In Facebook v. Duguid (2021), the US Supreme Court held that to count as an autodialer under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a device must have the capacity to store or produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator. Other federal and state rules can still apply, including those on prerecorded messages. Your counsel decides how they apply to your dialer. BestPair does not provide legal advice.

To test a change of mode, split a campaign’s accounts at random between the old mode and the new one, in the same weeks, and compare right-party contacts per collector hour, dropped calls and dollars collected per account contacted.

Setting up dialer campaigns

In our view a floor reaches more people when its campaigns are split by what the accounts need, rather than run as one list:

• Split by kind of account. New placements, promises due, broken promises and older accounts each answer at different times and need different follow-up. Give each its own campaign.
• Space retries. Set the gap between attempts for each campaign, and count every attempt against the contact limits, which apply per debt, not per campaign.
• Pace for live answers. Pacing that drops or holds consumers who do answer wastes the contacts that matter most. Set it so collectors are free when someone picks up.
• Keep the limits in one place. Contact rules belong in the dialer or the collection system, applied the same way to every campaign. Agent matching and business rules.
• Change one setting at a time, and read right-party contacts per attempt and dollars per account contacted for each campaign before and after.

When conversion is the bigger lever

More contacts are worth only what the floor turns them into. In our experience a floor that already reaches a fair share of its accounts gains more by making each conversation count: the right collector on the call, a clear offer, and a follow-up that keeps the promise. Under a contact cap this matters even more, because under Regulation F a call about that debt within seven days after a conversation is presumed to break the rule. How to keep collections up inside contact limits.

Where agent matching fits

Agent matching works on conversion, not on contact. It does not change your dialer’s campaigns, pacing or contact rules. BestPair sends each account to the eligible collector who has done best with accounts like it, from the floor’s own call and payment history, inside the rules and workload limits the agency sets, and measures the result against a control group. What RPC conversion is.

Sources

• Hiya, State of the Call 2026: a caller-identification company’s annual report on answering and trusting phone calls.
• FCC 20-187, Fourth Report and Order on unlawful robocalls: the Federal Communications Commission, 29 December 2020, on call blocking notification and labeling.
• The Different Types of Dialler Explained: Call Centre Helper, Robyn Coppell, 29 November 2022, quoting Ben Booth of MaxContact, a dialer company.
• The predictive gain of Predictive Diallers: Call Centre Helper, Jonty Pearce with Michael McKinlay of Sytel, a dialer maker, 12 April 2010.
• Predictive Dialing for Outbound Telephone Call Centers: Douglas A. Samuelson, Interfaces, 1999.
• Regulation F, official interpretation of section 1006.14: the CFPB’s commentary on which calls count toward the call frequency limits.
• 47 CFR 64.1200: the FCC’s telemarketing rules, including the abandoned call limit in paragraph (a)(7).
• Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid: US Supreme Court, decided 1 April 2021, on what counts as an autodialer under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.