What is connect rate?
Connect rate is the share of outbound dials that are answered by a live person. If you place 1,000 dials and 80 are picked up by a human, your connect rate is 8%.
It measures how well your dialing reaches people: list quality, the time of day you call, local presence and, increasingly, whether your numbers carry a spam label. Connect rate is a per-dial number, so it drops when you add more attempts per lead even if you reach more leads in total. Track it next to contact rate, which is per lead.
Definitions vary between tools. Some count any answered call, voicemail included, as a connect. Before comparing vendors or benchmarks, check whether voicemails, gatekeepers and wrong numbers are counted.