What is a predictive dialer?
A predictive dialer places more calls than there are free agents, using an algorithm that predicts when an agent will finish the current call and how many dials it takes to reach a live person. When a person answers, the call goes to the next available agent.
The goal is to cut the time agents spend listening to ringing, busy signals and voicemail. The cost is the abandoned call: if more people answer than there are free agents, someone picks up to silence. Under the FCC's TCPA rules, a telemarketing campaign may abandon no more than 3% of calls answered by a person, measured over 30 days, and a call counts as abandoned if it is not connected to a live rep within two seconds of the person's greeting. When no rep is free, the dialer must play a short prerecorded message with the seller's name, a callback number and an opt-out.
Predictive dialing works best for large teams with steady list volume. Small teams usually get a high abandonment rate or long waits between calls, which is why many move to power dialing or to AI agents that take every answered call themselves. See AI dialer vs predictive dialer vs parallel dialer for a side-by-side.