Predictive dialer abandoned-call rules (3% limit)

This is a general explainer, not legal advice. Dialing rules change and vary by country, state and call type. Check the current rules for where you call, or ask a lawyer.

A predictive dialer places more calls than there are free agents, betting that many will not be answered. When the bet fails and more people answer than there are agents, someone picks up to silence. That is an abandoned call, and regulators limit how often it can happen. The best-known limit is a 3% predictive dialer abandon rate.

What counts as an abandoned call

An abandoned call is one answered by a person but not connected to an agent promptly. The caller hears silence or a click and hangs up. It does not include calls that ring out, go to voicemail or hit a busy tone.

The commonly quoted limits

Two sets of rules are most often quoted. As we understand them at the time of writing:

• United States. The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule (and similar FCC rules) requires an agent to be connected within 2 seconds of the person's greeting, and limits abandoned calls to 3% of calls answered by a person, per calling campaign, measured over a 30-day period. When a call is abandoned, the rules call for a short recorded message that identifies the seller.
• United Kingdom. Ofcom's persistent misuse policy sets the abandoned call rate at no more than 3% of live calls, per campaign, measured over a 24-hour period. It also expects an information message when a call is abandoned, and limits repeat calls to the same number.

The details of the measurement period matter. The UK figure is daily and the US figure is monthly, so the same dialer needs different monitoring in each place. Rules for other countries differ again, and some are stricter.

How the abandoned call rate is worked out

Abandon rate = abandoned calls ÷ calls answered by a live person

If you reach 1,000 live people in a day and abandon 25, the rate is 2.5%. At 31 abandoned you would be over 3%. Over a 30-day month with 20,000 live answers, 3% is 600 abandoned calls in total, but the rate still has to be measured per campaign, not across everything you dial.

Why dialers abandon calls

• Over-aggressive pacing. The dialer dials too many lines per agent.
• Few agents. With a small team, one extra answer is a big swing. Pacing works better with many agents.
• Slow wrap-up. Agents take longer than predicted to become free.
• Answering machine detection errors. Live answers classified as machines.
• A change in who answers. The answer rate shifts through the day, and the dialer can lag behind it.

Answering machine detection can eat your allowance

Answering machine detection (AMD) listens to the start of a call to decide whether a person or a machine answered. It is not perfect, and its mistakes count against you. Suppose 800 live people answer in a day and AMD wrongly flags 2% of them as machines, so the calls are dropped. That is 16 live people hung up on. Against a 3% limit of 24 abandoned calls on 800 answers, those 16 have already used two-thirds of your allowance, before any pacing problem. Tune AMD, and treat its false positives as abandoned calls in your reports.

How to stay under the limit

1. Set a pacing ceiling well below the limit, for example aiming for 1% to 2%, so a bad hour does not put you over.
2. Cap the dial ratio and lower it when the abandon rate climbs.
3. Watch the rate through the day, not only at the end. A daily rule can be broken by one bad morning.
4. Keep reports. You may need to show your abandon rate for each campaign and period.
5. Play the required message on abandoned calls, where the rules call for it.
6. Use a power or progressive dialer if you cannot manage the risk. They dial one call per free agent and do not abandon by design.

A simple monitoring routine

• Check the live abandon rate every hour while a campaign is running.
• Set an alert at about two-thirds of your ceiling.
• If the rate rises, lower the dial ratio, then look at agent availability and AMD.
• Review each day's figures by campaign and keep them.

What to ask a dialer vendor

• Can I cap the abandon rate, and what does the dialer do when it reaches the cap?
• Is the abandon rate reported per campaign, with the time period I need?
• Can the dialer play a recorded message on abandoned calls?
• How is answering machine detection tuned, and are false positives reported?
• How does the pacing algorithm change as agents come and go?

A worked day

Suppose a campaign reaches 1,500 live people today, and your rule is a daily limit of 3%.

• The limit: 3% of 1,500 is 45 abandoned calls.
• Your ceiling: aiming for 2% means no more than 30.
• Your alert: set it at about two-thirds of the limit, which is also 30.

If by early afternoon you have already abandoned 24 calls with a third of the day to go, you are on course to break your own ceiling. Lower the dial ratio now, check agent availability and look at answering machine detection, rather than waiting for the end of the day.

If you go over the limit

• Lower the pacing, or switch the campaign to a power or progressive mode until the cause is fixed.
• Record what happened: the campaign, the period, the numbers and what you changed.
• Find the cause, which is usually pacing, too few agents or answering machine detection.
• Take advice if you have breached a legal limit, because the consequences depend on where you call.

Don't rely on the dialer to protect you by default. Many let you set pacing far above a safe level, so the limit is your responsibility.

What this does not cover

Abandonment is one part of outbound calling rules. Consent, do-not-call lists, calling hours, caller ID, recording and pre-recorded messages each have their own rules, and some are stricter than the abandon limit. Check them before you launch a campaign.

If you are comparing dialers, see power vs predictive vs progressive and which software lists each.