A predictive dialer does not wait for one call to fail before placing the next. It dials several numbers for each agent who is ready, because most attempts end in no answer, a busy signal or voicemail. The dial ratio is how many.
A simple way to reason about it: expected live answers per round ≈ dial ratio × connect rate. With a 25% connect rate, a ratio of 4 produces about one live person per ready agent on average. Real dialers also take into account average call length and how many agents are about to finish their calls.
- Too low: agents wait between calls and productivity falls.
- Too high: more people answer than there are free agents. Those calls are abandoned, which annoys the people called, hurts caller ID reputation and can breach abandon-rate rules.
A ratio of 1 places one call per ready agent, which keeps abandoned calls close to zero. In the OVOKY predictive dialer, the dial ratio is set per campaign from 1 to 10 lines per ready agent, and supervisors can change it during a running campaign from live supervision.