Agent-Assisted Dialing: A Guide

What does the term “agent-assisted dialing” in the B2B sales world mean to you? The definition differs across the industry, but the distinction is important, especially when it comes to compliance. Read on to learn what an agent-assisted dialer can mean and what it SHOULD mean.

Agent-Assisted Dialing Definitions

When a company states that they use agent-assisted dialing, there are two potential options:

• A robo-dialer or auto-dialer. This is a piece of software that either takes a list of numbers, or auto generates a list of numbers to dial, and calls those numbers without any human intervention.
• A human agent dialer. These are trained humans who are taking the list of numbers you’ve uploaded and going through and manually calling each number for you.

How Compliance Fits into Agent-Assisted Dialing

Now that you know the definitions, let’s talk about what agent-assisted dialing should mean in the world of B2B sales outreach to your sales team.

The company you choose for your dialing software should not use robo-dialers or auto-dialers, especially in light of Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) compliance regulations, which can lead to fines and litigation against your company if you’re using robotic dialers in your sales outreach.
If you have contracted with a dialing company, and you’re not sure what they’re using to make all those dials for you, ask them. Are they using actual humans or are their dials made by robots or auto-dialers?

To be TCPA compliant, agent-assisted dialing, which is also known as parallel-assisted dialing, should mean actual trained human agents are making the dials for your sales reps, so your sales reps can focus on what they do best – having the conversations that lead to sales.

For TCPA compliant agent-assisted dialing, human dialing agents take care of the busy work for you, namely dialing, navigating phone systems, and even talking with receptionists and other gatekeepers to get to your ideal target customer. Once they have reached that person, they instantly handoff that live conversation to you in a seamless process that is invisible to the recipient of the call. It is equal to having many human personal assistants sitting around your desk making calls and then handing off the conversation to you so you can focus on having those conversations, instead of wasting your time dialing.

About the Author

Mary Hart is the Senior Marketing Content Writer at ConnectLeader, a multi-channel sales engagement platform focused on helping B2B sales professionals increase their top-line revenue and reduce sales cycle time.