The dialer surcharges may be assessed due to traffic statistics not meeting the minimum requirements as outlined in the end user service agreement. These traffic requirements are imposed by upstream carriers.
Service Agreement:
4.6 If within any twenty-four (24) hour period, your NANP Termination Traffic falls into any of the following categories, VOICE1 may assess an additional charge of US$ 0.25 per call attempt.
- ASR is less than sixty percent (60%).
- ALOC is less than twenty-five (25) seconds.
- SDC (Short duration calls) More than ten percent (10%) of completed calls are under six (6) seconds in duration and the ALOC is less than forty-five (45) seconds.
Customers who use automatic dialing equipment can usually tune their configurations to avoid these surcharges. Outlined below is each surcharge metric so that you can review your system and make the necessary changes accordingly:
ASR – This is the Answer to Seizure Ratio, this is the ratio of answered calls to the total number of call attempts. For example, if your system dials 1,000 leads off a “lead sheet” and only 500 of those are answered, then your ASR would be 50%. This would effectively be under the minimum requirements. The best way to remedy this is to acquire “lead sheets” which have a higher percentage of known working numbers and to call during times when people are likely to answer their phones.
ALOC – This is the Average Length of Call over answered calls (unanswered calls don’t count). Your average call length should be at least 25 seconds. We understand that you will have some people that do not wish to subscribe to your offers and may hang up immediately (e.g. 10 seconds into the call); however, you will also have calls to interested people that will last much longer and should raise your overall ALOC.
SDC – Percentage of calls that are less than 6 seconds – This is the ratio of your calls which are less than 6 seconds divided by your total number of answered calls. For example, if you have 10,000 answered calls and 2,000 of these were hung up within 6 seconds, then 20% of your calls were less than 6 seconds. Customers having a high percentage of calls less than 6 seconds often systematically hang up on answering machines. A common fix is to leave voice messages instead of hanging up; this increases your ALOC as well as decreases your percentage of calls less than 6 seconds.