Cycle 3 Onwards

In most cases, you'll want to do more than 2 cycles. If you do, chances are that you'll repeat some of the same percentage figures. With this in mind, we have put a Copy cycle button at the bottom of the page, so that you can propagate the current cycle's assumptions into the next cycle.

After several cycles you may well choose not to recycle any more calls whose last outcome was a no answer (and thus answering machines as well). You can do this by zeroing the four cells under the no answer heading for the current and any subsequent cycles. You will still get no answers in these cycles, but only as a response to reschedules and busies.

But if you assume that a significant proportion of no answers in the current cycle will have been busies or reschedules in earlier cycles, then you will want to set the assumptions for the next cycle to reflect the fact that there are still good chances of making contact with these numbers.

If a high proportion of your calls are no answers, then take careful note of the following points:

1. Be realistic about how much recycling you will do in practice on no answers. Some of the no answers you record for later cycles could well have had other call outcomes in earlier cycles, but, for the most part, they are likely to be calls that were no answers in all previous cycles. Unless you have a predictive dialer that can call efficiently at high no answer levels, continual retrying of numbers that are persistent no answers, is a great way to push your agent talk times through the floor.
   
   If you are not sure about this, then check it out using Oceanic®. Recycle lots of no answers, and don't forget to slug your overdial performance appropriately on the Extended Properties page.
2. Even if you do have a crack dialer, talk and wait times will suffer as the no answer rate goes up. You can use the impact on revenues in the Forecast by Cycle report, to act as a natural break on continuing to recycle no answers.
3. If your campaign is short i.e. hours or days only, then sensible retry rules will limit the number of times you will redial no answers. If you are running a sophisticated call center you will probably be setting the retry rules yourself; and will know not to overstate what you assume in Oceanic®.