Calls Per Hour

Calls per hour (CPH) measures the number of calls placed or handled by an agent (or the entire campaign) within one hour. It can be measured as dial attempts per hour (total calls placed by the dialer), connections per hour (calls that were answered), or contacts per hour (calls that reached a live person and were handled by an agent). Each measure provides different insight into campaign efficiency.

How It Works in VICIdial

VICIdial reports calls per hour in campaign summary reports and the real-time monitoring dashboard. The metric is calculated from the vicidial_log table (call records) divided by the relevant time period. Per-agent CPH is available in agent performance reports.

Calls per hour is primarily determined by the dialing mode and auto dial level. Predictive dialing with an aggressive dial level can produce 200-400+ dial attempts per agent hour, while manual dialing typically yields 20-40. Connected calls per hour depends on the answer rate — if 10% of dial attempts connect, 300 dial attempts produce 30 connections per hour.

Other VICIdial settings that affect CPH include dial timeout (shorter timeouts free lines faster), AMD (filtering answering machines reduces agent handle time), wrap time limits (wrap_up_seconds controls post-call duration), and wait between calls.

Why It Matters

Calls per hour is a key operational throughput metric. Higher CPH means more opportunities for contact and conversion from each agent hour worked. When combined with contact rate and conversion rate, CPH determines the total revenue-producing output of the operation.

Benchmarking CPH helps identify configuration issues. If CPH drops unexpectedly, it may indicate hopper depletion, trunk capacity issues, or dialer misconfiguration. If CPH is high but contacts per hour is low, the list quality or CID strategy may need attention. See the dialer tuning feature page and our predictive dialer settings guide for throughput optimization.