Contact Rate

Contact rate is the percentage of outbound dial attempts that result in a conversation with a live person. It is calculated by dividing the number of calls that reached a human (excluding answering machines, no-answers, busy signals, and disconnects) by the total number of dial attempts. Contact rate is one of the most important leading indicators of outbound campaign success in VICIdial.

How It Works in VICIdial

VICIdial calculates contact rate from dial status data. Calls that result in agent-handled dispositions (sale, not interested, callback, etc.) count as contacts, while system-generated statuses (NA, B, AM, DC) count as non-contacts. The contact rate is visible in VICIdial’s campaign summary reports and real-time dashboard.

Multiple VICIdial settings influence contact rate. Caller ID selection significantly impacts whether leads answer — local-presence CIDs improve contact rates by 30-40%. Dial timeout affects whether the system waits long enough for slow-to-answer leads. AMD accuracy determines whether live answers are correctly identified and routed to agents. Timezone filtering ensures calls are placed during hours when leads are likely to be available.

List quality is the dominant factor in contact rate. Fresh, accurately sourced lead data with valid phone numbers produces contact rates of 15-25%, while aged or low-quality data may yield under 5%.

Why It Matters

Contact rate drives every downstream metric in an outbound campaign. A higher contact rate means more conversations per agent hour, more opportunities for conversion, and lower cost per lead. When contact rate drops, agent utilization suffers because the dialer must cycle through more numbers to produce each conversation.

Improving contact rate involves optimizing every element of the dialing chain: list quality, calling times, CID strategy, STIR/SHAKEN attestation, and dial timeout tuning. See the DID hygiene feature page and our predictive dialer settings guide for contact rate optimization strategies.