When our team receives any urgent notifications, especially when leads aren’t getting called, the first thing we look to troubleshoot is a lead example. This way we can look at the multiple eligibilities that could be affecting the lead’s ability to get called.  To begin, it’s important to realize that you are the only one that truly knows all of the configurations that have been put into place for your account. Therefore, we highly recommend that the administrator of the account makes a simple flow chart of your desired lead cycle. This will easily determine how a lead is supposed to flow through its life cycle and identify any special eligibility you may have put on the leads. Without knowing this information, our team will have to look through all options (a needle in a haystack) until we can potentially find what is causing the lead to be ineligible

Most common culprits

Tags

We typically recommend that you look at the lead details page and observe if the lead has a “Do Not Call” or any other restricted tags to start. Many times, we find clients have set up restricted tags and forgotten about them. 

An important note on the DNC (Do Not Call) tag – Once a lead has been tagged DNC, Ricochet actually tags all future leads posted into the system for your protection.  There may be cases of a duplicate lead being in your account and the original lead was marked DNC. So the new lead is automatically tagged that as well when it is posted. If the lead has mistakenly been tagged “do not call” then an administrator can simply delete the tag.  In the event of restricted tags, an admin can either update the agents or teams in the restricted tag configuration as a resolution.

To review the support articles we have regarding Distribution Rules & Tags, please see the following link:
Distribution & Tags Section

State Eligibility

The next piece we recommend looking into is the lead’s phone number.

1. Do I have any agents that are eligible in the state the lead is in?
   1. If not, simply update agents that you want to be eligible in the Manage/Agents section
2. Is it a valid phone number?  We typically check the area code in Google to see if that validates what the lead record reflects.  Of course, you could also manually click to call the lead to see if any error messages are made or if the call goes through.

To review the support articles we have regarding States and Permissions, please see the following link:
States and Permissions Section

Dialer Campaigns

Dialer campaigns are a full training topic unto themselves, but probably the most common cause of leads not getting called due to some criteria that have either been a part of the included or excluded filter. The best thing to do is to go through each criterion and ensure:

1. The lead meets the criteria
2. The team or agents you want to call the leads are assigned to the campaign
3. The campaign is turned on
4. Pay close attention to the min amount of time between attempts.  If it is a long duration, the lead may have been called and won’t be eligible for the next call for a long while (Reducing that time frame may result in making several leads eligible).
5. Is the option “Only call leads owned by agent” checked and the leads have no owner?

To review the support articles we have regarding Dialer Campaigns, please see the following link:
Dialer Campaigns Section

Less common culprits

Agent Queue eligibility

Check the team member pop out and ensure that agents are enabled for the Queue that leads are being called from. This is most common when new companies start-up or when new agents are added with this step is accidentally omitted from the new agent configuration. Simply click any Queue so that it is Blue with white letters.

Is the Queue turned off?

This is the least likely culprit, but it is worth noting. At times, admins may have disabled the various Queues in Company settings. To resolve, navigate to Configuration/Company Settings/Queue Settings and ensure that all Queues are turned on.

More difficult to diagnose

What Queue is the lead in?

One of the most powerful features of Ricochet is that it prioritizes newer leads!  Therefore, there is an established hierarchy that the leads go through. They are as follows:

Real/Live Queue > EveQ > CamQ

As “absolute priorities”, while there are eligible leads to be called in any one of these Queues, lower priority leads will not be called. The only way to resolve is to:

1. Call all LiveQ leads so that it clears out the Queue
2. An Admin can remove the leads manually in the Report/Call Queue dashboard
3. Manually change the agents to be eligible for only the queues you want them to call  

Lead to agent ratio

I have found that the most difficult issue to diagnose and resolve is the lead to agent ratio.  With automation, many tend to forget that there is a compounding effect for non-contacted leads, and contact rates must be considered. To start, we encourage you to digest the following information with more of a learning experience and not so much as a call to make any drastic conclusions or modifications until you have properly evaluated your team’s activity.  

The best analogy I can think to give a visual into this issue is: a penny a day doubled for 30 days is $5,368,709.12 but on day 15 it’s only $163.84! In business, success is paramount to simply contacting the lead and which is often not achieved on the first call or attempt (and an excellent reason to implement drip email and text campaigns). 

Studies have shown that the sixth call attempt has a significant success rate. However, if your team is getting a high number of fresh leads daily that enter into your system you can see how quickly leads with low contact rates can pile up. This can result in numerous first-call attempts but no follow-up attempts! 

It is difficult to put together a specific formula to account for the multiple factors that can contribute to this, but a good rule of thumb is to evaluate how many daily calls my team makes and factor that into one’s desired call strategy. 
Looking at a simple “ones” and “zeros” scenario. Let’s say we get 10 new leads a day. If my contact rate is 50% mathematically on the first call attempt I will contact 5, the second attempt 2, and then finally 1 resulting in 18 calls to contact all 10 leads.
 
Hopefully, you can start to see how important contact ratios are! Evidently, the higher the contact rate the lower amount of attempts you will require. This is largely regulated by the quality and age of the leads you are obtaining.  

Now keep in mind, if you are spreading out these calls over the first ten days, each day those non-contacted leads are carrying over at the same time, you are getting 10 new leads every day! Therefore, the most simple way to determine if you are getting too many leads on a daily basis is to evaluate the call activity of your team and, ensure their daily total calls can cover the average daily calls needed to meet your goals, and adjust accordingly.  

We plan on providing more insight and direction into this topic in future articles but felt that an introduction to this was important. As the famous Sherlock Holmes says “When you have ruled out all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The main time I see this issue manifested is when a client has a large number of eligible leads but the call history of specific leads shows that the desired call cadence is not being met.

Conclusion

After covering all of these details you can begin to understand how much information is potentially needed in order to diagnose why a lead may not be getting called. Some things can be identified and corrected quickly while other topics can require much more research to determine. However, with an organized plan you will find that Ricochet360 can really dial in and help you achieve the success you desire!

If you have questions, concerns, or need to submit a support ticket: return to your Ricochet platform and proceed to file a ticket using the Help -> Get Support action to open the Help widget.