Predictive dialing for outbound telephone call centers

In the late 1980s, I used queuing and simulation to invent predictive diali ng, a method to determine when computer-directed outbound telephone dialing systems should dial. I included a real-time estimation updating feature th at was highly robust against sudden changes in the system's operating envir onment; thorough validation to ensure that the models tracked all important features of the real systems; and a modular software design that allowed " plug-in" replacement of the control software, eliminating debugging of fiel d upgrades. The improved systems kept operators busier and drastically redu ced the number of calls the systems abandoned because no operator was avail able to talk to the answering party. This invention was critical to the suc cess, in the late 1980s, of International Telesystems Corporation (ITC), a small company founded in 1984, which a competitor, EIS International, bough t in 1993 for approximately $12 million.