Outbound Dialer
Outbound call and messaging campaigns for a Twilio Flex contact center. The voice dialer places calls to leads and hands customers who answer to agents. The messaging dialer sends SMS and WhatsApp in batches and tracks delivery; customer replies reach agents in Flex as ordinary chats.
- Dialing modes: preview, progressive, power and predictive
- Callbacks from agents, IVR / CRM and supervisors
- SMS and WhatsApp campaigns
- DNC lists, calling windows and the contact-center calendar
- Live supervisor monitoring, in Flex or in a plain browser tab
- English and Hebrew (right-to-left) user interface
How the dialer works
The dialer is part of the Floor Walker service and works with your own Twilio account: calls go out through Twilio Voice, dialer calls reach agents as ordinary Flex tasks through TaskRouter, and messages go out through Twilio's messaging APIs. Lead data, campaigns and call history are kept by Floor Walker in your environment.
- Leads in. Supervisors import CSV files into contact lists, or your CRM pushes leads through the integration API.
- Dialing. For every running campaign the dialer decides, every second, how many numbers to call for the agents who are free or about to be free, within the campaign's limits and Twilio's call rate.
- Agents. A customer who answers is connected to a free agent on the campaign. The agent sees the lead card in Flex and, after the call, picks an outcome (disposition) that decides what happens to the lead next.
- Compliance. Every number is checked against DNC lists, calling windows and the contact-center calendar before it is dialed.
- Supervisors watch campaigns live, change settings while a campaign runs, and see the dialer on the wallboard and in the Supervisor Console.
Channels
Voice and messaging share the same contact lists, DNC rules, calling windows and retries; only the way a lead is reached differs. The channel is chosen when a campaign is created and cannot be changed afterwards.
Voice dialer. Every second the dialer decides how many numbers to dial and calls them through Twilio Voice. A customer who answers is connected to a free agent in Flex. The agent sees the lead card and, after the call, picks an outcome (disposition) that tells the dialer what to do with the lead next.
- Four dialing modes, from "agent reviews the card first" to predictive
- Answering machine detection and retries by call outcome
- Callbacks from agents, IVR / CRM and supervisors
Messaging dialer. Every few seconds the dialer sends the next batch through the Twilio Bulk Messaging API and keeps checking delivery status for each lead. Failed messages are resent while the sending window is open. A customer reply reaches an agent as a chat, and an opt-out keyword such as STOP opts the number out.
- SMS with variables from lead fields
- WhatsApp through approved Content Templates
- Funnel: sent, delivered, read, replied
How the channels differ
| Voice | SMS / WhatsApp | |
|---|---|---|
| Who works the lead | An agent in Flex, in a live conversation | The message goes out with no agent; an agent joins only if the customer replies |
| Pace | How many calls to open for the free agents, decided every second | A batch every few seconds, limited by messages per minute and batch size |
| Result of an attempt | Call status, AMD and the agent's disposition | Delivery status: delivered, read, failed, undelivered |
| Window | The campaign's calling windows in the lead's time zone, and the contact-center calendar if one is linked | The same windows (here they are the sending window) |
| DNC | Global and campaign lists | The same lists plus per-channel opt-out lists ("SMS opt-out", "WhatsApp opt-out") |
| Consent | National do-not-call registry (optional per campaign) | Marketing needs consent less than a year old, or an existing customer |
| TaskRouter queue | One queue per campaign; agents are assigned to it | Not needed |
In this section
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Contact lists and leads | Lists, CSV import, lead selection and the lead lifecycle |
| Compliance and calling hours | DNC, calling windows, the contact-center calendar, consent |
| Voice campaigns | Dialing modes, call flows, pacing, AMD, outcomes, callbacks |
| SMS and WhatsApp | Sending, content, delivery, replies, opt-out, beta caveats |
| The agent in Flex | What agents see and do |
| Managing campaigns | The supervisor's Campaigns view |
| Dialer console | The supervisor screens in a browser tab outside Flex |
| Setup and configuration | What is set up in your Twilio account, call rate, the Flex feature flags |
| Reference | Campaign settings, integration API, limitations, glossary |
Related sections: Agent workspace (the business calendar that also gates the dialer), Wallboard (dialer tiles), Reports, Platform.