Outbound Calling

Telephone calls involving call centers are classified as inbound or outbound, depending on whether the call is being received by the call center (inbound) or initiated in the call center (outbound).

Any telephone survey that starts with a list of telephone numbers involves outbound calling, although telephone surveys often use inbound calling in support functions and can also be entirely inbound.

The list of numbers used might be randomly generated, such as a random-digit dialed (RDD) sample, created from public listings such as the white pages or from prior respondent contact (for example, a customer satisfaction survey might use the phone numbers provided by the customer at the point of purchase).

Particularly with RDD surveys, only a small proportion of dials made will result in live connects, and ...