10 questions to ask before you hire a VICIdial expert

A real VICIdial expert answers sizing, dialing and carrier questions with numbers and trade-offs, not with "it depends" and a quote. VICIdial is free and the install scripts are public, so plenty of people can get a server to boot. Far fewer have kept a 50-agent Predictive dialing floor under its Drop rate limit on a Monday morning. These ten questions tell the two apart.

Questions about running the dialer

1. "How would you size a server for my floor?" A good answer starts from concurrent calls, not agents. Predictive dialing at three lines per agent means a 50-agent floor carries about 150 live calls. If they only ask for your agent count, keep looking. Our server sizing guide shows the maths.
2. "What would you change first if agents are waiting between calls?" Listen for the Hopper, the Auto dial level, list order and Lead filter settings, in that kind of order.
3. "How do you keep the drop rate under 3%?" You want to hear about the adaptive dial methods, the drop percentage limit and how AMD (answering machine detection) delays the connect.
4. "How many concurrent channels should I ask my carrier for?" A useful answer gives you a number with headroom above your peak live calls, and mentions calls per second.

Questions about how they work

1. "What access do you need, and what do I keep?" You should keep root access and the VICIdial admin login. Be wary of anyone who wants to be the only person with access.
2. "How do you test a change before it reaches agents?" A copy of the campaign, a test list and a short calling window are signs of care.
3. "What do I get in writing when you finish?" Expect a list of every setting changed and why, and the logins you need.
4. "How do you quote?" Fixed-fee after a discovery call is easier to budget than open hourly billing. At VICIfast, custom integrations are quoted in writing within 48 hours.

Questions about the boring parts

1. "Who patches the server, and who checks the backups?" If the answer is "you", you are buying a one-off fix. If they host it, ask how often backups run and when a restore was last tested.
2. "Who answers when it breaks at 9am on a Monday?" Ask whether a person reads the message, and how fast.

flowchart LR
  A[Ask the 10 questions] --> B{Numbers and trade-offs?}
  B -->|Yes| C{You keep root and admin?}
  B -->|No| X[Keep looking]
  C -->|Yes| D{Fixed quote in writing?}
  C -->|No| X
  D -->|Yes| E[Good candidate]
  D -->|No| F[Ask for a scoped quote]

Red flags

• They want to replace VICIdial with something they sell before they have seen your setup.
• They cannot say what they would change, only that they would "optimize" it.
• They ask for the only copy of the root password.
• Their quote has no scope, only an hourly rate.

Where VICIfast fits

VICIfast is managed VICIdial hosting. Our founder has eighteen years of VICIdial experience across call centres, client deployments and weekend fixes, and the team has provisioned more than 200 VICIdial servers. You keep full root access and the same VICIdial admin (what VICIfast adds to VICIdial has the full list), and we run the patching, firewall, SSL and 24/7 monitoring, with daily backups as an add-on. Ask us the ten questions above; we would rather you check. Start with our VICIdial experts, compare plans by server size, or read when to hire a VICIdial consultant.