Blended inbound/outbound dialing explained

Pure outbound floors have a problem: when an inbound call arrives, nobody is set up to take it. Pure inbound floors have the opposite problem: agents sit idle between calls. Blended dialing fixes both by letting the same agents do both jobs on one campaign. When it is quiet, they dial out; when a call comes in, it slots into the queue and reaches an agent as soon as one is free. Here is how the pieces actually fit together.

The basic idea

sequenceDiagram
  participant D as Dialer
  participant Q as Inbound Queue
  participant A as Agent
  participant C as Caller
  Note over D,A: Quiet period
  D->>A: Route outbound call
  C-->>Q: Inbound call arrives
  Q->>Q: Hold in closer queue
  A->>D: Finishes outbound
  Q->>A: Route queued inbound first
  Note over A: Blended - inbound prioritised
  A->>C: Handle inbound caller

Blended means one campaign carries both directions of traffic. An agent logs in, picks an inbound queue to listen to, and clicks resume. If no inbound calls are waiting, they start dialing outbound from the active lists. The moment an inbound call lands, it queues; when the agent finishes their current outbound call, the queued inbound call is routed to them. The agent never has to switch modes by hand, and the floor stays busy whichever way the calls are flowing.

Because both call types share the same pool of agents, blended is mostly about keeping Occupancy high without letting either side starve.

What you need to set up

Starting from an inbound-enabled campaign, the moving parts are:

• A list of fresh outbound leads, set active, so agents have something to dial when inbound is quiet.
• A Local Call Time window, like 9am to 9pm, so outbound calls stay inside legal hours.
• A dial level of 1 with the dial method set to RATIO or one of the ADAPT options, so the outbound side does not over-dial while agents are also fielding inbound.

On the agent side, you can have the blended checkbox pre-selected at login so agents do not have to remember to turn it on. To stop dialing outbound, you simply set the lead list inactive, or the agent logs out and unchecks blended at login.

Who goes first: inbound or outbound

By default both call types compete for whoever is free, and VICIdial routes the next call to the Next agent call based on your selection method. If you want inbound calls to win, you raise the Queue priority of the in-groups above the campaign's priority. A word of caution though: many operators leave this balanced on purpose. An inbound caller will happily hold for a moment, but an outbound contact you connected will not sit waiting for an agent, so prioritizing inbound too hard can cost you outbound connections. Decide based on which side of the business actually pays.

There is also a manual variation: if you want agents dialing a list by hand while still catching inbound calls, you use the INBOUND_MAN dial method and leave the dial ratio at 1.

Where to go next

The switch that makes any of this possible is covered in our piece on the Allow Inbound and Blended setting, and the wider dialing strategies guide explains how dial level and method behave under a blended load. Because blended pacing can drift into over-dialing, it is also worth reading how to lower your VICIdial drop rate before you scale up.

If wiring leads, in-groups, and dial methods together is more than you want to take on, our managed VICIdial plans give you a blended-ready dialer in under a minute.