What a good dials-per-hour looks like in VICIdial

Dials per hour is the heartbeat of an outbound campaign. It counts how many calls the system places for each hour of agent time, and it is the number managers reach for first when they want to know whether the dialer is pulling its weight. VICIdial does not hide this figure; the outbound reporting lays out the calls placed and the agent hours behind them so you can work it out at a glance.

What dials per hour measures

Dials per hour is simply calls placed divided by agent hours worked. If your dialer made 4,000 calls across 100 agent hours, that is 40 dials per agent per hour. It is a throughput number, not a quality number. A high figure means the system is keeping the lines moving; it says nothing about whether those calls connected or converted, which is why you never read it alone.

The biggest lever on this number is your Dial level: how aggressively the dialer places calls ahead of available agents. Predictive pacing pushes dials per hour up by placing more calls per agent, but lean on it too hard and your Drop rate climbs as connected calls arrive with no agent free. The two move in opposite directions, so tuning one always means watching the other.

flowchart TD
  A[Calls placed] --> C[Divide by agent hours]
  B[Agent hours worked] --> C
  C --> D[Dials per hour]
  E[Dial level] --> A
  E --> F[Drop rate]
  F -.watch.-> D

Where VICIdial shows it

The Outbound Calling Report is where the raw pieces live. Its first section gives the number of calls placed for the campaign and the average length of a call. A later section lists every agent who took calls that day with their number of calls and total talk time, plus the average time between calls at the bottom, which is the gap that dials per hour is really fighting to close. Pair the campaign-wide calls-placed total with your logged-in agent hours and you have the figure.

The report also ends with a 15-minute time graph of calls dialed, with drops marked in red, so you can see throughput rise and fall across the day and catch the periods where pacing sagged. That visual is the fastest way to spot a dead half-hour that is dragging your average down. Often the cause is mundane: the hopper ran dry, a list finished, or half the floor went on break at the same time. The graph turns a vague sense that the afternoon was slow into a specific window you can go fix.

It helps to compare dials per hour across campaigns rather than judging one in isolation. A campaign with a clean, fresh list and short calls will always out-dial one working an old list full of dead numbers, and that difference is information, not a problem to paper over. The agent section, with its number of calls and average time between calls, is where you confirm whether a low figure is a dialing-config issue or just the nature of the work.

What counts as good

There is no universal target, because dials per hour depends on talk time, Lines per agent, and how many leads sit in the hopper. As rough guidance, a predictive consumer campaign with short calls can run well past 30 to 50 dials per agent hour, while a B2B campaign with long Talk time will naturally run lower and that is fine. Chase the number only as far as your drop rate stays inside your legal limit; speed that breaks compliance is not a win.

Where it fits

Dials per hour only means something next to drop rate and contact quality, which is why our guide to VICIdial reports shows how the outbound screens connect, and the outbound calling report walkthrough breaks down every section.

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