Fronter
The agent who takes the first call, qualifies the prospect, and hands them to a closer.
A fronter is the agent who takes the first call on a two-stage outbound campaign. Their job is to reach the right person, confirm there is genuine interest, qualify against whatever criteria the offer needs, and then hand the call to a closer. They do not close.
How it works in VICIdial
There is no fronter role in the software. A fronter is an ordinary agent logged into an outbound campaign, and the role exists entirely in what happens at the end of their call: instead of dispositioning, they transfer the live caller to a closer in-group.
Mechanically that is the agent screen's transfer panel, usually bound to a hot key so it is one keystroke. The fronter stays on the line while the closer picks up, introduces the prospect, and drops - a warm transfer. The closer's leg of the call is logged separately in vicidial_closer_log, which is why fronter and closer statistics have to be read from different reports.
Why teams split the roles
Two reasons, and they are both about cost. Reaching people is a volume problem and closing is a skill problem, so pairing many low-cost fronters with a few expensive closers lets you buy each one at its own rate. And the closer never sits through ring time, voicemail or a wrong number - they only ever pick up an already-qualified live prospect, so their expensive hour is spent almost entirely on conversations that could convert.
Compensation usually follows the split: fronters on a flat rate or per qualified transfer, closers on commission.
Where it goes wrong
The failure mode is fronters transferring anything that answers, to hit a transfer target. The fix is to measure the fronter on transfers that the closer accepted rather than transfers attempted, and to make the closer's disposition of a bad transfer visible in the fronter's numbers.
The other common problem is ratio. If closers are idle, you have too many fronters; if fronters queue waiting to transfer, you have too few closers. Watch the closer in-group's wait time - it tells you which way to move before either side complains.