Parallel dials per call places that many calls simultaneously and connects you to whichever is answered by a human first. The range is 1 to 5, capped by your plan.
What actually happens
- You press Call Next Batch. The system places N calls at the same moment.
- Each line is watched for answering-machine detection.
- The first human answer is bridged to you.
- The remaining lines are hung up — if Hang up other calls once connected is on. If it is off, they keep going and you will meet them in sequence.
What it costs
Minutes. Every line is a call. Five parallel dials use roughly five times the minutes of one, for the same number of conversations. The dial counter on the dialer says so explicitly: parallel lines count individually.
Abandon risk. When two people answer at once, one of them gets hung up on. That person now has a missed call from your number and no idea who you are. Do this often enough, at scale, and you generate complaints — which is exactly what carrier spam scoring measures. The regulatory frameworks in several jurisdictions also put limits on abandoned call rates for outbound campaigns; check what applies to you.
Bandwidth. Five lines is five audio streams on your connection. See What you need to run a good session.
Choosing a number
| Situation | Setting |
|---|---|
| Learning the product, or a high-value list | 1 |
| Normal prospecting on a warm list | 2 |
| Cold list with a low expected answer rate | 3 |
| Very cold, very large list, good connection, voicemail configured | 4–5 |
The right answer is the lowest number that keeps you talking. If you are waiting between conversations, raise it. If you are hanging up on people who answered, lower it.
Always pair it with these
- Hang up other calls once connected: on. Otherwise parallel dialing turns into a queue of confused people.
- A voicemail recording, or Skip machine calls. At higher parallel counts you hit far more machines; silence into all of them is wasted spend.
- Enough source numbers. Five parallel dials from one phone number is a volume pattern carriers notice. See Choosing which number you call from.