In Dialfire it is now possible to directly influence the telephone providers through which your calls are handled. This allows you to find the best combination of quality and price for you.
We work with a large number of providers and constantly negotiate prices so that we can always offer you a wide range of different qualities at attractive conditions.

How does Dialfire distribute my calls among phone providers?

Dialfire determines a list of route suggestions for each individual call via all available telephone providers at different prices and qualities. From this list, the bid manager then filters out the route that best fits your specifications.
If you have not made your own settings in the bid manager so far, then a default rule is stored there, that simply selects the route with the best quality up to a maximum of the standard price in the price list.

How can I configure my price bids?

In the Billing -> Prices section, you will find a link that will take you to the Bid Manager. There you will find 3 sections:

• Bidding rules with a list of filters where you can set the maximum bid price for a route under certain conditions, based on your own rules.
• History where you can track and target available routes and bids for the last 10,000 calls
• Missing bids where you can find the calls that were not executed because there was no bid, broken down by called destination network.

I get the message no bid for this call / error 166, although I have not yet placed a bid.

In accordance with our ATCs Telephony Services, each dialing of a telephone number represents an independent order, which only comes into effect when the call has been established, e.g. the telephone rings the subscriber's end. If you have not created your own bids, then bids according to the standard price list automatically apply. However, it may happen that no route is suggested to you that matches these prices. In this case the call is not possible.
You recognize this:

• at the message DI4: no bid for this call (error 166) if you dial manually
• the error 166 entry in the contact history for predictive dialing
• a percentage of missing bids noted at the call level if you have enabled predictive dialing
• the entries in the missing bids tab in the bid manager

In the missing bids tab of the bid manager you can see the number of unaccepted dial attempts and also the amount of the bid at which all calls would have been carried out. If you want such calls to be put through in the future, click on Add bid rule and possibly adjust your maximum bid.

How do I store my own bid rule?

In the bidding rules tab you will find all bidding rules. For each individual route proposal, the rules are run through from top to bottom. The first rule, where all criteria in the grey area match the concrete selection and the route proposal, is applied. If the bid in the green area now also matches the route proposal, then this route is considered accepted.
The result is a list of accepted route suggestions. Of these, the 3 best suggestions are now selected. For this purpose, these are sorted according to the default in the table header either by price or by quality. For the evaluation of the quality, it is also taken into account whether the voice quality or call number transmission is more important to you.
Since the rules are evaluated from top to bottom, the more specific rules should tend to be at the top and general rules further down. You can drag the rules to the right position with the mouse.

If you create a new rule or change an existing rule, these are immediately applied to the last 10,000 calls and you can see a preview in the table header under new settings. The missing bids row contains the number of calls that did not go through, based on the last 10,000 calls and as a percentage. In contrast, the row missed live connects contains a prediction of how many actual live connections would have failed as a result and their percentage.
Do not save the new settings until you are satisfied with this prediction, as they will take effect immediately.

What do the stars mean in expected call quality?

The star rating serves as an orientation for estimating the expected average telephony quality over a longer period of time. The expected quality is based on information from the provider, feedback from our customers and our own tests. Depending on the dialing mode, we also take into account whether the ring tones are transmitted correctly during call setup and whether the transmission of key tones (for navigation in IVR menus) works.

• ★★★★★ perfect quality (depending on the other party). The voice is undistorted. Virtually no interference, dropouts or interruptions. Connection setup is extremely reliable.
• ★★★★☆ very good quality (depending on the other party). The voice is clear, sound of the voice may vary. Disturbances, dropouts, interruptions rarely occur. Connection establishment is very reliable.
• ★★★☆☆ Very good speech intelligibility for most conversations. Occasionally there are disturbances, dropouts, interruptions. Connection establishment is reliable.
• ★★☆☆☆ Good speech intelligibility, voice not very detailed. Interference, dropouts, interruptions occur in a smaller proportion of calls. Connection establishment is sufficiently reliable.
• ★☆☆☆☆ sufficient speech intelligibility, voice usually sounds unnatural. There are frequent disturbances, dropouts, interruptions. Connection does not always succeed at the first attempt.

For some calls the voice quality is not good, what can I do?

First, you should look in the history tab of the bid manager for the calls where the quality was poor. The easiest way to do this is to use the search function at the top of the screen and search by phone number.
If the estimated call quality displayed for these calls was rather low, then you should create a bid for a higher quality level. Observe in the table header whether this would increase the number of non-executable calls in the new settings column and adjust your price bid accordingly.
If the call quality on many of your examples was clearly lower than the expected call quality suggests, then please send a ticket to support@dialfire.com with your examples. We will then contact the provider and devalue this route in the meantime. For a short term fix, you can set a blocking rule yourself for this provider by filtering by carrier code and setting the bid to zero. Don't forget to remove the rule again after support has given you feedback.

What do the stars mean in expected CLI quality?

CLI refers to the transmission of the caller's telephone number. The rating is used to estimate how reliably the call number transmission will function over a longer period of time. Here, too, the expected quality is based on information from the provider, feedback from our customers and our own tests.
In some cases, technical problems during the transition between different networks are to blame for the faulty transmission. In some cases, there are also regulatory restrictions on which phone number may be transmitted from which network. And some destination networks simply impose high surcharges on certain call origins.
For this reason, the CLI quality has a high influence on the call price and can sometimes increase it by a factor of 10 to 100.

• ★★★★★ Your phone number is almost always displayed correctly to the customer.
• ★★★★☆ Your phone number is most often displayed correctly.
• ★★★☆☆ Your own call number is usually displayed correctly.
• ★★☆☆ Your own call number is partially displayed correctly.
• ★☆☆☆☆ The own call number is displayed sporadically at most.

My phone number is sometimes not transmitted correctly, what can I do?

First, look in the history tab via the phone number for appropriate examples where this has come to the attention of the person being called.
If the expected CLI quality was rather low in these examples, then create a bid for a higher CLI quality. Observe in the table header whether this would increase the number of non-executable calls in the new settings column and adjust your price bid accordingly.
If the examples of such calls are more frequent than one should expect based on the CLI quality rating, then please send an appropriate ticket to support@dialfire.com with your examples. We will then contact the provider and devalue this route in the meantime. For a short term fix, you can set a blocking rule yourself for this provider by filtering by carrier code and setting the bid to zero. Don't forget to remove the rule again after support has given you feedback.

A certain country is not in my price list. What do I have to do?

If you have tried to make calls to this country before and got an error message error 166, you will see an entry in the missing bids tab. Click there on add bidding rule and a new bid will be created, which would have executed all dialing in the past. Check if the bidding rule meets your expectations and save the new rule.
If you had not tried it yet, then first create a new bid rule. There you enter your destination country in the destination field. The easiest way to do this is to enter the country code and then select a suitable destination from the suggestions. In addition, enter your maximum price bid for this route in the green area. After saving, you can make calls to the country immediately.

How are the prices for the route suggestions calculated?

Dialfire uses machine learning to predict the reachability and connection duration of each individual dial-up as accurately as possible. The prices are therefore determined individually for each dial-up attempt from the following parameters, among others:

• the predicted connection rate (if the rate is low, lines are blocked unnecessarily and the call minute tends to be more expensive)
• the predicted call duration (for predominantly short calls, e.g. answering machines, the call minute tends to be more expensive)
• transmitted telephone number (depending on the caller's telephone number region, prices often differ by a multiple)
• Time of day (particularly favourable offers are partly limited in their availability)