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Exploring the 4 Types of Outbound Dialers

Exploring and implementing this software helps ensure outbound contact centers continue to make outbound calls

Exploring and implementing this software helps ensure outbound contact centers continue to make outbound calls while simultaneously automating calling and boosting productivity. Depending on the situation, there are 4 major outbound dialer types to choose from.

What Is An Outbound Dialer?

For those unaware, outbound dialer software dramatically improves the effectiveness of sales reps and significantly reduces manual and trivial tasks regarding outward calls. Basically, it helps agents make more calls. These dialers automate the calling process which allows agents to solely focus on customer satisfaction, conversation, and journey. This technology is critical to success for either businesses or organizations and helps save tons of time. As cloud-based dialer solutions are being implemented into modern business practices, this type of software can have a dramatic impact on outbound campaigns.

Table of Contents:

  • What Are The 4 Most Popular Outbound Dialers?
    • Preview Dialer
    • Predictive Dialer
    • Progressive Dialer
    • Power Dialer
  • Why Would A Contact Center Want To Use An Outbound Dialer?
  • Improving Agent Productivity
  • Industries Using Dialer Software
  • How Do Outbound Call Centers Use This Software?
  • Typical Use Cases
  • FAQ

What Are The 4 Most Popular Outbound Dialers?

Deciding which type of dialer works best for your organization is critical to meeting goals and revenue. There are 4 major choices concerning this software and each has a variety of features, functions, and pricing that differentiate them from each other depending on your business needs.

A preview dialer uses a one-to-one calling ratio (one number is dialed per available agent), giving the agent the ability to preview a contact’s information before placing or skipping a call. Having this information readily available provides the agent with the ability to review customer information before a call is made.

A predictive dialer will automatically dial a multitude of phone numbers from a calling list by predicting the ratio of customers who will answer the phone based on a mathematical algorithm. It can detect any agent’s availability without the agent being part of the process and connect the agent with a live call.

A progressive dialer provides customer contact information to an agent before the call is even made. It automotes the entire process of making an outbound phone call so agents don’t waste time manually dialing each number from a list. This drastically reduces idle time and will increase agent efficiency.

A power dialer will make calls from one number to another successively through a calling list which eliminates the amount of time spent between dialing. For call centers dealing with extremely high amounts of outbound calls and hoping to reach as many potential customers as possible, this dialer will always call the next number in line.

Why Would A Contact Center Want To Use An Outbound Dialer?

A contact center would want to use this software for a multitude of reasons. Using this software will optimize agent performance, maximize salesforce, increase call conversion rates, and improve customer outreach. Essentially, this software will create happy customers as it helps cut back on dropped calls or extended wait times. Deciding which dialer your sales team will use is a critical aspect of delivering the greatest possible customer experience depending on what your organization wants to accomplish.

Other reasons include:

  • Agents can manage calls from only one space
  • Monitor and review the success of engagements
  • Filter out answering machines 
  • Access the entire call history of each customer
  • CRM Integration

A key benefit revolves around CRM (Customer Research Management). By having access on an agent desktop to each individual’s customer information, agents can create a more sophisticated and personalized approach when outbound dialing. Plus, using this key information, agents can target specific customer demands or preferences to create a more unique and personal customer experience. Now, the agent can focus on campaign management and goals as they have full access to call history, preferences, and information. If an agent is unqualified to handle a certain task or question, said agent can shift the call to a specialist through routing to successfully assist the customer. This increases call duration and significantly improves the customer journey as customers are more likely to stay on the line if they are being helped in a positive and effective way.

Improving Agent Productivity

There are a variety of benefits when using this software that will make a world of difference to a standard business or global organization. For starters, the most obvious benefit is it reduces idle time to ensure agents are focusing on the next number and next caller. Plus, it can filter out any voicemails or busy signals before connecting agents to the call. In fact, the entire process becomes significantly faster as it takes out the manual and repetitive tasks on the agent’s side. By eliminating manual tasks that were common years ago, as a business or organization, you are maximizing agent efficiency during their time on call which in turn will increase revenue, create engaging customer relationships, and provide unrivaled performance. The simplicity of the process is the basis of workflow automation within this industry.

Industries Using This Dialer Software

The dialer industry earns over a billion dollars annually and is rapidly growing as the years pass. A dialer allows organizations to select from multiple dialing modes, create real-time solutions between agent and customer, and maximize sales and revenue. Dialers can be effective in a variety of industries including: B2B sales and services, finances, telemarketing, and travel.

How Do Outbound Call Centers Use This Software?

These facilities use this software in a vast variety of ways. By implementing this type of software, you can experience an array of benefits for your agents, customers, and organization as a whole. For example, it decreases wasted time for agents, increases the overall number of connected calls, maximizes customer satisfaction, identifies and monitors records or information, and ensures a higher conversion ratio.

Typical Use Cases

There are plenty of examples of typical cases that use this specific software.

In popular B2B sales and solutions, connect with customer outreach, send notifications, and set up appointments. Plus, make multiple calls to potential customers based on a specific call list for those excited or interested about a particular product. These B2B sales teams can contact customers post-purchase to provide a personal approach to sales and maximize customer growth and satisfaction.

Financial agents and services can hold onto previous records or interactions from a customer and can identify when and who contacted that specific customer, account information, or customer financial status. With this software, banks and financial institutions can receive safe and secure payments directly from their customers backed by data protection and privacy.

Healthcare workers can use this software to send valuable appointment reminders, notifications for medicine renewal, patient surveys, and follow-ups. The healthcare industry is rapidly growing into a patient-quality focused enterprise as in order to receive reimbursement, they must offer quality, simplicity, and care to match the goals of their patients. Now, patients can easily schedule appointments or receive appointment notifications with the help of this software, which in turn, will increase the overall satisfaction of the patients.

Proactive Calls: a call sent out to answer a specific or important customer question, a complimentary introductory call, or a call to record customer interest or feedback.

Renewal Calls: a call sent out to a customer to renew a service (using a dialer to call customers automatically who may need a renewal on a particular product or service).

Travel agents can keep track of all customer interactions while using a call log to assist and inform agents on which customers have been contacted. Also, using this saved information, agents can plan ahead and potentially contact recurring customers who may want to travel again at a later time in the future.

Other remaining industries may include:

  • Lead Generation
  • Debt Collection

These are several of the industries where this software is commonly used and implemented. Due to the power and efficiency of this software, it can help significantly improve quality management, marketing campaigns, and product overview techniques.

FAQ

Auto dialers are popular software tools used in cloud-based call center software facilities that make outbound dialing calls to phone numbers in a fast, easy, and efficient way which significantly increases the number of calls per hour and outbound productivity. It ensures agent availability by allowing agents to solely focus on creating genuine conversations and relationships with their customers whether they are trying to finalize a sale, create a new channel partner or determine a new strategic alliance . Often popularized alongside omnichannel software, these dialing systems are essential as they maximize agent time and efficiency while simultaneously reducing downtime.

By using a contact list, a live agent can reach countless potential customers to try to make a sale. Calls using an auto dialer systems are automatically called and are significantly more efficient than performing the process by hand. Using basic metrics will ensure more customers are reached than ever before compared to an older business phone system. Plus, with this software, agents are able to identify if there was an answered or unanswered call. In basic terms, the more customers reached in the least amount of time, the higher chance of potential revenue; thus maximizing workflow.

Below is a list of dialer topics that are common in the industry. 

Power Dialing

A tool to make calls from one number to the next seamlessly through a list eliminating time spent inputting the numbers by hand.

Predictive Dialing

Used to automatically call multiple numbers from a list by predicting the ratio of customers who will answer based on an algorithm. It can instantly connect an agent with a live call.

Progressive Dialing

Provides customer contact information to an agent before a call is made reducing time wasting and boosting agent effectiveness. 

As a business, choose which dialing mode works best to match your company goals. 

Answering Machine

Will receive missed calls but offer a personalized message to the caller; a voicemail 

AI Virtual Agent

Used to assist in customer service interactions, answer customer questions, or fulfill requests or challenges

Automatic Call Distribution 

(ACD)

A system that automatically receives inbound voice calls and properly distributes them to an available agent or when an agent becomes available

Caller ID

A type of service that identifies any incoming calls. If missed, knowing the number will encourage a call back

Connection Rate

A mathematical formula used to determine call center efficiency from the amount of calls dialed to the amount of calls answered

Do-Not-Call Lists

A contact list that specifies customers who do not want to be contacted for any reason. Oftentimes, customers fill out the form to ensure they appear on the list.

Microsoft Teams

A software tool used to connect agents and team members together to solve issues and problems

Speech Analytics

A tool used to analyze live customer calls to call centers with speech recognition software to identify important information and improve the customer journey

A variety of these software tools are used by cloud contact center platforms to perform daily tasks and necessities as agents assist their customers. However, it is important to identify and follow all compliance tools and requirements for a high-performing organization.

Common Problems & Challenges Associated With This Software

Finding, learning, and incorporating resources for agent training is essential for the ability and productivity of your agents. There are several key practices agents should follow such as: not interrupting a caller, asking pertinent questions, sharing resources based on the direction of the call, or keeping a positive attitude while speaking to the caller. Using software or other resources allow agents to learn and improve their performance. For any business or organization implementing this software, there should be a 2 – 4 week training program for every agent to maximize their performance. By providing a resource library of information, reviewing data sheets of customer records and information, and analyzing systems integrators, agents will certainly excel in their productivity.

A common difficulty is finding the balance between overall organization objectives and fulfilling a customer’s goals. These two key aspects of business are not mutually exclusive. As a business, you need to find a healthy balance between serving your businesses’ interests while simultaneously meeting your client and customers needs.

While using this software, it is crucial to understand the laws and legalities revolving around this technology. As a call center facility, you must follow TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) among other regulations to avoid any negative legal issues while operating and implementing this software.

Attracting new clients and customers is key to growing a brand or business. Trying to find new and exciting ways to communicate with potential customers can be an extremely overwhelming task but with this software it will allow agents to reach countless prospective customers to share and spread the ideas of the organization. However, once they are on call, it is an entirely new battle to keep them interested. It is important to incorporate a personal and human touch to every call, as an intelligent virtual agent may not provide that type of interaction. Finding ways to identify goals and desires is the perfect way to attract and keep customers.

Travel agents can keep track of all customer interactions while using a call log to assist and inform agents on which customers have been contacted. Also, using this saved information, agents can plan ahead and potentially contact recurring customers who may want to travel again at a later time in the future.

Other remaining industries may include:

  • Lead Generation
  • Debt Collection

These are several of the industries where this software is commonly used and implemented. Due to the power and efficiency of this software, it can help significantly improve quality management, marketing campaigns, and product overview techniques.

Summary

Identifying the challenges of a contact centre are essential to understand how to maximize the success of any organization.

What Is The Difference Between Predictive Dialing and Preview Dialing?

There are various types and it’s important to identify which works best for your organization. 

  1. Predictive: this dialer automatically will call multiple numbers from a list by predicting the ratio of customers who will answer their phone based on a formula.
  2. Preview: uses a dynamic one-to-one calling ratio which provides the agent with a preview of the contact’s information before placing or skipping the call.

In Closing

Taking the time to implement time-saving and productivity-boosting strategies through this software will exponentially increase sales and revenue, significantly raise agent and customer satisfaction by creating genuine relationships, and launch your organization into the future.

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