There are many ways customers can communicate with companies today—email or chatbot, Zoom, or Skype. But the phone call remains the most popular kind among them. So, when someone has questions about the product, price, or company, he prefers to pick up the phone and call you.
That’s why outbound call center services are still in demand. But how to understand you need to have an outbound call center? And then, how to improve its work to increase customer satisfaction and your income, respectively? Let’s talk about this.
What do you think, what is an outbound call center? Maybe, it is a room where are a lot of managers sitting at their tables and making outgoing calls?
Technically, you are right if you think so. But two nuances give an understanding that such a definition is not accurate and complete:
So, the outbound call center is a group of managers who make outbound calls using software that supports smooth work, facilitates tasks, and provides information for analyzing the effectiveness of the call center. They can work in the office or remotely. It doesn’t matter.
Has your company already had an inbound call center? If yes, that’s great. But beware of making the mistake of trying to use the same software for both inbound and outbound calls!
Inbound calls are usually about customer support. Your prospects call you to solve their issues and to get some help with processing orders and making payments. You can also inquire them about renewals and upgrades within these calls.
On the other hand, outbound calls are made by your sales team to generate leads via a cold outreach, for example. Or your agents can also call the customers to conduct market research or take feedback. Ideally, you should provide phone support for proactive customer service as well.
As you see, the functions of the two types of calls are entirely different. It is logical that for practical work, not only two separate groups of managers are needed, but also two sets of software.
Thus, if you want an effective outbound call center, you require the appropriate outbound call center software.
Are you sure you need to spend money to organize an outbound call center? Maybe, it will be more profitable for you to invest in other departments like marketing or support center?
There are three reasons why you should have this kind of call center:
If one of them is about your company, you indeed have to organize the practical work of your outbound call center.
Every business process has 7 general stages:
The workflow of your outbound call center also goes through this life cycle. Then, you should use software that can cover all the steps. Let’s see what it can be.
Integrating different departments and business structures without any software is complex, especially when more than 10 people are working at your company.
As you know, businesses use CRM systems or help desks for this purpose. It is impossible to overestimate its role, but we will look at CRM from the point of view of the outbound call center working process.
Firstly, the CRM system contains all information about your customers and leads. Thus, you can easily find it before making a call, and you may add new data after calling, so everyone can see it and know about the progress or difficulties with the client.
Secondly, your managers will have their tasks visible to them, their colleagues, and their supervisors. So, it is easier to monitor how the work process is going on and make corrections if needed. Also, you can see who is responsible for what actions and tasks.
If you don’t have the CRM system yet, we recommend selecting the one that can integrate successfully with the types of software we will talk about further.
When you have several outbound agents, it’s challenging to correctly organize and control their work. This type of software can make it easier to do.
Tagging helps organize and filter calls. For example, if your agent calls a new lead, and the last one is interested in the offer, he can assign the tag “interested” to the contact. Then, it is easy to look back or find the required information.
Call recording is the essential instrument for training your managers. You may also provide disciplinary actions depending on the records and do performance reviews.
Monitoring is a series of features that allow you to listen to live conversations with customers and even help agents communicate correctly. This is especially useful when training new employees and working with underperforming agents.
So, this software facilitates and improves your core workflow.
Remember the sixth stage, called result monitoring?
Analytics is essential for achieving your goals. So, use some tools to improve this process for your outbound call center.
Reporting should be regular. For example, the weekly reports from all call center agents. It is crucial not only for you as a boss but also for them. Because they will see the actual situations, it will motivate them to change something in their approach or ask for help in achieving better results.
And the last thing you should have is an outbound dialer itself. It helps to automate the work process and eliminate the time your agents could waste on manual processes. How does it work?
Commonly, the outbound dialer can send prerecorded voicemails, show brief information about the client from the CRM system during the call, and update the data after the call if needed. For that, it should be perfectly integrated with your CRM.
We’ll talk about different types of outbound dialers next.
There are 4 main types of outbound dialers. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each.
Remember what we said about the brief information the agent can see during the call? This type of dialer shows customer data for preview before making a call. Then, the manager has time to prepare. It is vital for sensitive calls or complex cases.
Do you want to save time and make more calls? You should try a progressive dialer that gives the customer information while the call is being made. It speeds up the outgoing call, but your outbound call center agents won’t have time to prepare.
There is another feature you should know about this dialer. If the prospect doesn’t answer, it automatically proceeds to dial the next contact.
It is a perfect solution for large outbound call centers that have to make thousands of calls daily because it is the fastest dialer among others. That’s how it works:
A predictive dialer automatically calls many customers at once. The agent is connected only when someone answers the phone. Every agent has a specific status in the system, so it knows who is busy and who is free.
The system is speedy and productive, but there could be a problem. The situation may arise when the client picks up the phone and all managers are busy. He will hear silence and hang up if he is not answered within a few seconds. You will waste money on the outbound calling, and the system will move on to the subsequent contacts, thereby losing sight of some customers.
The last type is deservedly the most optimal for most businesses. Why is that so?
A power dialer generates a list of contacts the agent plans to call. But calls do not start automatically if the user does not set up such a function. It also shows the customer information before the call is made and allows the agent to end the call or leave a voice message. Such opportunities help to enhance customer service in outbound call centers.
There are 3 key metrics that you can rely on for making a choice:
Ideally, it would help if you tried to find a dialer that would cover as many of your needs as possible. So, take a look at those tools, which have a lot of different functions and can give you many instruments to improve the workflow.
The Ring.io Sales Dialer is one of them. And there are reasons why we can say so.
This dialer perfectly integrates with the most popular CRM systems, such as Salesforce, Zoho, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Thus, it will quickly become a part of your work process.
Also, you will find out many useful features built into this software. For example:
As you can see, the Ring.io Sales Dialer can not only dial numbers but also helps to automate most tasks, analyze the efficiency of the workflow and facilitate the work and training of your employees.
Is this software suitable for your company? Do not think in vain; it is better to take a try. What’s more, it’s free for 14 days. Choose your CRM system if you are ready to start!
See what separates you from the world-class sales leaders and get the short-cut to becoming one.
Power Dialer lets you get the manual dialing out of the calling process. You can trigger a call with an automation, schedule a call, record it, and analyze it afterward. More time to sell! As an omnichannel sales engagement platform, Ring.io can cover all the digital channels you need to ensure successful customer interactions.
Empower your go-to-market (GTM) team with Ring.io, the market's most adaptable sales engagement platform, seamlessly integrated into Salesforce. Turn each rep into a masterful marketer, eloquent speaker, and expert in lead nurturing, significantly elevating their efficiency. With Ring.io, every call, email, and interaction is automatically recorded in the Salesforce Sales and Service Clouds, streamlining your workflow and enhancing data accuracy.
Channels are not created equally. You might discover that one is working better for your prospects or customers than other. We hand-picked channels and their combinations to deliver the percentage of engagement you can close your quota with.
