Technology Automation has transformed how contact centres operate across every industry; replacing time-consuming manual processes with streamlined, automated workflows provides opportunities to boost efficiency, productivity, and customer service while reducing operational costs.
Sales teams and outbound contact centres can leverage the power of automation by embracing the power of dialler technology. What was once a tedious manual activity requiring agents to dial each number physically can now be an automated process that significantly speeds up the repetitive process and saves agents time.
Outbound dialler software offers a simple way to reduce the time and effort involved in making outgoing calls to maximise productivity. However, with a wide range of outbound dialler solutions available, it’s essential to understand which type of outbound dialler best suits to the specific requirements of your contact centre.
In this guide to outbound diallers, we outline the different types of outbound dialler solutions you can use and explore practical ways to use outbound dialler technology to grow your business.
Continue reading to discover how an outbound dialler solution can boost your business and transform your contact centre!
Firstly, what is an outbound dialler and how does it work?
An outbound dialler is a software solution enabling a contact centre to automate outgoing calls. There are many different types of outbound dialling systems, each offering specific features and benefits.
Rather than relying on physical equipment, modern auto-diallers utilise VoIP software and cloud-based technology to ensure implementation and maintenance is quick and easy. Once your contact centre is set up with an outbound dialler solution, your agents can use this for outgoing calls using any device with an internet connection and a voice path.
Outbound diallers detect the presence of answering machines and only then connect agents to customers who have responded to the call. Once a call is finished, the dialler will connect the agent to the next customer.
In this way, outbound diallers can significantly improve efficiency, offering a fast and streamlined alternative to manual dialling.
Next, let’s look at the different outbound diallers available for contact centres.
The Three Types of Outbound Diallers
Advanced outbound diallers combine process automation with AI-based technology, enabling contact centres to boost operational efficiency and continually improve their processes for ongoing business growth.
When choosing an outbound dialler solution for your contact centre, the first consideration is which type of outbound dialler will be best suited to your specific needs, call volumes, and business type.
The following three outbound diallers are the most common in today’s contact centres:
Preview Dialler
A preview dialler is an outbound dialler that presents leads and customer details to the agent responsible for initiating the call. This allows agents to prepare themselves for the call and read previous interaction details to ensure they are well-informed before making the call.
With CRM integration, this delay gives the agent time to view a client’s record before dialling.
Progressive Dialler
With a progressive dialler, a call is only made when an agent is available and provides time for an agent to review customer details before calling within a pre-defined time. This ensures agents efficiently improve contact rates while maintaining customer experience as no calls are dropped.
Predictive dialler
A predictive dialler is an outbound dialler that uses intelligent algorithms to forecast the available agents’ ratio to live calls accurately.
The predictive dialler will then call numbers before agents become available, optimising connect rates, talk time, and agent productivity. This solution is particularly beneficial for larger organisations making a high volume of outbound calls that want to maximise efficiency for their outbound team.
Here are 10 ways you can use outbound diallers to grow your business:
- Create more personalised conversations using a preview dialler
When using a preview outbound dialler, an agent can control when they are presented with the next call. As they have time to prepare for the call, the agent may read through background materials in the customer relationship management system (CRM). This enables the agent to review the call script and ensure they have all the necessary information available to handle the situation appropriately.
Preview dialling is best suited for more complex cases and sensitive calls. With these conversations, the agent will benefit from having more context before engaging with the customer.
By enabling agents to be adequately prepared before starting the call, businesses can achieve higher call resolution rates, improve customer satisfaction, and increase engagement. The only downside to preview dialling is the slower pace of outbound calling, which is necessary to provide the agent with extra preparation time.
- Using progressive dialling to increase productivity
Progressive dialling works similarly to preview dialling, with contact centre agents having more time between calls to prepare for the next call. However, with this type of outbound dialler, contact centre managers can limit their agents’ time to review the information before the system automatically starts dialling. This helps maximise agent productivity while still having adequate time to review customer information.
As a result, progressive dialling enables a faster calling process, with the benefit of having time between calls. However, this method does mean that the agent has less time to review the background information and prepare for the call.
Progressive dialling is an excellent choice for contact centres that balance high output with improved customer experience. As calls are dialled on a 1:1 ratio when agents are available, they can provide the best service to each customer without the risk of the dialler hanging up on a customer.
- Using a predictive dialler to maximise productivity and increase sales conversions
Using a predictive dialler method of outbound dialling can offer a range of benefits, including minimising idle time, increasing efficiency, improving contact rates, and increasing talk time.
A predictive dialler connects agents to the next live caller as they finish their previous call, using algorithms to establish when to make the next call. Predictive dialling algorithms draw on data such as average call duration to accurately forecast the ratio of available agents to live calls.
As predictive diallers dial several numbers at once and then direct the first answered call to an available agent, this outbound dialler effectively improves outbound calling speed and agent productivity.
Predictive dialling can be a great choice for contact centres with high outbound call volumes. It allows them to improve talk time by leveraging answering machine detection technology to ensure agents are constantly talking to customers. It can also boost productivity and reduce idle time.
- Setting up callbacks to maximise sales opportunities
Scheduled callbacks feature outbound dialler technology that can help agents maximise every lead opportunity by ensuring every potential lead is ultimately contacted via an automated process.
With a scheduled callback feature, missed customer calls are registered on the dialler system, and the number is then called back later. This way, callbacks can help to maximise every sales opportunity while reducing call abandonment rates.
Using callbacks as part of your contact centre outbound dialling strategy can help to improve efficiency, increase agent productivity, and enhance call resolution rates.
- Incorporating list weighting to prioritise high-value calls
In any contact centre, some lead lists represent a higher value than others.
List weighting is a feature of advanced outbound dialler systems that allows you to load multiple lists of leads to an outbound campaign and apply prioritisation inputs, such as a ‘weighting’ that specifies the ratio at which you would like each list to be dialled. For example, a 50% weighting for a campaign with two lead lists will ensure that each list will be blended equally.
Blending lead lists with a ‘weighting’ will ensure your agents maintain enthusiasm and perform at their best for every call, regardless of lead list quality.
- Using state-based or mobile CLIs to improve contact rates
CLIs – or calling line identification – are numbers that are purchased by most contact centres and are the numbers that are displayed when making outbound calls to customers and prospects alike.
Many organisations leverage state-based or mobile CLIs to increase contact rates. Customers are more likely to answer calls they recognise as a local or mobile number rather than a business number.
State-based CLIs are a great option to increase contact rates, as the numbers will dynamically change based on the state being called. Using the right technology that links your state-based CLIs to your outbound campaigns will mean that your agents won’t need to change the numbers manually and can focus on selling.
- Using answering machine detection to increase contact rates
Answering machine detection technology is an essential feature of your outbound dialler software to improve contacts and increase talk time.
Using answering machine detection software, a call will only be presented to your agents when a customer has answered the call, as calls that go to voicemail are automatically filtered and disconnected.
The ability to filter out calls that direct to an answering machine means your contact centre agents will have more opportunities to speak to prospects, resulting in higher engagement and improved conversion rates.
Having more conversations with leads and customers – rather than manually dialling numbers and ending up on voicemail – means agents can engage directly with customers and build connections.
- Optimising the campaign creation process with an intuitive leads module
An intuitive leads module provides a guided user experience, enabling dialler managers to upload, map data fields easily, and validate lead lists.
This intuitive leads module helps dialler managers efficiently set up and implement outbound campaigns while also minimising errors through validating checks native to the system. Furthermore, uploading your lists automatically through a system that dials leads will ensure that agents can focus on their sales calls.
- Protecting your phone numbers from being blocked
Customers are more likely to answer a call when they recognise who is calling them. Tools such as Branded Call ID allows businesses to display their company name, logo, and call reason on all outbound calls. This increases contact rates and talk time with valuable customers.
Organisations can also protect their brand identity, as customers are less likely to mark calls as ‘spam’ when provided with more information regarding the call. This is also a cost-effective measure to implement, as businesses will not frequently require additional CLI numbers.
- Optimising performance with QA and Speech Analytics
Using call recording technology as part of your outbound dialling system can be a simple yet highly effective way to enhance how your contact centre team handles calls and services customers.
You can subsequently review customer interactions by recording calls to identify opportunities to improve customer satisfaction. In addition, call recordings can be used by your Quality Assurance team to assess agent performance, enabling the provisioning of specific training and feedback based on actual performance.
Another benefit of call recordings is when organisations use this data to leverage the compliance and risk benefits of Speech Analytics. 100% of calls are automatically transcribed and analysed for deeper insights into each customer conversation. The system detects nuances in the customer or agent’s voice and reveals emotions such as stress or anger. Organisations can see customer dissatisfaction or proactively intervene with agents to support staff and reduce attrition.
If you’d like to discover how ipSCAPE can help optimise your contact centre with our advanced outbound dialler, state-based or mobile CLIs, QA, and speech analytics solutions, get in touch today.
ipSCAPE is a cloud communication technology solution that is feature-rich, scalable, and has advanced integration capabilities. We help businesses connect with their customers through multi-channel communications, including Voice, Web Chat, Email, SMS, IVR, and other emerging channels.