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If you’ve been in the marketing industry for a while, you’re probably familiar with the concept of outbound calls.
According to a study by Instapage, 32% of marketers say that outbound calls effectively promote their marketing strategy and lead generation. By using outbound marketing, businesses can get their products to a wider audience more quickly. But, the best part? Recent innovations have been introduced that can help further optimize the outbound calling process.
Indeed, the development of predictive and auto dialer software has improved many companies’ outbound calling strategies. As reported by PR Newswire, the predictive dialer software market size is estimated to reach $12.19 billion by 2028. The basic idea of this software is that it begins making calls even before an agent becomes available. It’s also called predictive because the software uses algorithms that predict whether a person will actually pick up their phone.
With these automated functions, your company can cut overall downtime and make the entire business operation more efficient. The intelligent software also maximizes your call center agents’ productivity while eliminating their worries of time zone navigation and idle time.
Still, you may be asking, “How can I make the most out of my outbound calling strategy, and what’s the best auto dialer software?” Continue reading to find out.
1. Improve Your Customer Database
Your customer database is the backbone of your outbound call efforts. Therefore, you need to have a solid database if you want your software to work well. One tip to improve your customer database is to use an external one.
Initially, you might think this strategy won’t work because other call centers use structured query language or Excel databases. But using an external database will help make it easier for you to randomize your customer profiles and contacts, leading to lower abandonment rates and wait times. It will also reduce your daily operational workload and is helpful for data security and recovery.
2. Organize Your Customer Lists
Let’s say you already have an improved customer database. The next thing you need to do is organize your customer lists. Customer lists are a record of all your past, existing, and potential customers. It’s useful for promotion and keeping up with your customers. Sometimes, customer lists can be broken down into groups of customers based on demographics, behaviors, preferences.
Organizing your customer lists can be tiring, but it will help optimize your outbound dialer software. Organizing your lists will also reveal any inaccurate or incomplete information. So, make sure your lists are updated, and all your contact information is valid and active.
3. Review Your KPIs
Your key performance indicators or KPIs will provide you with the necessary information to ensure that your predictive and auto dialer software is good, optimized, and up to speed. These key statistics also show you whether your marketing efforts are failing, progressing, or achieved.
Some common examples of KPIs include:
- Finance: return on investments, return on sales
- Banking: number of loans and assets, customer retention
- Teamwork: satisfied clients, completed projects
- Operations: lead time, efficiency ratios
- Retail: customer satisfaction, expected return, sales per store
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4. Make Recommendations Based on Your KPIs
Reviewing your key performance indicators is helpful, but making recommendations based on these KPIs is even better. For instance, when you introduce new company policies or marketing strategies, you can align them with your KPIs. If you also want to fast-track your contact center operations or evaluate your auto dialer software’s efficiency, KPIs can be a great tool.
Key performance indicators are more than just numbers and reports—they’re essential to the health and success of your call center business.
5. Know Your Customers
We’ve already discussed the importance of improving your customer database and organizing customer lists. But what good will these actions do if you don’t genuinely know your customers? Before you go out and look for the best predictive dialer in the market, you should first know your customers. By doing so, sorting out your customer database will seamlessly follow.
Moreover, knowing your customers will help you understand who you’re optimizing for and what prospective clients need. For example, who is your target audience? Where is your business most and least popular? Or perhaps, which of your customers has the best returns? All this information should be at your fingertips if you want to better optimize your predictive and auto dialer software.
6. Only Get What You Need
When optimizing your software, you should only get what you need. It might be tempting to get software with all the high-tech bells and whistles, but those extra functions will eventually get in the way of what you’re trying to achieve. The best tip is to keep a list of the must-have auto dialer features to boost your operational efficiency.
Moreover, you can consider the following factors when choosing a dialer software for your business:
- Technical support and ease of use
- CRM integration capability
- Multiple campaigns management
- Pace algorithm customization
- Call dispositions
- Ringing strategy
- Software compatibility with your business needs
- Cost
- Legal compliance
- And other features: voice call recording, auto callbacks, time zones, SMS and email integration, local dialing numbers, etc.
7. Customer Support Is Key
When choosing the best predictive dialer software for your company, you should find a provider that offers great customer service. As enumerated above, customer relationship management and CRM integration are two significant factors to consider when purchasing auto dialer software. As revealed by Microsoft, 90% of American consumers decide whether they want to do business with a company based on customer service.
Plainly, you should invest in predictive and auto dialer software that helps your customer representatives offer a seamless experience to customers. Some of the best software providers that understand the importance of excellent customer service include CommPeak, CallHippo, MyOperator, and SparkTG.
8. Motivate Your Customer Support Team
Your auto dialer software is only as good as the people who operate it and therefore it’s crucial to have a highly motivated staff. Motivating your sales and customer support teams can be challenging but not impossible. You can incentivize performance or reward the staff who have produced the highest sales for the month.
You may also provide opportunities for promotion, host regular training sessions, celebrate achievements, and share customer appreciation. Most of all, your team members should feel that their voices matter and that they’re an asset to the company.
9. Communicate Well
Last but not least, it is essential to establish good communication with everyone on your team if you want to fully harness the power of your predictive or auto dialer. What can you do with a communications degree if you can’t communicate well? Communication barriers can prevent problems from being identified and solved, so if you want to make the most out of your auto dialer software, your team should be able to talk with you freely. Allow them to voice their suggestions. Conduct regular meetings to evaluate your software’s performance and your overall business operations.
Optimize Your Outbound Calling Strategy With the Best Predictive and Auto Dialer Software
Optimizing your outbound calls using the best predictive and auto dialer software can leverage your business to its fullest potential. It may seem like a daunting task at first, but many call center companies have tried it and have profited greatly. With all the benefits of the predictive dialer, your customer support team will better address your customers’ needs and improve your lead generation, sales, and revenue.