Trade Secrets: Getting the Best out of Your Outbound Dialler

Quoted on this wiki

Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.

1. Don’t ring parents during the school run “If you don’t have much history of the contact – if perhaps you’re cold calling – clichéd thinking can work until you start building your own records. For example, if you know your contact is a parent, don’t bother phoning at school run times.” Ken Reid

   In Best days and times to cold call

2. Here’s some common-sense for time-of-day calling: “A telemarketing operation will get higher connect rates calling home numbers outside of business hours than inside business hours.” If you call somebody at the same time of day as you did yesterday you’ll likely get the same outcome.

   In Call timing analysis

3. It’s automation that makes an outbound dialler so useful, but you can extend that automation across other areas. “Using an application programming interface (API), the dialler can work closely with your customer relationship management (CRM) platform.” Integrating your dialler and CRM means you could:

   In Dialer and CRM integration

4. Integrating your dialler and CRM means you could: “Update client records automatically when calls are made” Provide agents with up-to-date information from your CRM

   In Dialer and CRM integration

5. Update client records automatically when calls are made “Provide agents with up-to-date information from your CRM” Automate follow-up and administration – like changing customer status or despatching more information by post or email

   In Dialer and CRM integration

6. Provide agents with up-to-date information from your CRM “Automate follow-up and administration – like changing customer status or despatching more information by post or email” Automation can also be extended to other areas, such as the central calendar system, emails, appointment reminders, inbound email, and SMS messaging.

   In Dialer and CRM integration

7. When people don’t recognise the caller’s number, or see a non-geographic number, they’re much less likely to pick up. “Most diallers can set the caller ID to match your prospect’s geographic area – so your callers see a familiar number and are more likely to answer the phone.” With thanks to Chris Key at Hostcomm

   In Local presence dialing

8. Mike Donohue “A good predictive dialling system will flag these issues up for you without the need to go wading through vast amounts of data to try and pinpoint where the problems are.” You might consider investigating other avenues for data sourcing but you can also look to do more with what you already have. For example, wrong numbers; it’s a quick win to send these records to a data cleansing company for verification.

   In Predictive dialers

9. Progressive dialling works by waiting until the agent has indicated that they are ready for a call, so information about the call is presented and the number is then dialled. “Predictive dialling relies on automatically dialling out calls at a rate forecast to match the speed at which agents will be available – but runs the risk of an agent not being available for a call at any time and therefore those ‘silent calls’.” With thanks to Simon Beeching at Syntec

   In Predictive dialers

Quotes are verbatim and belong to their publishers. Where a quote has been translated, the original wording is kept below it.