7 Surefire Tips to Improve Your Outbound Calls Strategy
Outbound calls are the primary way many business agents use to communicate with clients. It is, therefore, critical to develop a sound and comprehensive strategy that allows these communications to run smoothly. This article will offer suggestions for improving your company’s outbound calls strategy.
What exactly is an outbound call?
Outbound calls are those made by your agents to your customers in the most basic sense.
Call centers must make these calls for various reasons, including sales and outreach efforts, as well as calling back customers who requested information that your agent did not have on hand during the initial call.
Creating a solid outbound calling strategy that uses all the available tools is critical to staying ahead of the competition.
Tips for improving your outbound calls strategy
1. Set your objectives and KPIs conversion rate
Conversion rate
Your conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of calls made by the number of successfully converted leads for a given time. It’s a simple metric, but it provides a good overall picture of your outbound calling strategy’s performance in terms of ROI.
Average handle time
Average handle time is another simple KPI that represents the average amount of time your agents spend on the phone with your prospects. As a rule, you should keep this metric as low as possible. After all, the shorter it is, the more calls your agents can handle per shift. Simply put, more calls equals more converted leads equals more profit for your company.
Answer success rate
This metric, also known as hit rate, calculates the percentage of phone numbers dialed that result in a successful connection between agents and prospects. It’s an essential KPI to monitor when developing your outbound calls strategy because it will help you decide which type of automatic dialer to use if you choose to use one. More on that later
2. Examine your strategy
Analysis and evaluation are critical stages in developing an Outbound Calls Strategy. When you’ve decided on a preliminary approach, solicit feedback from your coworkers in management and on the call center floor. Be open to suggestions, regardless of who makes them. The goal is to create a solid, workable strategy, so be prepared to make changes if necessary.
3. Make use of a predictive dialer
Managers understand idle time can be detrimental to call centers. Those few minutes an agent spends twiddling their thumbs between calls add up and can result in a significant amount of lost revenue month after month.
Your agents can save time, stay on task, and complete more outbound calls per shift than you ever thought possible with a predictive dialer automating the tedious task of searching for their next number.
4. Make use of a speed dialer
A power dialer is a simplified version of a predictive dialer. Power dialers dial one number per agent sequentially until a connection is made, whereas predictive dialers use algorithms to dial multiple numbers per agent in search of a connection.
As a rule, use predictive dialers when your connect ratio is less than 30% and speed dialers when your connect ratio is greater than 50%. Furthermore, predictive dialers perform better in high-volume call centers (1000+ calls per day), while speed dialers perform better in low-volume call centers (100-900 calls per day).
5. Click to call
If you don’t want to use an automatic dialing system, instead of manually entering phone number digits, click to call allows your agents to initiate outbound calls by simply clicking on phone numbers within an interface. In other words, it does precisely what its name implies. Isn’t it simple?
6. Make use of region-specific numbers
Regardless of who you are or where you are from, if you recognize the caller’s area code, you are more likely to pick up the phone. People are wary of foreign phone numbers for two reasons: one, there’s a slim chance they’ll recognize the person on the other end of the line, and two, depending on their carrier, these types of incoming calls can incur high fees.
7. Track results and don’t be afraid to experiment
As with many other business strategies, flexibility is an important aspect of successful outbound call strategies.
Is a high hit rate not resulting in a high conversion rate? Change your focus and experiment with tracking different KPIs. Is your predictive dialing system causing an increased number of dropped calls? Try using a speed dialer to see if you get better results.
The point is that every call center is unique, and what works well for one group may not work well for another, and vice versa. Solicit feedback from your staff on a regular basis and stay flexible — the ideal strategy for your contact center could be right around the corner.
In conclusion
In this article, we’ve outlined a few tips and tricks to help you improve your outbound calling strategy, but none will matter unless you have a solid foundation for success.
TheVoIPGuru guarantees to improve your call center’s outbound calling strategy. Our straightforward process allows you to be creative with your outbound calling strategy and is designed to work with a variety of call center sales techniques. What’s the best part? We can grow alongside your company. The sky is truly the limit!
