Are you one of those striving call center agents in the industry who are having a hard time maintaining quotas? Have you been thinking about how your efficient colleagues accomplish their workloads and meet Key Performance Indicators (KPI) despite many challenges at work? Or are you mainly concerned about improving your outbound calling system and bringing your revenue per client (RPC) to a new level?
No matter what your reasons may be, it’s crucial to know the secret to boost your outbound calling system and achieve what you’re aiming for.
Role Of Outbound Telemarketing In Call Center Industry
When it comes to being a call center agent, you should know there are many obstacles you’ll have to deal with in your journey to honing yourself as an effective employee. Being an outbound agent isn’t as easy as it may seem. There are days you’ll have to deal with a lot of difficulties and customer concerns. Fortunately, you can utilize various forms of predictive dialer systems to solve your problems.
Outbound telemarketing is a practice in the call center industry mainly involving a system of cold calling potential customers to inform them about a certain service or product and persuade them to purchase it.
Outbound telemarketing covers a wide range of services such as:
- Providing database updates
- Conducting outbound telemarketing surveys
- Scheduling of appointments
- Improving lead generation and prospecting
- Notifying customers
- Handling customer service
On the other hand, an outbound call center agent’s role is to follow a script formulated as a part of a bigger and more detailed telemarketing campaign. While you may wonder what this is all about, it’s more like a copy of instruction on how to respond to queries and objections arising from clients or customers.
Essential Use Of Predictive Dialer Systems
It’s important to know what predictive dialer systems are all about and how important they are in outbound telemarketing. To help you more, below are necessary things you ought to know about such systems:
- Among other technological innovations you can use to enhance your outbound calling system, one of the most common and highly efficient tools you can use includes predictive dialer systems. It’s a type of automated calling software primarily dialing a number from a list and makes use of algorithms to screen out busy signals. Also, it deals with unlinked phones and answering machines.
- Modernized predictive dialer systems may also offer benefits in enhancing your team’s full potential and adjusting the customers’ calling patterns.
- Predictive dialer systems can significantly help the sales team manage their time wisely and avoid wasting time if possible.
- Though handling outbound calling systems can be daunting, some ways can be utilized to effectively manage calls and sales. With the assistance of various technological advancements and innovations, outbound telemarketing continues to rise in popularity over the past decades. There’s also a remarkable growth in its market, which significantly bolsters its stability and security.
- Aside from the aforementioned technological advancements, another efficient innovation to help you manage your outbound calling system includes software applications such as Mass Test App and others. You can also utilize such applications to send Short Message Service (SMS) texts to a large number of people simultaneously.
Tips To Boost Your Outbound Calling System
After learning some important things about outbound telemarketing and predictive dialer systems, listed below are helpful ways to bolster your outbound calling system:
1. Utilize Outbound Dialing Systems
Outbound calling systems involve the use of scripts among agents to follow and a list of numbers to contact. Call center agents have to pick a number from the list, dial potential clients manually, and see if the lines were connected. However, with this particular setup, almost 65% of calls were disconnected, which significantly delays the teams’ operation. Besides, there are also instances when the call was only answered by an answering machine or fax.
Consequently, such scenarios diminish the team’s motivation and drive to perform well as their efforts often turned out to be futile. It also led to lower KPIs and sales rates. To put a stop to this prevailing concern, various companies make use of technological innovations and advancements like predictive dialing technology to help their staff deal with the issue.
This system automatically dials a number from the list and transfers the call to a team member only if the call is connected. Through this alternative, the team won’t have to waste time dialing disconnected lines, further boosting their productivity.
Another efficient alternative to help you enhance your outbound calling system is through bolstering your campaign management efficiency. This can be achieved utilizing comprehensive analysis and powerful statistics.
Additionally, team leaders can now evaluate metrics on connection rates in geographic locations and promote appropriate campaign configurations. They’re also able to keep track of the number of times the system redials a certain contact, control the maximum redial systems, and decide on when to end a campaign.
2. Impart Pertinent Information
Call center agents, both inbound and outbound ones, are responsible for handling and imparting a quantity of information to their clients. Such duties make them responsible for filtering out details and concentrating on significant aspects through systematic applications. When in a call, always remember to include valuable and logical pieces of information in your conversation to make it more informative.
While numerous reliable software assistances can help your carry out your goals and purpose, you still need the knowledge and expertise about dealing with potential issues and concerns your clients may raise.
Also, you can utilize dependable software assistance to enhance your conversations with other people. Remember, clients vary depending on their concerns and issues, so make sure to provide them specific pieces of data they need.
3. Execute Proper Consolidation Of Data
When it comes to upgrading the level of your outbound calling system, one of the primary things you can do is to keep a record of your performance within a certain frame. Not only can it keep you aware of your work quality, but it can also provide a more comprehensive picture of your performance.
To pull this off, you must track customer experience metrics and keep a record of them. It’s also necessary for you to incorporate every data you have to determine their common areas and touchpoints.
To properly consolidate the data you have, you must learn some smart call center data processes to make your job easier by connecting all channels to formulate a comprehensive solution.
4. Manage Data Dissemination
Contact centers, along with their staff, handle vast quantities of salient details of other people. They’re also responsible for various processes of data dissemination. Due to various technical issues within interconnected communication infrastructures, some people are having a hard time obtaining the services they need. As an outbound call center staff, the best thing you can do is to maximize the use of a reliable database management system to better cater to their concerns and needs.
You can also seek the help of professional information technology (IT) experts in your company and several service providers to better help you manage your data.
5. Demonstrate Professionalism And Confidence
While there are significant differences between inbound and outbound calling systems, one of the primary things both of them may require is the agent’s ability to execute proper working ethics and confidence while in a call. As an outbound call center agent, demonstrating professionalism is an essential factor to help make your clients believe in the information you’re aiming to impart.
Always maintain confidence and consistency. You also have to know most customers can recognize the authenticity of the brand by just listening to the agent’s voice. Therefore, conviction and authority are some key factors most people look for when they’re dealing with an outbound agent.
Whenever you’re promoting your products or service’s brand, make sure you’re emphasizing its benefits and potential use to your customers as well as highlighting the legitimacy of your product. If you’re selling items, you may introduce them to your client valiantly and incorporate verified data to ensure validity and reliability. If you’re not sure about what to say, you may use a script but prevent it from sounding artificial.
6. Keep A Natural Tone
When it comes to telemarketing, one of the most common problems staffs need to deal with is the tone of their voices when they’re on a call. Most agents sound unnatural when speaking, which can affect the quality of their work. While it’s understandable for such situations to occur in this type of work environment, there are numerous ways you can do to solve the problem.
It may take you some time to learn the products’ features and get accustomed to the script. However, speaking in a natural tone allows you to exhibit expertise and knowledge about your service and helps you answer queries with ease. Telemarketers often find it difficult to answer simple and genuine questions without the use of a guide. When this happens, experienced shoppers can come up to a realization you’re spewing made-up stories, and this turns them off big time.
As a professional outbound call center staff, you should always maintain your composure while answering calls. Keep your tone natural and avoid sounding like an automated machine.
7. Promote Customer Experience
One of the best practices in the call center includes rapport building. Some clients are initially hesitant to ask concerns, especially if the agent they’re talking to isn’t accommodating. While there are only a few instances of such a scenario, this may cause a lingering impact on the company’s image. It can also hinder you from obtaining your goals concerning the quota and KPIs.
Besides, if your client seems to not comprehend what you’re trying to impart with them, then you may not be able to provide them with good service. To avoid such situations, you should know the key to successful outbound calls includes establishing connections with your clients. You must also demonstrate proper working ethics to improve customer experiences.
8. Liven Up Your Conversations
High-quality calls often result in an easier promotion of goods and services you’re offering. To improve your conversations with a client, try to eliminate all kinds of fillers from your call. You should also avoid uttering vocal tics as they can significantly affect the quality of calls.
What you should do is select meaningful and relevant words, which can provide parallel support to your point. When your client finishes off a sentence, you must think of a logical and substantial reply to build a suitable impression in their minds and keep a steady flow of information between the two of you.
9. Prioritize Clients’ Preference
One major problem about the call center industry, especially among outbound call center staff, is they tend to push through with their opinions without seeking their clients. Similarly, agents initiate their insights even before their customers ask a relevant question. While this isn’t entirely the problem of the majority, some of them tend to listen less to their clients’ issues and focus more on selling their products.
Such scenarios often establish an impression of an advertorial and hard-sell campaign policy, which may leave an unpleasant impression on your customers. The best approach to deal with such scenarios is to listen attentively to their opinions, wait for their questions, and then do your part. You may start with presenting your product to the client, know their ideas, and then provide a sensible reply with the product’s attributes.
Conclusion
Being an outbound call center agent isn’t easy because you’re expected to impart relevant information to your clients and educate them about the products and services you’re promoting. Also, you have to provide quality performances and accommodate your client’s concerns regarding varying issues to the best of your capacity and knowledge.
In terms of boosting your outbound calling system, you may utilize some helpful ways such as using outbound dialing systems, providing relevant information, executing proper consolidation of data, improving the quality of your calls, and demonstrating proper work ethics. Learning about some of these practices can significantly boost your outbound calling system and help you improve as an agent.