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Outbound Dialling Benefits
When we think of outbound dialling, we often think of debt recovery, where the customer's feelings fall second to recovering outstanding money, or telesales where it's all about reaching as many people as possible.
In today's competitive environment, it is no longer sufficient to advertise and expect the market to come to us by way of an incoming call. The internet allows customers to instantly find alternatives. Existing customers need to be stroked occasionally to encourage them to be loyal and as fewer new customers find us, we have to go in search of them.
Direction for call centre technologies in 2010-11
Enhancing the customer experience should be a core focus for call centres, but in doing this they will need to embrace different forms of media collaboratively. One such technology and concept that is currently greatly under-used is the Universal Queue - whereby multiple communication channels are integrated into a single queue to standardise processing and handling. This allows agents to collaborate centrally to resolve customer queries more effectively.
The technology has been available for years and systems were purchased with the capability to ensure they were future proof, but there were not many companies ready for this change in approach. We are now seeing companies, however, making more use of this technology as the divide between the call centre and online interaction narrows. Longer term, we expect to see companies using the concept of the Universal Queue in a proactive way to improve the service expectation of their customers.
Outbound calling
Outbound calling can be a tough job. You need to have the ability to listen to the person at the other end, communicate to them what you need them to know, and handle their concerns and issues with professionalism.
However, outbound agents also need to be strong sales people, with the ability to deal with knock backs and irate customers who object to being cold called.
Home working
The benefits of having a home working strategy as part of your contact centre resource plan have been well publicised over the past few years. The operational cost savings to be gained and the ability to grow an operation without all the traditional workplace costs can no longer be ignored.
Here are some practical steps that you can take now to ensure that you not only have a home working strategy but a plan that can be executed quickly.
GSM Gateway
The GSM Gateway reduces the call costs from fixed landlines to mobiles. The GSM Gateway is an intelligent device that connects to your existing phone system or IT infrastructure (incl VoIP). Users do not notice its presence as they make a call in the usual way.
You save between 30% - 50% as the call is directed to a much cheaper mobile-to-mobile network. The average cost of a call from a fixed line to a mobile is 9p per minute. With a GSM Gateway this cost can be cut to an average of 4p - 5p per minute, which is a very significant saving!