Call centers have been thriving on outbound dialers for years, not only because of the enormous volume of calls made to customers, but also because of the tedious nature of having to dial numbers repeatedly. It’s a monumental task for your agents that affects their productivity and steals their focus. It comes at the expense of having good conversations with customers and prevents them from adding strategic value to the business.
Here we break down the different types of outbound dialers and their use cases. Better understand outbound dialers and make the right choice for your business with these use cases and dialer types.
4 Types of outbound dialers:
Gone are the days when manual dialers were the backbone of call centers. Today, they are replaced by software that automatically dials telephone numbers from your target lists. There are many types of outbound dialers available in the market. Although some of them share similarities, each one caters to different business requirements.
1. Preview Dialers
A preview dialer identifies when an agent becomes available and provides key details about the recommended person to contact. After reviewing this information, the agent can either initiate the call or skip it and get a different number to contact. Once selected, the number is automatically called by the outbound auto dialer, and the agent is already prepared for the conversation.
Advantages:
- Gather customer data to personalize calls
- Increase agent performance by providing contextual information
- Handle complex customer situations
2. Progressive and Power Dialers
This type of outbound dialer automatically calls the next number in the queue as soon as agents have completed their current calls. It gives agents the time to gain more contextual information about the person to be contacted while the call is being made, but agents no longer control who they are going to talk to and how long they can take to review their information.
Some dialer allows over dialing, attempting more than one call when an agent becomes available. Progressive and power dialing are used interchangeably, the former often referring to customer service and support use cases and the latter to sales and marketing campaigns.
Advantages:
- Cost-effectively initiate a large number of calls
- Increase the chances of calls getting through
- Be more consistent in triggering positive call outcomes
3. Predictive Dialers
Predictive Dialers harness a pacing algorithm based on the success and failure patterns of recent calls to predict the number of calls that will go through. Predictive dialers adjust the number of calls made so that all available agents can be seamlessly connected to live customers.
While maximizing your agents’ occupancy, this pacing mode doesn’t give them time to get prepared for their calls and works best when limited personalization is warranted.
Advantages:
- Save time, effort, and money while managing contact centers
- Avoid long wasteful gaps between calls
- Monitor agent performance through integrated monitoring
4. Agentless Dialers
This type of outbound dialer uses an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to dial numbers. If there is no response, it disconnects the call. If connected to a live person, agentless dialers can drop a message or offer an option to connect with a live agent. In case that it reaches an answering machine, it plays a pre-recorded message.
Advantages:
- Execute large scale notification campaigns
- Use a high level of automation to ensure more dialing efficiency
- Provide self-help options to make customer journeys more seamless
Popular use cases for outbound dialers:
- Keeping customers abreast about a new product launch
- Initiate feedback, registration, or onboarding
- Send payment reminders with a personalized touch
- Generate leads by calling a predefined list
Outbound dialers can go a long way toward reducing calling errors, lowering call-related costs, and improving workforce performance. In addition, depending on their type, they can have a measurable impact on your business. In particular, auto dialers help your organization stay compliant and track adherence. You can also leverage advanced pacing modes to dial multiple numbers on behalf of a single agent and significantly improve the chances of getting connected and increase their occupancy.
Overall benefits of outbound dialers
- Increase capacity to manage a large volume of calls at a quick pace
- Initiate priority campaigns based on information extracted from CRM
- Unearth opportunities to cross-sell or up-sell, thereby growing revenues
- Increase agent occupancy and productivity
- Get access to call reports to extract actionable insights
- Deliver great customer experiences uncompromisingly
How to choose the right outbound dialer
Choosing the best-fit outbound dialer for your organization depends on your current business objectives and how many resources you can afford to execute them. As earlier mentioned, unless you are working with a handful of people, manual outbound dialers are out of the question. When it comes to auto dialers, each one serves a variety of purposes.
For instance, small businesses might prefer preview dialers since they deal with relatively smaller calling lists and are very cost effective. Larger organizations often need predictive dialers to dial huge volumes of numbers at a fast pace.
As for progressive and power dialers, they are preferred by organizations that need their agents to be prepared for the conversation before it happens. Finally, agentless dialers are primarily used by those looking to make a lot of calls simultaneously or automate their outbound dialing.
Acqueon offers best-in-class automated outbound dialing solutions that support all– preview, progressive/power, predictive, and agentless–dialing types for popular contact center platforms, such as Amazon Connect, Cisco, NICE CXone, Twilio, or UJET. This approach lets you chose your dialing mode on a per campaign basis and can be used for:
Sales: Improve prospecting, boost speed-to-lead, enable virtual selling, and increase customer retention with Acqueon’s Dialer and Campaign Management for Sales.
Collections: Modernize the collection process, enable omnichannel collections, and increase debt recovery rates with Acqueon’s Auto Dialer and Workflow Software for Debt Collection.
Proactive service: leverage outbound dialing for proactively informing your customers about urgent issues or impeding problems and inform them about the resolution of open inquiries.
Patient Engagement: Personalize healthcare and wellness, streamline appointments, and optimize revenue cycle management with Acqueon Epic EHR and Contact Center Integration.
Customer lifecycle activities: outbound dialers are also critical to driving engagement at many critical junctures of the customer journey, including onboarding, retention, and loyalty development.
Acqueon’s outbound dialers boost the productivity of your agents, ensure compliance, and increase connect rates. By working with your contact center platform, they streamline your operations as we move into a digitally fluid future where remote and hybrid work conditions are becoming the new normal.