What Is Outbound Call Center Software And How Can I Improve My Outbound Call Center?

Outbound calling has been an effective strategy for businesses to expand their customer base. A research study has shown that businesses that use cold calling tactics have experienced 42% more business growth than those that don’t. Therefore, outbound calling is not an obsolete marketing technique. You can enhance the efficiency of your outbound calling by investing in reliable outbound call center software.

An automated outbound call software empowers the business with advanced features. It has become a must-have technological aid for every business. Let’s delve into the fundamentals of outbound call center software to uncover the ways to leverage it to its maximum potential for your business growth.

Inbound calling Vs. outbound calling

Before going through the capabilities of outbound calling software, let’s understand the difference between inbound calling and outbound calling through this chart.

Parameters	Inbound calling	Outbound calling
Definition	Customer support provided for incoming calls from customers to the business	Customer service provided for outgoing calls from business to customers
Purpose	Technical support Product/service-related support Customer query Complaints Payment issue Order tracking, etc.	Telecalling Promotion or offer update Market research or survey Feedback collection Post-purchase follow-up, etc.
Primary focus	Customer experience	Customer acquisition or retention
Evaluation metrics	Customer satisfaction Repeat purchases	Closed deals  Referrals

7 Ways to improve outbound calling strategy

The outbound calling strategy serves as the backbone of your marketing efforts. A business can leverage the attributes of outbound call center software to strengthen its outbound calling strategy. Let’s take a look at how the features of outbound calling software can boost conversion rates of outbound calling.

• Choose an ideal auto dialer

Outbound dialer software eliminates the time wasted on manual dialing. An auto dialer can be categorized into the following

• Progressive dialer
• Predictive dialer
• Preview dialer
• Power dialer

Assess the characteristics, benefits, and limitations of these dialers to choose the most suitable dialer for your business. Choosing the dialer according to your business needs optimizes your agents’ performance. So, make sure to research well before making the final decision.

• Integrate CRM with outbound calling software

CRM software stores all the essential information about the customers, such as age, profession, previous conversation history, etc. Integrating CRM enables agents to retrieve customer information and prepare accordingly to strike an engaging conversation with them.

• Encourage real-time monitoring and call recording

Real-time call monitoring is an excellent feature of outbound call center software to improve agent performance. It enables the manager to provide quick feedback during the conversation so that the agent can close the deal. Furthermore, the call recording feature helps businesses prepare training material and identify areas to improve sales pitches. Both features help in ensuring quality compliance.

• Focus on the right metrics

Outbound calling software comes loaded with analytics and reporting features. A business can improve its outbound calling strategy by analyzing the metrics of calls. However, it’s essential to identify the right metrics to drive such outcomes. Here’s a list of metrics outbound call centers must focus on to bring efficiency:

• Average handling time
• Average call duration
• List closure rate
• Conversion rate
• Call volume per agent
  

By tracking these metrics, a business can gain actionable insights on how to improve its outbound calling strategy.

• Implement personalization

Customers understand the drill when it comes to outbound calls from businesses. As a result, most customers hang up by the time an agent completes the first line of their sales pitch. So what can be done to grab the attention of modern customers? The answer is personalization. Leverage CRM integration and call analytics to understand customers’ personalities and tailor the sales pitches accordingly. When your agents reach out to customers in a different and more personalized way, it leads to a significant improvement in the conversation rates.

• Offer call-back scheduling

Customers may be busy when your agents call them up. Instead of forcing them to listen, consider offering them an option to call back. Outbound call center software automates call-back scheduling that enables your agent to interact with the customers at their convenient time.

• Follow up with qualified leads

According to a survey, 80% of sales made by businesses require up to 5 follow-ups. However, 44% of agents don’t follow up with leads after the first call. An automated outbound software streamlines and schedules follow-up calls so that your agents can nurture qualified leads until they close the deal.

Best practices to level up your outbound game

Businesses must follow some standard practices to keep their prospects interested and not become unwelcomed nuisance through outbound calling. Here are some of the best practices that’ll help you overcome these outbound calling challenges:

• Focus on making human connections

Even though the primary goal of outbound calling is making sales, establishing relationships with customers is also crucial. Therefore, instead of sounding super salesy, your agents must focus on initiating meaningful conversations. Empathy is a core component that helps in building a bond with the customers. Moreover, leverage advanced features of outbound call center software such as speech and sentiment analytics to understand the mood and trends of customers.

Read Also: Best Practices to Adopt for a Successful Outbound Call Center

• Feedback collection

Feedbacks are the stepping stones to improving your product or service. Utilize outbound calling to encourage feedback collection. It helps in understanding customer needs and expectations. For example, a business can conduct post-purchase follow-up calls to gather feedback and analyze it with the help of outbound call center software to drive actionable insights.

• Upgrade prospect list regularly

Agents make hundreds of calls every day. Outbound call center software lets agents identify valuable prospects by regularly upgrading the follow-up list. It not only saves time by automatically sorting good leads but also eliminates the hassle of following up on bad leads. Consequently, agents can focus on nurturing good leads leading to better sales.

• Develop training programs based on analytics

Call analytics helps in identifying the training needs of your agents. Moreover, it also helps in detecting the flaws in your existing outbound calling operations. Therefore, such insights can be leveraged to develop training material for agents, thereby boosting their performance.

Become a lead magnet with an outbound calling software

Outbound call center software helps a business improve its bottom line. It not only automates workflow but also enhances customer satisfaction. It’s a powerful tool for improving conversion rate, as well as, building customer loyalty. HoduCC is the best outbound call center software that comes with a plethora of features to deliver an exceptional customer experience. It helps in boosting the marketing ROI for businesses of all sizes. To know more about HoduCC and other HoduSoft products, check out its website.

If you have any queries or would like to learn more about the HoduSoft product suite, get in touch with our sales team at [email protected] or fill up the form here for a callback.