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There is nothing like being proactive to help brands grow and strengthen the relationship with their customers. Properly leveraged, outbound calls can be a fantastic tool helping contact centres to be proactive. However, there are several types of outbound calls and not all of them serve the same purpose. In this blog, we will explain how to take advantage of outbound calls to enhance the customer experience.
Outbound calls tend to suffer from a negative reputation, in part because of the companies’ contact centres abusing them. However, when used intelligently and in compliance with the legal framework, outbound calls can do wonders for brands who want to be proactive.
An outbound call is a call made on the brand’s initiative from a contact centre, usually with the intention of building or achieving customer loyalty. It differs from an inbound call, which is initiated by the customer or prospect.
This fundamental difference from inbound calling means outbound calling faces both cultural stigmas and legal issues. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that the misuse of outbound calls has had a negative impact on:
Outbound calls can be divided into three main categories, also referred to as modes of communication:
Before using outbound calls in your contact centre, you need to know where you want to draw the line between agent productivity and customer experience.
Preview diallers are the most professional dialling mode of calling. It consists of automatically calling an agent who, when he picks up the phone, is presented with information about the person about to be called (the preparation time given to the agent varies). The customer is then called and, if they pick up, is immediately put in touch with the agent.
This solution ensures an excellent customer experience at the expense of contact centre productivity, as agents spend time preparing for conversations that may never take place because the customer doesn’t always answer the phone.
Progressive diallers are the dialling mode that automatically reaches an agent who is not given any preparation time. The client is called as soon as the agent picks up the phone.
This solution has an impact on agent experience because the agent has less time to prepare – even if they have some time before the client picks up. On the other hand, immediately having someone on the phone preserves the customer experience, even if the agent doesn’t immediately have answers to all the questions a customer may have.
Predictive diallers are the most productive, but least friendly in terms of CX, form of dialling mode. The engine, via a defined algorithm, anticipates and calls customers before agents are actually available. This is the dialling mode that is most often outsourced.
In terms of productivity, this dialling mode is excellent for contact centres because the agents are always busy. Unfortunately, this productivity is clearly to the detriment of the experience. It is annoying for the customer, because they may receive calls and the agents aren’t actually available. This highly regulated dialling system is often used for activities such as telemarketing or debt collection.
What if outbound calls could enhance the customer experience by emphasising quality over quantity?
While no single communication channel can ensure customers pick up more calls, there are effective ways to overcome the negative aspects of outbound calls, and even ensure exceptional customer experience and brand awareness. To achieve this, outbound calls should be limited to certain use cases, specific to certain customer journeys, allowing brands to anticipate customers’ needs and therefore exceed their expectations.
Here are the main use cases when it comes to outbound calls:
In order to ensure proactivity with your customers while enhancing customer and agent experiences, your contact centre’s outbound call campaigns should rely on features such as:
By using outbound calls intelligently, you can enhance your customers’ experience, getting in touch with them at the right time, with the right message, and the right people.
As mentioned in a previous blog, symmetry of attention is a key concept in maximising customer and employee satisfaction. When it comes to outbound calls, it becomes fundamental.
Thanks to this ideology, it is possible to imagine a world where your agents will not only make a call but will also effectively anticipate your customers’ expectations. How can you do this? By providing agents with the right information at the right time, to simplify their work and allow them to concentrate on value-added tasks.
By using less intrusive dialling methods, such as preview or progressive diallers, it is possible to ensure agents are able to have real conversations with clients. This is particularly important for complex calls where agents need to be fully aware of the client context.
It is also important to ensure all relevant information for managing the customer interaction is incorporated into the agent console: information about the current campaign, multi-channel history of customer activity, CRM information on the customer’s profile, etc.
In the majority of European countries, along with America, state regulations have been put in place to protect consumer rights. Logically, these are becoming stricter, almost daily it seems, in order to limit the use of certain kinds of outbound calls, sometimes seen as spam by the customer.
Examples of these are the Ofcom regulations in the UK, which has defined a quality threshold to be respected for dialling methods, or the FCC regulations in the US, that clearly define the standards outbound calls must adhere to or face fines.
In a world where regulations can change at any time, it is important to have total control over one’s contact centre solution. Every aspect of the centre and how it works needs to be easily accessible and configurable through a graphical interface, no matter how complex it is.
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