What is an Outbound Dialer?

Posted by Ahmed Macklai on August, 8 2019 7:29 pm

How many calls do your call center agents make per day? If your center is like many, the number would be staggering to anyone outside the customer service or sales industries. However, it’s just part of everyday operations at your center - and that may be part of what’s wrong with your facility’s productivity.

You see, if you don’t have an automated outbound dialer in place, your agents are making all of those many calls by hand. Every contact they reach out to must be chosen from a list, their number identified, and then manually dialed. This may only take a minute or so for each contact. But with dozens or even hundreds of calls being made by each agent every hour, those minutes quickly add up. That lost time is lost productivity and profitability for your center.

Here, we’ll look at how using an outbound dialer in your contact center can mean the difference in marginal profit and booming business for your company - and how to get your hands on the best in the industry.

First - What is an Outbound Dialer?

An outbound dialer is any type of technology that allows your agents to make outgoing calls in your contact center. There are several types of dialer styles that you can choose between, each with its own benefits depending on what size and style of contact center you operate.

Manual dialers were once the standard in call centers, but are no longer used for the most part. This outdated technology uses little more than a telephone touchpad and the hands of the call center agent. Unless your agents are working remote, this type of dialer is inefficient for most operations today.

Power or preview dialers are more efficient and more suited to today’s call center operations. The term “power dialer” is often used interchangeably with any type of automated dialer. Specifically, though, power dialers are preview dialers, a type of outbound dialer that offers click-to-call dialing efficiency.

Saving you the time of dialing numbers individually, this type of dialer also offers you the benefit of giving you information about the contact you’re about to make before you make it. This helps to prepare your agents for the exchanges they are about to have with potential clients or consumers, making it easier to land sales or close out collections accounts.

Most preview dialers also allow you to create call queues, which can help you prioritize your workload. This helps you knock out important calls earlier and get higher-priority clients or contacts addressed quicker, making customer service simple. This is critically important when it comes to business to business sales or networking calls, since making your contacts feel like a priority is half the battle to winning their business!

Predictive dialers offer some of the most powerful technology for today’s contact centers. This technology sifts through the long list of contacts that centers often have and makes connections for agents automatically. This saves agents the time of manually dialing numbers, as well as the hassle of searching for contacts individually from listings. Connections are made for them, so all they have to do is remain alert and ready to speak to the person on the other end of the line.

Progressive dialersare some of the most intuitive dialers available for outbound contact centers. Much like predictive dialer software, these programs are designed to automatically make connections to contacts from your agent’s list. However, these connections are made only once an agent indicates that they are available and prepared to take the call. This means that the problem of a connection being made before an agent is ready to field the call won’t be an issue at all - and your connections will be genuine and meaningful, every time.

Progressive dialers are constantly updating, so that agents who are already engaged with a contact won’t be matched up with another. This keeps your agents from getting overloaded and overwhelmed -and keeps things running smoothly at your center, regardless of call traffic!

Which Type of Outbound Dialer is Best for My Contact Center?

Now that you understand more about the different types of outbound dialers, you may be wondering how to choose between them to find the right one for your center. Finding the solution that will work for your facility may take some trial and error, but generally speaking, manual dialers are only suited to extremely small operations or remote workers. Unless your facility fits either of these descriptions, it’s best to move on to one of the other options!

Preview dialers are typically best for small to medium-sized contact centers. They only offer the time savings of not having to type in the phone number of the contacts on your list, so if your list is very large, this may not save your agents enough time to be worth your investment.

Predictive dialers are great for very large contact centers. These dialers make moving through massive lists of contacts a breeze, saving you tons of time. When your agents are making hundreds of calls an hour, a predictive dialer that makes connections automatically might be the outbound dialer for you.

A progressive dialer is the best choice for large contact centers that are looking for the best and most intuitive technology. They offer the best of all possible worlds, giving you speed, efficiency, and the opportunity to be ready to speak to each connection before the line becomes active, so you’re never unprepared.

When you’re ready to see the benefits of outfitting your facility with the best outbound dialer technology in the business, talk to the experts at ChaseData. We have what you need to help your agents make more and higher quality connections - and your center to make a high profit because of it. Call ChaseData today to learn more!

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