For outbound contact centers, obtaining more sales is a constant struggle. Even if you have a consistent flow of leads coming in, transforming those leads into actual sales can be difficult. It isn’t impossible, though - you just need to give your approach a facelift to ensure your agents are always putting your business’s best face forward!

Today’s most successful businesses are using the power of SMS messaging to great effect. Many customer service companies and business processing organizations believe that they can’t be part of this trend - but that isn’t true! There are myriad ways to make use of SMS in your customer service strategy.

The bigger problem for these organizations is that they often don’t understand SMS integration. Thankfully, some of those same famously popular and successful brands we mentioned previously are happy to share their secrets of success. Check out how they make proper SMS integration look easy - and how you can make it easier for your staff, too!

The idea of new technology for your contact center can be exciting. Actually launching that technology? Not so much.

Why do so many call center managers balk at the idea of introducing new software and programs in their facilities? A big part of the reasons is because the user adoption process can be slow and arduous. Far too many centers suffer major declines in productivity and profitability due to problems implementing new technology.

If you want to bring your center up to date and up to speed with new software but don’t want to suffer through a problematic user adoption phase, check out these tips for smoothing things out:

What is your contact center’s customer effort score? Many of today’s most successful call center’s don’t just know the answer to that question - they know why it matters. Not sure if you’re among their number? Just check out this handy guide to the customer effort score and why it matters for your center. You’ll soon be a master of making customer service effortless for those you serve!

Does your contact center have sufficient staff? This is something that many growing centers struggle to determine; are there enough agents on the payroll to efficiently handle daily operations without stressing the labor budget?

If you’re in the market to add to your staff, doing so may seem like a daunting task. There are so many things to consider when improving your hiring practices and so many reasons why you shouldn’t add too many agents at once. Taking all of these into consideration, we’ve prepared a quick guide to new employee recruitment and making your center a better place through recruiting agents who are best prepared for the job:

You know your contact center agents work hard. You’ve seen them in action. But do you know how effective their hard work really is? How productive are your agents? It can be hard to determine how efficient their efforts are when you’re only seeing part of the big picture each day.

Having a call center performance scorecard - and a sensible way to collect the information you need for one - is your best bet for getting a better idea of your agents’ true level of efficiency and productivity. Here, we’ll show you the best way to create and analyze your center’s scorecard - and how to use it to educate and motivate your agents to perform even better in the coming year!

In today’s fast-paced world, we value time more than ever before. The phrase, “Time is money” is one that many businesses include in their training approach - and in few industries is this more prevalent than in that of the contact center.

Keeping your pace quick when serving customers or making connections with leads is only logical. The more calls you can make in a given period, the more satisfied customers you can create. That means a more profitable day for your facility - and a bigger profit for your business.

However, there are major merits to slowing things down. Longer phone calls may actually be beneficial to your business in ways that you might not have imagined. Here, we will examine the value of longer phone calls - and the customer service that they can result from - and how all of it can positively impact your center.

When your phone rings, how likely are you to pick up if the number you see is an unfamiliar one? If you’re like most people, that likelihood is low - but it is much higher if that unknown number starts with a local area code. Whatever your logic - it could be a doctor, your child’s school, or a distant relative! - most people tend to be more receptive to numbers that are based out of their own area.

As a salesperson, debt collector, or other employee of an outbound call center, you may wish you could harness that familiarity for your own needs. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a call center in all of the area codes where your consumers or clients were located? With the simple magic of local presence dialing, you can seem to do exactly that - all while running a single center!

When you are operating an outbound call center, compliance with the TCPA - or Telephone Consumer Protection Act - is crucial. Not only does this compliance mean you’re doing your job correctly - it is what keeps you from losing your legal right to operate at all!

With such a premium placed on outbound compliance, it’s no wonder so many outbound call center agents worry about meeting these regulations and what will happen if they don’t. This doesn’t have to be a fear in your facility if you train your agents toward compliance throughout their tenure at your center. Here, we will examine ways to ensure compliance at every step of the communications process - and how you can build in the training you provide to your agents regularly.

Are you looking for ways to increase your outbound sales numbers but don’t want to skim through yet another list of common-sense approaches? Maybe it’s time to take a few tips from the industry experts. Here, we’ve compiled some advice on how to dramatically improve your outbound sales numbers - all without the eye-rolling obvious suggestions you’ve read before: