Improving Answer Rates for Outbound Campaigns
“Sorry, I missed your call. I was…okay, okay, I haven’t left the house in twelve weeks.”
If your outbound answering rates are low, it’s not because they’re falling on deaf ears.
With an unprecedented shift to remote work environments, as well as individuals observing stay-at-home precautions, most people are seldom far from their phones.
Fewer meals out, fewer long commutes, fewer movie nights — call center leaders need to be focusing on boosting answering rates to improve their outbound success.
Here are a few topics to consider:
Why You Need to Know About STIR/SHAKEN
The runaway winner for 2020’s most haphazardly titled acronym, STIR/SHAKEN, might be a mouthful — but it’s a serious development for call center leaders to manage.
The Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR) and Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs (SHAKEN) standard — *breath* — is an FCC protocol created to reduce pestering “robocalls” for consumers and signal that incoming calls can be trusted.
STIR/SHAKEN is a relatively new legislative measure, which kicked off in late 2019 to curb the nuisance of increasing automated call volumes. The need has been years in the making, as U.S. consumers now receive more than 50 billion automated calls each year. This has stoked distrust from consumers, who are now more likely to ignore calls from unfamiliar numbers.
If you are deploying campaigns outside of STIR/SHAKEN frameworks, your answering rates may suffer. Practices like switching ANIs on a regular basis are no longer enough.
As a result, partnering with companies featuring STIR/SHAKEN protocols to help digitally validate the integrity of outbound campaigns and prevent calls from being marked as “Spam” or “Scam Risk” is critical for any outbound shop, even if you are not using predictive or power dialing solutions. While these partnerships do not guarantee that all outbound calls will go through as desired and mobile providers continue to position themselves as gatekeepers, it is by far the most effective action you can take at this time.
I Want to Learn More About STIR/SHAKEN
Predictive Dialing: Outbound Dialing on Steroids
To increase efficiency and automate outreach, autodialers have been around for more than a generation. However, what was previously a call center hardware cost has morphed into an emerging cloud feature with modernized deployment. Unfortunately, many of the larger solution providers are not spending significant R&D dollars on improving outbound dialing. The good news is that there are niche players that work within heavy outbound verticals that have continued to advance this technology. This means in some business cases it may be more advantageous to bring in a specialized outbound solution provider for those campaigns.
Predictive Dialers vs Autodialers VS TCPA Dialer:
| Predictive Dialers | Autodialers (Power Dialer) | TCPA Dialer | |
| Dialer Type | Automatically calls your targeted consumers. | Automatically calls your target consumers based on when an agent puts themselves in a ready status. | Click to dial functionality, with an option to improve performance by utilizing a “clicker agent” that has passed additional scrutiny |
| Analysis | Screens out busy signals, voicemails, disconnected numbers. | No call progress analysis in most cases. | No call progress analysis |
| Agent Assignment | Passes calls to available agents using a predictive algorithm to guess when they’re free. | Passes every call to an agent; best for handling a 1 line to 1 agent ratio. | Passes every call to an agent. |
| Notes | Drop call management and compliance are critical to the successful use of this technology. Consult your legal counsel and ensure you have express written consent. (See the paragraphs above on STIR/SHAKEN.) | There are opportunities for abuse with this technology, so consult your legal representative if you are calling cell phones without express written consent | These systems have gone through rigorous testing and evaluations and should have proven cases showing they comply with TCPA |
Predictive dialers use business intelligence to do far more than just call across a list. With algorithms and machine learning baked in with some of the solutions recently, predictive dialer solutions optimize outbound calls to increase answer rates and connect agents to customers at the right time.
For example, manual calling takes time to dial; autodialing wastes time on busy signals and disconnected numbers; predictive dialing increases the volume of calls being made to real consumers, boosting productivity by 200-300 percent.
In addition, while not directly correlated to answer rates, CCaaS dialing solutions have become more sophisticated in handling compliance regulations so it can provide value beyond just managing your DNC lists.
But, with fewer worries (or even monetary penalties) across compliance mishaps, call centers can invest more time and money into improving their outbound campaign success rates.
I Want to Supercharge My Outbound Dialing
Elevate Your Outbound Answering Today
There are several ways to approach this challenge, but doing it alone without a complete understanding the landscape can be daunting. TCPA, DNC, STIR/SHAKEN, carriers blocking calls, and the future of outbound callerID reputation management create a challenging future for outbound organizations.
If you’re committed to improving answering rates across your outbound campaigns, you need to understand the comprehensive solutions that are available in the market.
Let Cloud Call Center Search help you explore your options, with a no-cost, no-risk assessment to ensure your agents can engage with the customers that need your products and services most.
