Every call centre needs a dialler

MANY people believe that diallers — predictive, progress or preview — are only for large call centres to drive specific campaigns.  But if you look at almost any call centre, including those that consider themselves to be purely inbound, around 40 per cent of all calls are outbound.  They are to follow up inbound calls, chase third parties, to call customers back and so on.

Why don’t I just pick up the phone and call?  You can!  That’s what most call centres do!  Just think about it.  No matter who you are calling, a proportion of the calls will fail — the number is busy or is simply not answered.  If you are calling consumers at home less than half of your call attempts reach the person you want.

Your people are spending huge amounts of time dialling numbers that do not connect, using more time making notes to remember to try again then expending more effort retrying these calls later.

Manual dialling is a labour intensive, costly way of getting in touch with your target audience.  Do the maths; it is estimated that around 1m people are employed in UK call centres.  After making allowance for part-time working, holidays and so on a conservative calculation shows that outbound call centre activity adds up to 60m days a year.

If you run a manual outbound operation the chances are that you will have little or no idea how that time is spent.  Dialler automation changes all that by providing detailed feedback

• How many calls have you made?

• Who is making the calls?

• How long does each call take?

• What’s the after-call administrative overhead?

• Are outbound calls impacting inbound service levels?

Automated dialling unlocks the outbound secrets and, through management information systems, makes your outbound activity visible.

Remove the drudgery, deliver productivity.  But modern dialling is not just about productivity and management information.  It’s about providing active support to your call centre team.  With manual dialling you will be lucky if your people are talking to your customers and prospects for more than 20 minutes in an hour; 15 minutes an hour is common.  It’s not because your people are bad or lazy; it’s because dialling one number after another can be very tedious.

Automated diallers take way the drudgery and simply deliver connected calls to your call centre together with supportive desktop tools to guide the call, support operational processes and capture business outcomes.  If you make a promise to call back your dialler will help you to keep that promise.  Structured processes replace the sticky notes plastered around the computer screen.

Today’s diallers are more than productivity tools; they ensure that your activities support your call centre’s business goals.

Ken Reid, marketing director, Rostrvm Solutions; ken.reid@rostrvm.com