How to Set up an Outbound Call Center?
Who are the people you will be calling? For any outbound call center, having contact details of the target audience is of paramount importance. Besides knowing your customers’ landline number you should acquire their mobile numbers and make use of any other contact methods offered by current multimedia environment: SMS, email, Skype, Telegram, etc.
Why will you be calling? There are plenty of opportunities to establish profitable interaction with customers. You may contact new prospects or provide follow-up for direct marketing campaigns. You may confirm orders, thus lessening the chance of mistake and creating up-sell opportunities. You may boost staff utilization by making sure the clients are accessible for service engineers or deliveries. You may make welcome calls to new customers to check if their first purchases were satisfactory and encourage them to place another order.
When is the best time to call? The time is one of the hinges upon which the success of your outbound campaign rests. You must realize that in about 50% of your calls you will fail to contact the client. So you should determine the time when your customers are most available. It means that it is the time when they are not only likely to pick up the phone, but also when they will be "in the mood for buying".
What will you do if you fail to reach your client? Half of the failed calls mentioned above is constituted by cases when you get no reply, the line is busy or you repeatedly reach an answering machine instead of talking directly to a person. Of course, attempting to call again is the first solution that comes to mind. However, it will take a lot of time that you could have spent otherwise more efficiently, and there is no guarantee of success even if you are persistent enough. Instead, make use of modern media (email, Skype, Viber) to get in touch with the customers.
What outbound dialing technology to use? These are pivotal in increasing the efficiency of outbound calling. The most popular automated dialing solutions are preview dialer, progressive dialer, power dialer, and predictive dialer..
