10 Things to Consider Before Buying Hosted Predictive Dialer

In the previous blog of this blog series, How Call Centers Save Money and Time with Hosted Predictive Dialer, we got to know that the significance of predictive dialer is unavoidable for making a higher number of customer connections with much lesser investment of time and money.

The significance of predictive dialers has only grown in the past many years because of the results it has produced. In a survey done in March 2018 by Dell EMC of 315 IT executive, 39% of the respondents said, their organization uses Predictive Analytics for better results.

When it comes to getting a predictive dialer for your call center, there are certain points that should be taken care of to make a perfect selection of a predictive dialer. A brief checklist of the features for Predictive Dialers is giving below.

1. Dialing Ratio

Scenario: While setting up a campaign, the dialing rate was too high that led to agent unavailability.

A dialer should have an option to set a calling rate. In this way, according to the number of agents, the outbound calling rate can be set. With a preset calling rate, the potential customers will not have to wait for the agents once the call is on. Here the number of agents play an important role because the outbound call ratio, relates to the agent strength.

2. Call Reporting

Scenario: The call center manager could not decide the overall profitability of the outbound calls made. 

Go for a predictive dialer that gives a full detailed report of the calls made and agents connected. It helps in analyzing the overall success of the outbound calls made. A detailed report also helps in deciding the agent performance and makes the most out of the available resources such as customer information and expert opinions.

3. Time Zone Based Calling

Scenario: Bad timing of the outbound calls led to lesser number of connections. 

If the meaningful leads of the business are spread across different time-zones, then the time-zone based calling helps in getting a higher number of connection and you as a user can easily decide when should the outbound calls be made for a particular region. Better results in call connection show up when the timing is right.

4. Ringing Strategy

Scenario: The call center could not utilize the availability of agents completely.

A predictive dialer that has various types of ringing strategies is more likely to connect agents to the customers with a higher possibility.

For example, in ring all strategy, once the call arrives it will ring to all the agents simultaneously and in case of round robin, it will ring one by one to all the agents until it is taken. Memory round robin is quite similar, it’s just if an agent doesn’t take the call then the next call will come to him only once the whole sequence of the agents has been completed. You can further change the ring strategy as per the need.

5. Lead Management

Scenario: Because of the bad lead management, the call center loses out on the potential customers

A predictive dialer without lead management feature is very unlikely to produce promising results. Lead management is the essential part towards achieving a solid customer base. Effective lead management leads to a much better scenario for the future goals of a business.

A predictive dialer with lead management takes care of the call history with features that helps in making the most out of the outbound calls.

6. Skill-Based Routing

Scenario: Customer was connected to a wrong agent leading to a mismatch of service support. 

A customer led to an agent with wrong information may lose a loyal customer. Predictive dialers with skill-based routing feature lead customers to the agent performing better and who has the right skill to answer the customer query.

So, skill-based routing helps in delivering a better customer satisfaction level and an immediate solution in the least time invested by the customers and agents.

7. Customizable Options

Scenario: A user couldn’t add another field to the customer information in the predictive dialer interface. 

It is always advisable to have your predictive dialer well-equipped with customer information. Like in the above-mentioned call center scenario, we saw that the user could not add an additional field such as email address or demographics to the customer information.

With the help of customizable options, it gets much easier for the user to add different customer information and use it as per the business need.

8. Integration Capability

Scenario: Dialer doesn’t support the CRM or other business applications.

A predictive dialer can perform to the best of its potentials if it can be easily integrated with the various business applications that increase the total efficiency of the dialer many folds. For example, CRM integration is one such tool that helps in making a productive conversation with the customers.

In addition to this, the dialer should be able to integrate with the workforce management tools, it helps in managing your agents like their work timing and deployments as well.

9. Blended Operations

Scenario: Only outbound but no inbound calls.

If the dialer is not able to blend the inbound calls as well then it puts a limitation to its capabilities. If the dialer can blend the incoming and outgoing calls then the agents get more options to communicate with the customers.

So, when the dialer works in a blended mode, the agent can easily give a seamless experience to the callers, by using the inbound and outbound calls.

10. Maximum Call Connecting Capability

Scenario: Lesser number of call connections. 

Predictive dialer works based on an algorithm that tracks the histories of customer conversations and other information such as demographics and time-zones. Without the implementation of this information, the number of call connections cannot be maximum. Always make sure that your predictive dialer is equipped with such an algorithm as it ensures a high connection rate.

CallCenterHosting (CCH) makes sure that the Predictive Dialer it delivers, covers all the needed features to ensure its users unprecedented productive results in terms of making call connections in bulk and bring more opportunities to the agents to pitch the products or services.

In the coming blog, we will be discussing about ” Why a Predictive Dialer from CallCenterHosting is the Best Choice for You“. A detailed overview that will help you decide.