Calling clients and prospects is an essential part of any business. From generating new leads to providing customer service, agents spend much of their time choosing who to call and dialing numbers manually – often just to get a busy signal or voicemail. In fact, customer agents only spend 15 minutes per hour speaking with customers on average. This is where autodialers come in. They are helpful tools that automate repetitive tasks, ensuring call agents spend their time on what's more lucrative for the company: talking with clients. Considering the different types of autodialers and the number of features available, all kinds of companies – no matter their size – can find a perfect solution.
Types of Autodialers
Depending on the company's needs, different autodialers will make more or less sense. Therefore, it's important to understand what each type does and what they were built for.
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Power Dialer
Power dialers dial one number at a time in sequence, following a contact list. They skip unanswered calls and ensure that an agent is available when the call gets connected. They're perfect for companies that want to spend more time personalizing a call since it's possible to adjust the dial rate and add pre-recorded voicemails.
Predictive Dialer
Predictive dialers dial many numbers simultaneously, making them perfect for companies who want to make a large volume of calls in a short time. These types of dialers take advantage of machine learning to adjust the dialing rate and ensure agents are on a call at all times.
Robo Dialer
Companies using a robo dialer can record messages beforehand and send them to all their contacts. Robo dialers are especially helpful for sending product updates or reminders. It's possible to set up press-1 functionality to collect customer responses or to connect them to an agent automatically.
Preview Dialer
Lastly, preview dialers provide a customer review beforehand so the agent can gather all the necessary information before making the call. It's mainly used on complex sales or important follow-ups.
5 Best Autodialer Features for Your Business
Just as there are many autodialers out there, there are many features to choose from. Here are the five you should definitely get:
1. CRM Integration
If the company already uses specific CRM software, it saves a lot of time and money to have that program integrated with the autodialer. All call data is tracked automatically, and team collaboration becomes more efficient.
2. Live-Call Monitoring
Live-call monitoring is extremely useful since it helps agents to make quick decisions while speaking with customers, and enables managers to track calls in real time, giving them information to better train agents and improve overall effectiveness.
3. Text-To-Speech
While creating a call campaign, companies have to spend the time recording the message that customers will hear when they pick the phone. With text-to-speech, campaign managers can just type the message, and they're done. This makes the process less time consuming and improves efficiency.
4. Call Scheduling
Call schedulers analyze agent activity history and predict the best times to call customers. This feature ensures companies connect to the right people at the right time, maximizing engagement levels.
5. Dynamic Call ID
For companies that do business internationally, having a dynamic call ID is a must. It automatically presents the local prefix from where the customer lives, increasing the pickup rate.
3 Benefits of Autodialers for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
1. Improved Efficiency
Customer service agents that manually dial numbers and wait until a call is connected spend a lot of time without doing anything productive for the company. Time is wasted listening to busy signals, answering machines, and disconnections.
Autodialers do all the tedious work automatically, and since they're able to detect busy signals, voicemail, and non-serviceable numbers, they only transfer connected calls. It's therefore easy to understand how much this technology reduces agents' idle time. On average, autodialers increase agents' active talk time from 15 minutes per hour to 45, leading to better customer engagement and higher overall efficiency.
2. Higher Lead Conversion Ratio
Autodialer software can be implemented to improve complex sales processes that involve high value leads by increasing the agility of outbound calls. Autodialers that offer a quick customer preview to the agents or can be integrated with CRM services also help agents prepare for their next call, creating the ability to conduct personalized conversations.
3. Real-Time Monitoring and Reporting
Last but not least, most autodialers come with a dashboard where key metrics can be easily tracked in real time. This feature not only improves the manager's decision-making abilities; it also helps agents to take quick actions. Some autodialers also let managers listen to or even jump into calls, which is perfect when training new customer agents.
Integrating an Autodialer with Your VoIP Provider
RingCentral is one of the few VoIP providers that offers a built-in autodialer. Even though it's paid for separately, RingCentral Engage provides various types of autodialers – progressive, predictive, preview, and TCPA safe dial – to answer any company's needs. Of course, if your organization is already using RingCentral, the integration is going to be flawless and require much less effort than working with third-party software.
There are other VoIP providers that don't offer complete auto-dialer software but still incorporate some of the most common features seen on this type of service. For example, CallHippo provides an auto-switch feature that automatically calls international numbers by using the company's local number for that specific country, saving call agents 75 minutes each month. But even VoIP services that don't come with any autodialer features can still be integrated with this kind of software. Nextiva, for instance, integrates autodialer software through its SIP trunking service. However, we recommend contacting your VoIP provider's customer service to ensure they're capable of integrating with an autodialer.
Best VoIP Systems of 2020
| Rank | Provider | Info | Visit |
1 | Editor's Choice 2020  |
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2 |   |
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3 |  |
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