ICMI - Dialing: It's Not Just For Sales Anymore

What's the status of outbound call center technology these days really? Did "Do Not Call" (DNC) decimate dialing? Does anyone even make predictive dialers anymore?

As DMG Consulting president and frequent Call Center contributor Donna Fluss said in her column last July, dialing isn't dead. When we asked her to elaborate on that for this issue she told us that the outbound landscape has changed dramatically -- and for the better.

"Dialing isn't dead. Blind dialing is dead. And may it rest in peace," Fluss told us. "Now there's a huge opportunity for companies to use dialing to enhance -- not to build -- to enhance relationships with existing customers. And the smart companies will be using it to their benefit."

Outbound is still around, and it's going through one of the most interesting changes in the history of the call center industry. The restrictions imposed by the DNC legislation not only focused telemarketers on the consumers who were receptive to phone solicitations, it also allowed the industry to step back and think about the benefits of using outbound to reach out to existing customers.

The push for innovation in outbound came from the vendors who were forced to create new markets for predictive dialers and the companies and call centers that realized there was untapped profit in customer loyalty and good service.

Telemarketing is still viable

Telemarketing is arguably more viable now than it was before the DNC rules went into effect a few years ago; it's no longer out of control. Aspect Software technology office senior vice president Jim Mitchell reiterated something that we'd been hearing from industry experts of all stripes: "Although the size of the lists that companies have to call has decreased between 30 and 50 percent, the quality of the remaining prospects is better since the people who wouldnit buy anyway are no longer on the list." Telemarketing is stronger, but leaner.

And, Fluss reminds us, this is very good news for consumers: "DNC did not kill outbound dialing. DNC prevented companies from disruptive dialing, and therefore, I think it's tremendously positive. It also basically challenges companies to figure out how to build relationships with their customers."

Building and nurturing relationships with existing customers is a more rewarding use of a company's resources (and its predictive dialer) than the aggressive, shotgun-style outbound campaigns for new customers we were all so frustrated with a few years ago.

"I think telemarketing is making the same shift that web sites did five years ago," said Five9's director of product management Randy Jessee. "When the Web first went commercial, everyone put up a website that said 'here's what I sell.' Now, marketers have gotten smart, and put up something useful for the consumer to draw them to the site, and then allow the consumer to discover the benefits of their product at the same time. Telemarketing is making the same adjustment. By calling with something of value, they can get the customer on their side, rather than just getting another 'don't bother me at dinner' response."

Collections: The Beginning of it All

Some say that the origin of dialing was in debt collection. While much of debt collection remains pretty straightforward (pester the delinquent account until he or she pays the bills) there are still some improvements being made in the way collectors handle these calls.

Burlington, MA-based SoundBite Communications prefers not to call their customer communications platform a predictive dialer because it's so much more. The SoundBite 6.0 hosted voice messaging platform works like a predictive dialer in that it connects the people called with the appropriate number of agents available, but it does this by automatically vetting each call. The outbound IVR asks if the person that answers the phone is the person the system is trying to reach. Using speech recognition technology, the platform actively detects answering machines and eliminates awkward pauses so the delivery of the message is smooth. If the system reaches the right person, the call gets routed to an agent. Although the benefits for collections call centers are obvious -- the hosted system is often much cheaper than adding a traditional predictive dialer -- SoundBite 6.0 also works in marketing and service environments. Most of SoundBite's customers use the platform to connect people with agents, but many use it as a message system.

Aspect's Jim Mitchell is seeing more collections call centers combining their dialers with text-to-speech systems for totally automated collections. "Customers speak their responses directly into their phones and the automated systems responds appropriately, engaging customers in 'conversations.' For example, if you're 30 days delinquent on a payment, a collections contact center may call you and ask for the last four digits of your social security number. You speak the digits into your phone. The system then asks you to submit payment and offers you the option to speak with an agent. This is a quick, private and convenient way to render payment."

The Future is Relationship Building

"I'm seeing a definite rise in companies launching proactive customer care programs," SER Solutions senior vice president, marketing and business development Scott Wielar told us. "Gone are the days when proactive customer care was limited to the occasional customer satisfaction survey. Whether it's healthcare reaching out with appointment reminders, financial services notifying customer of late payments or fraud, or telecommunications making customers aware of usage thresholds and attempting to up-sell plans -- we are certainly seeing a meaningful rise in demand for outbound solutions across the spectrum."

This trend, the most significant one we see in dialing, is in its early stages. It coincides with the more customer-centric style of service that changed CRM systems from passive systems that help the agent to strategic multi-faceted systems designed to optimize the customer experience.

Imagine how happy you can make your customers by letting them know when there's a great investment opportunity -- at the right time. Or telling a parent when his daughter has gone over her cell phone minutes. Appointment reminders. Flight cancellation and delay alerts. Sale announcements. Order status calls. Preemptive service calls can catch a confused new customer before they have to wait, frustrated, in a long tech support queue. All of these kinds of outbound calls can help you create stronger and more meaningful relationships with your customers.

And, said Interactive Intelligence product manager Matt Taylor, "These proactive uses of outbound dialers can generate additional revenue and eliminate customer issues before they even occur. It can also greatly reduce inbound call volume handled by live agents, thus further reducing costs. With agent costs running anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of total contact center costs, these savings can be significant."

The trick is to combine the power of your business's existing resources and other technology to create dynamic, proactive outbound strategies. Taylor told us that it doesn't have to be limited to voice dialing: "This approach is made possible by important advances in dialer technology, such as the maturation of voice over IP (VoIP), and the ability to blend not just inbound and outbound interactions, but various communications types, such as calls, emails, Web chats and SMS text messaging. In addition, the convergence of applications such as automatic call distribution (ACD) and interactive voice response (IVR) with outbound dialing result in even more effective customer care programs."

CRM systems can play a big role. Donna Fluss: "The cool thing, bringing up CRM, is that in these past couple years there've been massive improvements in some of the marketing applications. Now, if we take the output from the significantly improved marketing applications and we combine it with relationship dialing, we've got a win for everybody involved. So there's a huge opportunity but it takes time to get everybody on these bandwagons."

-- For more of our coverage of outbound trends, including the full interviews with the outbound experts mentioned in this article, check out the outbound section of the Call Center Blog.

How Monster.com Scares Up A Sales Boost

Multi-variable testing (MVT) is the complex statistical technique of measuring the possible effects of many things your business does at once. The method, developed by Knoxville, TN-based QualPro, is being used by Monster.com to help boost sales for their outbound call center staff.

Monster.com makes money by selling access to resumes to employers. In the largely outbound environment that Monster operates, there are many variables that could be manipulated to improve performance. They include the volume of calls, the various metrics used to measure success, the average order size, and the activities reps spend their time on.

One area they considered had to do with year-long job postings. Reps were selling a year-long commitment, yet customers often believed that they had to use that inventory immediately. Would sales go up if reps stressed to customers that they had up to a year to use the postings they purchased?

As it turned out, the MVT process found that their thinking was precisely opposite to the desired results. "As we got the team focused on underscoring that the postings were good for a whole year, it got customers thinking in a different manner that delayed the transaction. They thought of it as more of a long term process," Monster.com's John Hyland says. "It made things worse."

That example comes from a menu of a menu of 56 variables that were measured and tested. After all the testing was completed, Monster.com saw a measurable sales boost. "There wasn't a person involved who wasn't surprised by something we found," Hyland says. "Everybody goes in with preconceived notions - we all went through something that we thought would make a big difference that didn't. It reveals the unbiased nature of statistics."

The Potential Of Dialing

The over-arching trend today is the more sophisticated use of outbound dialing to meet retention, acquisition, and loyalty strategies. This proactive, targeted, "high-touch" customer care approach not only enhances customer service, it can also increase revenue, minimize inbound call volume spikes, and improve agent utilization. This approach is made possible by important advances in dialer technology, such as the maturation of VoIP, and the ability to blend not just inbound and outbound interactions, but various communications types, such as calls, emails, Web chats and SMS text messaging. In addition, the convergence of applications such as ACD and IVR with outbound dialing result in even more effective customer care programs.

-- Matt Taylor, Product Manager, Interactive Intelligence

A Country Star's Outbound Fan Message

In our search for innovative uses of outbound, we found country singer Dierks Bentley, who used Indianapolis-based Vontoo to send out voice messages to 15,000 of his biggest fans.

The messages were part of a "Win a Phone Call From Dierks" contest held by the singer and his label, Echomusic. Some fans signed up specifically for the contest while others opted in on the singer's website. On the day Bentley's new album came out, one lucky fan got a live call and others got voice messages from him.

Vontoo calls it permission-based, on-demand messaging. The company is focusing specifically on the existing relationships that companies -- and entertainers -- have with people to build loyalty and to create a deeper connection between musicians and fans, politicians and supporters, non-profits and contributors, and companies and customers.

"Nothing can convey emotion, enthusiasm and energy like the human voice, and Vontoo helps organizations capitalize on this," Vontoo co-founder Dustin Sapp said in a release. "Vontoo voice messages were the perfect addition to Echomusic's marketing efforts for Dierks." Sapp may be right; the response to the messages was overwhelmingly positive and subscriptions to Bentley's fan website spiked.

The Vendors

The movement toward hosting is a trend in itself, and even the outbound market is feeling its pull. Firms like SoundBite and Vontoo offer very intuitive browser-accessible outbound options that eliminate the need for costly hardware and the in-house IT expertise that it necessitates.

Pleasanton, CA-based Five9 offers the Virtual Call Center Suite, a completely hosted call center system, including a hosted predictive dialer. Five9 highlights the benefits of combining inbound and outbound capabilities, but the fact that it's all hosted means it's easier for call centers to grow or even start from nothing.

In the hardware realm, SER Solutions released its next generation CPS E2 dialer two years ago and its third update will be out this month. It supports multi-site and multi-telephony deployments and has a nice array of features including an outbound IVR and agent-free campaign capabilities.

CosmoCom's CosmoDialer, an optional module for the CosmoCall Universe call center suite uses what the company calls "massive call simulation" to properly pace outbound dialing. It's a mathematical model that allows maximum dialing while limiting abandoned calls.

Indianapolis-based Interactive Intelligence offers the Interaction Dialer, a SIP-based predictive dialer that works with the company's Customer Interaction Center product to blend inbound and outbound queues in your center. The Interaction Dialer boasts a patented predictive algorithm.

Aspect Software offers the Aspect Conversations Predictive Dialer and the Aspect Unison Predictive Dialer as standalone products. Dialers are also options in their Aspect EnsemblePro unified contact center suite. In addition, Aspect sells outbound campaign optimizing and managing software.

Here's how to reach some of the vendors we mentioned in this article:

Aspect Software

CosmoCom

Five9

Interactive Intelligence