The Inner Circle Guide to Outbound & Call Blending · providing call-back functionality. Debt collection also still forms a key part of the outbound industry. Outbound calling is

Sponsored by

The Inner Circle Guide to Outbound &Call Blending

http://WWW.ENGHOUSEINTERACTIVE.COM

http://WWW.NOBLESYS.COM

http://WWW.CONTACTBABEL.COM

2

“The Inner Circle Guide to Outbound & Call Blending”

© ContactBabel 2016

Please note that all information is believed correct at the time of publication, but ContactBabel does not

accept responsibility for any action arising from errors or omissions within the report, links to external

websites or other third-party content.

3

CONTENTS

Contents ........................................................................................................................................................ 3

List of Tables ................................................................................................................................................. 6

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 8

Background to Outbound ............................................................................................................................. 9

The Role of Outbound in Businesses Today ............................................................................................ 10

Inbound and Outbound Activity ......................................................................................................... 10

The Nature of Outbound Activity ........................................................................................................ 13

Outbound: Vertical Markets ............................................................................................................... 15

Outbound: Contact Center Size .......................................................................................................... 15

Drivers of Outbound Automation ............................................................................................................... 16

Efficiency & Productivity ......................................................................................................................... 16

End-user question #1: ......................................................................................................................... 17

Apart from increasing the number of outbound calls being made, what benefits can automated

outbound solutions provide? .............................................................................................................. 17

Flexibility ................................................................................................................................................. 20

Customer Experience .............................................................................................................................. 20

Agent Engagement .................................................................................................................................. 22

Salaries and Bonuses for Outbound Agents ........................................................................................... 23

Agent Attrition ........................................................................................................................................ 24

Agent Absence ........................................................................................................................................ 26

Recruitment Costs ................................................................................................................................... 27

Outbound Automation: Implementation and Usage .................................................................................. 28

Outbound Dialling Practices .................................................................................................................... 28

Use of Diallers ..................................................................................................................................... 28

4

Dialler modes ...................................................................................................................................... 30

Outbound Outcomes .......................................................................................................................... 35

Agent Utilisation Rates (UK) ................................................................................................................ 39

Dialling activity: time of day (UK) ........................................................................................................ 41

Dialling activity: maximum number of attempts (UK) ........................................................................ 45

Ring time and connection time ........................................................................................................... 47

Dialling activity: the role of mobile ..................................................................................................... 48


We’re interested in increasing productivity, but concerned about agent burnout and increased

attrition. Do you have any pointers on best practice? ....................................................................... 49

Answer-Machine Detection ................................................................................................................ 54

Use of CLI / CLID .................................................................................................................................. 57

The Use of IVM (Interactive Voice Messaging) ................................................................................... 58

Use of broadcast messaging ............................................................................................................... 59

Compliance with Regulations ................................................................................................................. 60


What impact does current and future legislation have on outbound, and how do your solutions

address this? ....................................................................................................................................... 61

Complying with Regulations ................................................................................................................... 63

Call Blending ............................................................................................................................................ 67

Multimedia Blending ........................................................................................................................... 68


What benefits are there from call blending? What effects can we expect to see on productivity and

agent engagement? ............................................................................................................................ 70

Multichannel Outbound Strategies and Techniques .............................................................................. 73


5

Are outbound and call blending solutions separate from other multichannel interaction, or has

there been any move to integrate these channels together? ............................................................ 75

The Role of Scripting ............................................................................................................................... 77


Have you noticed any changes in how scripting is being used? How do businesses tend to use this?

............................................................................................................................................................ 81

Call-Back & Call-Me requests .................................................................................................................. 83

Outbound in the Cloud ........................................................................................................................... 90


Has there been much uptake of cloud-based solutions? Is this mainly down to cost, or are there

other benefits as well? ........................................................................................................................ 92

The Future of Outbound ............................................................................................................................. 94


Are you seeing a change in the nature of outbound calling? How are your solutions developing to

address this and what can we expect to see in terms of future functionality from outbound

solutions? ............................................................................................................................................ 96

Supplier Directory ....................................................................................................................................... 98

About ContactBabel .................................................................................................................................. 105

6

LIST OF TABLES

Figure 1: Inbound and outbound activity by contact center size, end-2014 .............................................. 10

Figure 2: Outbound agent positions (equivalent), by contact center size, end-2014 ................................ 11

Figure 3: Outbound agent positions (equivalent), by vertical market, end-2014 ...................................... 12

Figure 4: Outbound activity ........................................................................................................................ 13

Figure 5: Outbound activity by contact center size .................................................................................... 15

Figure 6: Salaries by contact center activity type ....................................................................................... 23

Figure 7: Agent attrition rate by contact center activity type .................................................................... 24

Figure 8: Historical mean agent attrition by contact center activity type (with 2018 projection) ............. 25

Figure 9: Short-term absence by contact center activity type ................................................................... 26

Figure 10: Historical mean agent absence by contact center activity type (with 2018 projection) ........... 26

Figure 11: Cost of recruiting a new agent, by contact center activity type ................................................ 27

Figure 12: Use of automated outbound dialers, by contact center size ..................................................... 28

Figure 13: Use of dialing modes, by contact center size (outbound operations only) - UK ....................... 31

Figure 14: Use of dialing modes, by outbound activity (outbound operations only) - UK ......................... 32

Figure 15: Proportion of calls answered, by outbound activity type (UK) .................................................. 35

Figure 16: Proportion of calls answered, by size (UK) ................................................................................ 35

Figure 17: Of the calls that were answered, how many were by a consumer? (by outbound activity type)

(UK) ............................................................................................................................................................. 36

Figure 18: Of the calls that were answered, how many were by a consumer? (by contact center size) (UK)

.................................................................................................................................................................... 36

Figure 19: Of the calls that were answered by a consumer, how many were hung up by the consumer

when an agent was available? (by outbound activity type) (UK) ............................................................... 37

Figure 20: Of the calls that were answered by a consumer, how many had a recorded message is played

as no agent was available (by outbound activity type) (UK)....................................................................... 37

7

Figure 21: Of the calls that were answered by an answerphone, where a recorded message is played, by

outbound activity type (UK) ........................................................................................................................ 38

Figure 22: Average outbound agent utilization rates (UK) ......................................................................... 39

Figure 23: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Mon-Fri (UK) .............................................................. 41

Figure 24: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sat (UK) ....................................................................... 42

Figure 25: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sun (UK) ...................................................................... 43

Figure 26: Call attempts by activity type (debt collection) (UK) ................................................................. 45

Figure 27: Call attempts by activity type (warm calling – sales calls to existing customers) (UK) .............. 46

Figure 28: Call attempts by activity type (cold calling – sales calls to new prospects) (UK) ....................... 46

Figure 29: Minimum mean and median ring time before call termination, by outbound activity type (UK)

.................................................................................................................................................................... 47

Figure 30: Use of answer machine detection (AMD) .................................................................................. 55

Figure 31: Use of call blending by contact center size ................................................................................ 67

Figure 32: Average speed to answer, by call blending environment type ................................................. 68

Figure 33: Use of multimedia blended agents by contact center size ........................................................ 69

Figure 34: Use of automated outbound communication for proactive customer service ......................... 73

Figure 35: Use and type of scripting, by vertical market ............................................................................ 77

Figure 36: Use and type of scripting, by contact center size ...................................................................... 78

Figure 37: Use and type of scripting, by contact center activity ................................................................ 78

Figure 38: Reasons given for dislike of contact center queuing ................................................................. 83

Figure 39: Types of telephony call-back offered to customers .................................................................. 85

Figure 40: Use of website and queue call-back options and queue position announcements, by contact

center size ................................................................................................................................................... 86

Figure 41: Proportion of customers in telephony queue offered call-back ................................................ 87

Figure 42: Effectiveness of telephony call-back functionality .................................................................... 88

8

INTRODUCTION

“The Inner Circle Guide to Outbound and Call Blending” is the 8th in the Inner Circle series of

ContactBabel reports. Other subjects include Cloud-based Contact Centers, Multichannel, Self-Service,

Interaction Analytics and PCI DSS Compliance, and can be downloaded free of charge from here.

The Inner Circle Guides are a series of analyst reports investigating key customer contact solutions. The

Guides aim to give a detailed and definitive view of the reality of the implementing and using these

technologies, an appraisal of the vendors and products available and a view on what the future holds.

The Inner Circle Guides are free of charge to readers. Research and analysis costs are borne by sponsors

- solution providers in the specific area of study - whose advertisements, case studies and thought

leadership pieces are included within these Guides.

Solutions providers have not had influence over editorial content or analyst opinion, and readers can be

assured of objectivity throughout. Any vendor views are clearly marked as such within the report.

As well as explaining these solutions to the readers, we have also asked the potential users of these

solutions whether they have any questions or comments to put directly to solution providers, and we

have selected eight of the most popular to ask to the report’s sponsors. These branded Q&A elements

are distributed throughout the report and give interesting insight into real-life issues.

Please note that statistics within this report refer to the US industry, unless stated otherwise (the

section on outbound outcomes is based on UK figures, as there are no equivalent US statistics available).

There is a version of this report available for download from www.contactbabel.com with UK statistics

throughout.

NB: “Small” contact centers are defined in the report as having 50 or fewer agent positions; “Medium”

51-200 agent positions; and “Large” 200+ agent positions.

http://www.contactbabel.com/reports.cfm

http://www.contactbabel.com/

9

BACKGROUND TO OUTBOUND

The traditional outbound call was simply about selling more products to new and existing customers.

However, legislation and customer pressure impacted on cold calling, and the past years have seen an

increasing proportion of outbound calling being made to existing customers, either to deliver customer

care or to inform them proactively about events and circumstances which affect them, as well as

providing call-back functionality. Debt collection also still forms a key part of the outbound industry.

Outbound calling is fundamentally different from inbound, and - facing significant and growing cultural

and legislative issues - must be managed sensitively:

the nature of outbound is intrusive and usually driven by the needs of the business rather than

the customer (except in cases of call-back requests and for proactive outbound service)

this means that customers are more likely to be defensive and wary of the purpose of the call.

Trust needs to be built very quickly in order to overcome this negative start point: having the

right information about the customer to hand will improve the experience for both agent and

customer

outbound work can be very hard on agents: few people actively welcome most outbound calls,

and persistent refusal, lack of interest and rudeness can be very wearing for agents, especially if

productivity-enhancing technology such as dialers are being used over-aggressively.

Management should consider ways of alleviating agent stress, through sensible scheduling and

call blending, judicious use of technology, focused training and improving working

environments, amongst other ways

especially where the technology exists to do so, it can be tempting to treat outbound calling

campaigns as an exercise in maximizing call volumes and (theoretically) revenues. However, this

can result in brand damage and high staff attrition rates through over-pressured and exhausted

agents delivering poorer quality interactions

there has been a tendency to use offshore contact centers for low-value outbound sales

campaigns which would otherwise be unprofitable to run. However, the same high standards of

training and support are needed by offshore agents to do their job properly: too many

businesses simply put the agents on a dialer with an inflexible script in front of them and then

wonder why their customers and prospects become negative towards their brand

tough legislation has emerged which is reducing the amount of cold calling which businesses can

do. Cold calling is illegal in Germany, and the Do-Not-Call register in the US and the Telephone

Preference Scheme (TPS) in the UK allow customers to opt out of receiving any sales calls at all

in theory.

10

THE ROLE OF OUTBOUND IN BUSINESSES TODAY

INBOUND AND OUTBOUND ACTIVITY

In past years, there had been a strong positive correlation between the size of the contact center and

the proportion of outbound activity, with larger contact centers carrying out a higher proportion of

outbound activity than smaller ones. It may have been the case that larger operations had more scope

and investment to have dedicated outbound sales teams and to be able to afford the outbound

automation technology which makes this so much more efficient.

In more recent years, the greater availability of affordable automation for smaller operations, added to

the wider use of digital outbound marketing, the effect of legislation, the impact of offshoring and the

general negative cultural attitude towards cold calling has meant that massive outbound cold-calling

‘factories’ are much less prevalent than had been the case, although there is still a slight positive

correlation between size and outbound activity.

These figures do not include outbound calls made from offshore locations into the US market, nor do

they include automated ‘robo-calls’.

NB: the term “outbound agent positions (equivalent)” describes the number of exclusively-outbound, full-

time agents required. In practice, not all outbound work is done by outbound-only agents, hence the

need for “outbound agent equivalents”.

Figure 1: Inbound and outbound activity by contact center size, end-2014

Agent positions

% of inbound activity % of outbound activity

11-24 agent positions 77.2% 22.8%





501-1,000 agent positions 74.6% 25.4%

1,000+ agent positions 74.3% 25.7%

Mean average

76.3% 23.7%

11

Figure 2: Outbound agent positions (equivalent), by contact center size, end-2014

Size band (agent positions)

Outbound agent positions (equivalent)

11-24 agent positions 60,500





501-1,000 agent positions 139,750

1,000+ agent positions 142,000

Total

813,000

The outsourcing and telemarketing sector is a key part of the US’s outbound activity and is the largest

exponent of outbound calling, with campaign-based outbound for sectors such as communications,

retail and utilities still very important. It also does a significant amount of client satisfaction checking

and market research, all of which are outbound activities.

The finance and insurance vertical markets have large numbers of outbound agents, involved in debt

collection, renewals, persuading customers to change financial products (e.g. credit cards) and

increasingly, cross-selling and up-selling to existing customers. Businesses are aware that one of the key

moves towards increased profitability is to get customers purchasing multiple products, e.g. a personal

loan, a current account, a credit card and insurance from the same provider. However, the sector is

seeing an increased use of cross-selling on inbound calls, as well as direct mail and web-based

marketing, rather than an increase in outbound telephony, with offshore playing a significant role too.

The services and communications sectors carry out a high proportion of outbound activity, especially

around sales.

The retail & distribution sector uses outbound as a sales tool, calling existing customers, as well as

providing information about deliveries. However, the proportion of activity that is outbound is below

the industry average.

There is a low level of outbound calling in public services, as many of these operations are non-sales,

reactive helpdesk environments, which answer the public’s queries. As such, proactive outbound

campaigns are needed less than in most commercial environments.

12

Figure 3: Outbound agent positions (equivalent), by vertical market, end-2014

Vertical market

Proportion of outbound agent equivalents

Outbound agent positions

(equivalent)

Outsourcing and Telemarketing 41% 189,625

Finance 21% 105,500

Communications 25% 92,500

Retail and Distribution 22% 83,000

Services 26% 76,000

IT 29% 73,250

Insurance 19% 46,000

Public Services 14% 43,125

Manufacturing 20% 31,000

Transport and Travel 16% 25,250

Healthcare 17% 25,000

Utilities 14% 22,750

Total 23.7% 813,000

13

THE NATURE OF OUTBOUND ACTIVITY

The traditional outbound activity of trying to sell to prospective customers (rather than those who have

already done business with you), is still in #1 position, at 21%, alongside proactive customer service,

which is a strong brand builder as well as an effective call avoidance tactic.

In total, the three sales-related activities - to potential customers, cross-selling and upselling to existing

customers, and renewals to existing customers - account for 44% of outbound activity, compared to less

than 40% in most of the previous years.

Sales to both new and existing customers are obviously still key reasons why companies carry out

outbound calls, and the hybrid method - customer service leading to a cross-sell/up-sell opportunity - is

seen a good way of circumventing the increasing numbers of people joining TPS. However, businesses

must be careful not to pester customers or abuse the relationship they have built up with frequent calls

about products and services that are not tailored to the customer. Increasingly, turning an inbound

service call into a cross-sell or upselling opportunity has become a widely-used tactic.

Figure 4: Outbound activity

Sales calls to potential new customers (cold

calling)21%

Proactive customer service (e.g. notification

of deliveries, delays, etc)21%

Renewals (sales calls to

existing customers)

12%

Cross-selling or upselling to existing

customers (warm calling)

11%

Debt collection6%

Customer satisfaction surveys

4%

Other25%

Outbound activity

Call us on 01483 494 690Email us on [email protected] rostrvm.com

Precision contact

Inbound Response

From simple call queuing to multi-skilled, multi-channel contact handling – deliver great service where and when it’s needed. Powerful routing means that contacts are handled gracefully and delivered to the right person at the right time.

Outbound Contact

Hit your targets and keep promises to customers with Ofcom compliant blended predictive, progressive and preview dialling. Delight customers with proactive service across multiple channels.

In Control

Real-time and historical management information delivered to your connected devices as you need it. Compliant voice recording, system configuration, adds, moves and changes are all in your control from wherever you are.

Agents Anywhere

Say and do the right things with agents anywhere – in the office, at home, on the move. . . scripting, note taking and call outcome capture supported by CallGuide for an effective, compliant and measured customer experience.

15

OUTBOUND: VERTICAL MARKETS

Of those vertical markets that provided enough responses to this question from which to draw some

conclusions, the B2C sectors (the services and TMT – Technology, Media and Telecoms – B2C sub-

sectors, as well as retail & distribution) were more involved in sales calls to new prospects, as were

outsourcers.

B2B sectors (manufacturing, TMT and Services B2B sub-sectors) were more involved in proactive

customer care, as was insurance, the latter of which has to keep customers informed of claim progress

and collect required information.

OUTBOUND: CONTACT CENTER SIZE

It is noticeable when considering outbound activity by contact center size that small (sub-50 seat)

operations seem more likely to carry out cold calling, whereas larger operations are more focused on

renewals (sales calls to existing customers).

Debt collection is also more likely to be carried out in larger (200+ seat) operations, as well as cross-

selling and upselling to existing customers. For larger operations, proactive outbound customer service

via telephony seems to be much less prevalent, as the volumes of calls required that are non-revenue

generating would be a significant cost. Such operations may prefer to use email, SMS or automated

broadcast calls to carry out this activity at a lower cost.

Figure 5: Outbound activity by contact center size

26%

15% 21%22%

23%

28%

17%

22%

7%10%

20%

13%

9% 11%

17%

12%

3% 2%

11%5%

4% 4% 7% 5%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Small Medium Large Average

Outbound activity by contact center size

Customer satisfaction surveys

Debt collection

Cross-selling or up-selling salescalls to existing customers

Renewals (sales calls to existingcustomers)

Proactive customer service (e.g.notification of delivery, delays,problems, etc)

Sales calls to potential newcustomers

16

DRIVERS OF OUTBOUND AUTOMATION

EFFICIENCY & PRODUCTIVITY

Automated dialing solutions, especially in predictive mode, have traditionally been about reducing the

time between the agent making live contacts, by eliminating manual dialing time, the time spent waiting

for the customer to answer the call and eliminating calls passed through to answer phones.

It is interesting to note that industry statistics on dialing mode efficiency suggest the following to be

reasonable estimates, if the list quality and time of day that calls are made were the same in each

instance:

• manual dialing: 12 minutes of talk time per hour (20%)

• preview dialing: 18 minutes of talk time per hour (30%)

• progressive dialing: 25 to 35 minutes of talk time per hour (42% - 58%)

• predictive dialing: 35 to 45 minutes of talk time per hour (58% - 75%).

In reality, each dialing mode will be used in different circumstances, making direct comparison very

difficult. The following section, on implementation and usage, gives an explanation and greater detail

into the advantages and disadvantages of each dialer mode, and how they are typically used.

Productivity is not simply about maximizing live contacts: the effectiveness of the results is of course of

the utmost importance. Automated outbound solutions allow the business to analyze the most effective

times of day to call customer segments, tailor their scripts in order to increase positive outcomes, and

even to ascertain whether voice, text or email is the correct channel for the specific customer or

campaign. This management information also identifies the agents’ effectiveness, identifying training

requirements for underperforming agents, and providing opportunities to share best practice from the

top performers.

17

END-USER QUESTION #1:

APART FROM INCREASING THE NUMBER OF OUTBOUND CALLS BEING MADE, WHAT BENEFITS CAN AUTOMATED OUTBOUND SOLUTIONS PROVIDE?

Beside the higher volume of calls, professional automated outbound solutions

provide the opportunity to be proactive with your customers and should be a core

part of any organization’s go-to-market strategy. By growing and strengthening

customer relationships and uncovering new sales opportunities you can turn every customer

conversation into a fruitful one. Answering and fax machines can be detected and not delivered to the

agent so they can focus on value calls. Automation allows agents to have information on the customers

before they are connected, ensuring they are prepared and adding a personalized approach. From a

legislation point of view, with an automated outbound system it is much easier to count and control

your end customer contact attempts and follow the regulations requirements regarding call attempts

and rest period. As part of our outbound solution you are able to obtain more information about

conversation content, agent voice quality and speed.

In the inContact solution, our patented no-pause predictive dialing allows agents

to immediately be connected with the customer so there is a natural

conversation. This leads to fewer hang ups and more positive outcomes. In addition, our conversation

detection feature enables reduced abandoned rates because the agent is present from the first “hello”.

Automated calls make it easier for call center managers to access data that

improves both the quality and quantity of calls agents can make.

By automatically tracking metrics, such as best time of day to call and length of time spent on the phone

by each agent, contact centers have the information needed to get the best and most effective ROI,

reducing agent downtime and ensuring the best quality leads are matched with the strongest

performing agents.

18

An outbound solution delivers a lot more than simply increasing the number of

outbound calls being made. It also provides the tools to target activity and deliver

the management information needed to measure outbound business benefits.

rostrvm Outbound enables you to contact your audience:

at the right time – the best time to call;

with the right message and channel – modern campaigns mix telephone, text messages and email;

and the right people – making sure your calls are handled by appropriately-skilled agents.

Outbound solutions routinely collect data such as the number of call attempts that don’t get answered,

connections to live callers etc. They also capture information that will give you insights into campaign

success and whether your contact is proving to be effective.

These solutions not only improve contact rates - they also support agents with integral agent scripting

systems to help them do and say the right thing, capture the relevant information and provide links to

supporting IT systems.

Today’s outbound solutions are highly flexible and user friendly, whatever you use them for, from

following up on abandoned inbound calls, upselling/cross-selling, customer satisfaction surveys etc.

They can ensure that real progress is made and customers feel appreciated.

Aside from increasing the throughput of outbound calls and maximizing agent

productivity, outbound dialing solutions automate and add intelligence to the

dialing process, so agents are presented with all the information they need to handle a call effectively.

Far more efficient than manual dialing because of the speed, increased number of calls made, and

streamlined management of responses and call reporting, automated outbound dialing can create a far

more efficient and compliant contact center environment. With less time spent dialing, and less errors

made by automated dialers, agents are able to spend more time handling the actual call, giving a better

end customer experience.

New technology in answer machine detection can also further increase contact center productivity.

Considerably more advanced than traditional cadence AMD solutions, new algorithm based technology

available today has much higher accuracy rates (99.9%) and can enable an uplift in staff productivity of

over 10%. The call connection delay and false positives associated with cadence AMD can also be

avoided and organizations using these solutions are able to stay well within Ofcom’s 3% abandonment

threshold.

With lower cost of integration, greater flexibility, and infinite capacity to respond to changing campaign

demands, the benefits of automated dialing go way beyond simply the quantity of calls made possible.

Instinctive cloud

contact

Efficient, robust, secure capacity

Protecting brands and consumers

Enabling best practice - 24/7

Insight driven solutions

Cost effective execution

InboundOutbound

Blended

ultracomms The Granary, Cams Hall Estate, Fareham PO16 8UT

T +44 (0) 207 965 0207 www.ultracomms.com

20

FLEXIBILITY

Call blending - the process by which agents are switched between inbound and outbound queues

depending upon the operational requirements of the contact center - offers businesses the opportunity

to deploy their resources flexibly to meet service levels. This capability can be enhanced by

automatically providing the relevant customer data to the agent desktop - whether in inbound or

outbound mode - reducing the need for manual searches of information, reducing handle time and

maximizing productivity.

In terms of workforce management, real-time adherence and intraday functionality will mean that the

dynamic nature of much contact center work will not impact upon the accuracy of management

information systems, being able to track and allocate resource to the necessary activity without

requiring significant amounts of manual reallocation.

Over many years of research, ContactBabel has analyzed key performance metrics in operations that use

blended agents or dedicated outbound, and has found that there is often a direct correlation between

superior KPIs and a blended environment. This is investigated in more depth within the Call Blending

section of this report.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The idea of outbound calling being beneficial for the customer experience goes against the old-

fashioned view of outbound as making cold calls to sell home improvements or encourage PPI or

litigation claims.

In fact, the following section on outbound activity shows that proactive outbound service - keeping

customers informed - has grown very strongly over the past few years. Increasing volumes of outbound

calls are being made at the request of the customer, whether through a website ‘call-me’ button, or as a

result of a callback request being made while within the inbound telephony queue. In all cases, these

forms of outbound communication are positive for the customer experience, and when aligned with a

judicious mix of non-voice outbound communication, such as email or SMS, goes a long way to

improving the customer experience while deflecting significant volumes of inbound calls from

otherwise-frustrated customers.

The section on call-me and callback outbound activity later in the report gives more detail on the

importance of this variety of outbound in improving the customer experience.

Why be reactive when you can be proactive with Outbound Contact Center technology?

Waiting for your customers to contact you and only servicing them when they do is unproductive, unpredictable and creates issues with managing resources

Typically the relationship with your customers involves a series of events over time. Some of these events are unpredictable in their nature but many are not,

and it is these that provide the opportunity for you to be proactive in your customer engagement.

Enghouse Interactive’s award-winning Outbound Communicator with predictive

user-friendly operation for your dynamic outbound proactive campaigns. The software allows you to quickly set up and implement tailored campaigns without extensive programming skills, and complete them successfully while making the

“With the centralization, Teleperformance is now able to move agents between project

locations independently, which leads to better utilization of the local dialers and reduced

telecommunication costs. Additionally, the solution can now be

scaled more easily across sites.”“One of the great benefits of this tool is its

reporting capability, we

with key details about call outcomes, whilst

predictive dialer for our dynamic outbound campaigns.”

much as 200%

such as OFCOM

award winning answer machine detection

your customer communications

new campaigns giving you lower costs and greater flexibilityContact us to learn more

www.enghouseinteractive.comTel: +1 602 789 2800

E-Mail: [email protected]

22

AGENT ENGAGEMENT

As well as improving certain key performance metrics, call blending seems to have a positive impact on

agent attrition rates. More information is given in the dedicated Call Blending section of this report, and

it can be hypothesized that a greater variety of work can improve agent engagement and thus reduce

staff attrition. It should also be noted that the outbound sector has experienced a significant and

ongoing drop in agent attrition rates over the past few years, and this may be linked to a reduction in

repetitive, highly-scripted calls, in favor of more personalized customer service and sales calls.

By removing the tedious elements of manual dialing, outbound automation can improve the agent

experience by providing more live contacts and thus more opportunities to make sales or otherwise

reach performance targets. Of course, overly aggressive use of predictive dialing for long periods can

exhaust agents, which will quickly have a very negative effect on job satisfaction.

23

SALARIES AND BONUSES FOR OUTBOUND AGENTS

Outbound contact center employees tend to get paid relatively less than their inbound equivalents,

mainly because the former will tend to receive a much higher performance-related bonus. As in previous

years, agents in either inbound or mixed environments will tend to receive fairly similar basic salaries.

Figure 6: Salaries by contact center activity type

$30,225

$36,425

$47,341

$71,885

$32,535

$39,106

$46,804

$68,111

$28,000

$34,333

$38,200

$51,000

$30,631

$36,818

$46,627

$69,605

$ $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $60,000 $70,000 $80,000

New agent

Experienced agent

Team leader

Contact center manager

Salaries by contact center activity type

Average

Outbound

Mixed

Inbound

24

AGENT ATTRITION

Conventional wisdom states that outbound customer contact is a very difficult, high-pressure job, which

leads to stress and burnout, and thus high levels of attrition. Statistics from these studies used to bear

this theory out, although recent years’ findings have seen a reduced difference between exclusively

inbound and outbound operations.

This year, although the medians are very similar, the mean average for outbound is considerably higher,

indicating a small number of very high attrition rates within this sector which drag the mean upwards.

Figure 7: Agent attrition rate by contact center activity type

28%30%

40%

29%

19%17%

21%

18%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

Inbound Mixed Outbound Average

Agent attrition rate by contact center activity type

Mean Median

25

Since 2007, when this figure started to be tracked, outbound operations have seen higher levels of

attrition, and the gap between inbound and outbound contact center attrition rates has been significant

in each year.

2013/2014 figures – indicating little difference between inbound and outbound operations’ attrition

rates – seem to be likely to indicate something more structural and long-term: although 2015’s

outbound figure is higher than the mixed / inbound attrition rates, the previous chart showing little

difference in median (typical) attrition across activity types suggests that the days of very high attrition

in outbound operations have come to an end for many.

Figure 8: Historical mean agent attrition by contact center activity type (with 2018 projection)

Contact center activity type

Q2 2007

Q3 2008

Q4 2009

Q3 2010

Q1 2012

Q1 2013

Q1 2014

Q1 2015

Q1 2018

Inbound 31% 32% 30% 20% 23% 25% 24% 28% 22%

Mixed 29% 42% 23% 45% 24% 32% 38% 30% 32%

Outbound 44% 87% 62% 56% 49% 28% 21% 40% 34%

Mean 33% 42% 34% 32% 27% 27% 27% 29% 26%

Median 27% 30% 24% 20% 16% 21% 19% 18% 17%

26

AGENT ABSENCE

Conventional wisdom would expect to find that those in high-pressure outbound jobs would have higher

unauthorized absence rates. This is much less the case again this year than in some previous years, and

ties in with the reduction in agent attrition in outbound operations that has been seen recently,

suggesting the nature of the role has changed somewhat.

Figure 9: Short-term absence by contact center activity type


Agent absence rate (mean)

Agent absence rate (median)

Inbound 9.6% 6.0%

Mixed 6.8% 4.8%

Outbound 9.8% 6.5%

Average 8.9% 5.5%

Figure 10: Historical mean agent absence by contact center activity type (with 2018 projection)

Contact center activity type Q2

2007 Q3

2008 Q4

2009 Q3

2010 Q1

2012 Q1

2013 Q1

2014 Q1

2015 Q1

2018

Inbound 6.3% 8.7% 7.5% 5.7% 6.0% 7.7% 9.8% 9.6% 7.4%

Mixed 9.5% 9.5% 5.5% 6.6% 7.3% 6.5% 12.4% 6.8% 7.8%

Outbound 8.7% 10.3% 12.7% 7.6% 7.5% 12.1% 10.6% 9.8% 9.2%

Mean 7.0% 8.9% 8.2% 5.6% 6.4% 7.9% 10.4% 8.9% 7.6%

Median 5.2% 7.0% 5.5% 5.1%

27

RECRUITMENT COSTS

When looking at contact center activity type - inbound, mixed, or outbound - a more definite pattern

begins to emerge, with outbound operations tending to spend far less on recruitment, than inbound or

mixed respondents.

Greater attention should be paid to median averages than mean, due to a small number of extremely

high costs being quoted.

Figure 11: Cost of recruiting a new agent, by contact center activity type


Mean Median

Inbound $4,004 $2,100

Mixed $5,017 $3,250

Outbound $1,075 $750

Overall $4,012 $1,900

28

OUTBOUND AUTOMATION: IMPLEMENTATION AND USAGE

OUTBOUND DIALLING PRACTICES

USE OF DIALLERS

Automated outbound dialers are almost ubiquitous in large operations which carry out reasonable

amounts of outbound work, as the efficiencies over manual dialing are so considerable that it will often

make commercial sense. Outbound automation in the cloud is very popular, and this means the barriers

to usage are even less.

While smaller operations may not see the same scale of cost savings, over one-fifth of these

respondents have implemented outbound automated dialing technology.

Figure 12: Use of automated outbound dialers, by contact center size

21%

24%

40%

28%

17%

23%

13%

10%

3%

6%

7%

62%

52%

26%

47%

8%

3%

6%

6%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Small

Medium

Large

Average

Use of automated outbound dialers, by contact center size

Use now, no plans to replace/upgrade Use now, looking to replace/upgrade Will implement within 12 months

No plans to implement Don't know / NA

inContact’s Personal Connection™ Outbound Dialer.With inContact’s Personal Connection™ Outbound Dialer, your customers will never hear a delay again. This outbound solution eliminates awkward delays when greeting a caller while increasing productivity as agents make multiple predictive calls. Agents are connected at the first hello, which paves the way to better outcomes, higher conversion rates, and increased revenues.

• Increase Outbound Call Center Revenues • Eliminate Awkward Delays When Agents Greet Customers • Boost Agent Productivity with Predictive Dialing • Comply with Government Regulations

Connect agents BEFORE the customer answers with Personal Connection, our patented technology that eliminates the telltale pause and delayed hello from legacy predictive dialers. Calls will start more naturally and agents will have more productive conversations which translate into higher revenues.

Learn more at: www.incontact.com

30

DIALLER MODES

The following definitions of automated dialing are provided as guidance, although there is an

acknowledgement that some in the industry may refer to these modes differently.

Preview dialing: once an agent has indicated that they are ready for a call, information about the call is

presented to them. The number is then automatically dialed after a predefined period; the agent is

given time to preview the customer details before the call is launched. Calls where agents need to be

familiar with the context of the call or the customer history, or where the call may be of a more complex

and personalized nature are particularly suitable for the preview dialing mode.

Progressive dialing: once an agent has indicated that they are ready for a call, information about the call

is presented to them and the number is then dialed immediately. Call progress is monitored by the

dialer technology. Calls that do not result in 'ringing' are automatically and immediately disconnected,

whilst 'no answers' are disconnected after a predefined number of seconds. This dialing mode enables

contact centers to avoid abandoned calls, and may be used in conjunction with predictive dialing in

order to keep abandoned call rates within acceptable boundaries.

Predictive dialing: a predictive dialer launches calls at a rate such that the system connects to live callers

as soon as an agent completes the previous transaction, meaning that agents do not need to listen to

engaged tones or answer machines. The dialing rate for each campaign is controlled by a pacing

algorithm, which automatically monitors activity, and calculates when the next contact should be dialed.

The dialing rate is automatically adjusted to maintain a contact rate that is theoretically synchronized

with operator availability. The accuracy of predictive dialers improves as more agents are using the

system, as it means there are more data from which to estimate average call length. As such, the best

results are often seen in larger contact center operations where efficiency and cost per live call are of

key importance to profitability.

31

NB: the following sections (on dialing modes, call outcomes and dialing activity) are based on a survey of

UK-based outbound contact centers. There is no US equivalent survey, and has been included here in

case it is of interest to the readership.

The chart below shows that in surveys carried out with UK-based outbound contact center operations1,

it was found that larger operations (200+ seats) are more likely to be using full predictive mode (73% of

their outbound activity), as they will tend to have the agent and data pools deep enough to make better

use of this, although the gap between small and large operations’ use of predictive is not as wide as

might be thought, and is perhaps more dependent on the type of calling being made. (It should be noted

that these figures apply to the outbound sector of the industry, not the entire contact center industry).

Figure 13: Use of dialing modes, by contact center size (outbound operations only) - UK

1 ContactBabel research on behalf of Ofcom, 2015

42% 43%

73%

55%

22%28%

16%

21%7%

15%

6%

8%16%

10%

4%

10%13%

5% 1%6%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


Use of dialling modes, by contact centre size

Manual

Other

Preview

Progressive

Predictive

32

When considering dialing mode by activity type, warm sales and debt collection are somewhat more

likely to have been calls made predictively, with customer surveys and service being less so.

Figure 14: Use of dialing modes, by outbound activity (outbound operations only) - UK

14%4% 8% 4%

50%

11%13%

6%

8%

21%17% 35%

28%

64% 62%55%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Service Sales Debt collection Customer surveys

Use of dialling modes, by outbound activity

Predictive

Progressive

Preview

Manual

33

In interviews with outbound contact centers, respondents were asked why they used particular modes

of outbound dialing.

Preview dialing was stated to be chosen in cases where:

there was a danger of breaching regulations through imperfect use of predictive dialing

campaigns were small and/or where data was of high worth

activity involved handling callback requests, where the customer and their requirements could

be checked before the call was placed.

Progressive dialing was more often used where:

there is a blended environment which may need rapid changes between inbound and outbound

work, and which thus risk high spikes of abandonment as agents move between inbound and

outbound more quickly than a predictive dialer can handle

campaigns are smaller than those which typically use predictive dialing, but management still

wish to gain efficiencies.

Predictive dialing is said to be chosen where:

there are very high volumes of data in the campaign

the campaign or data is in a late stage and is the most efficient way to contact hard-to-reach

customers

where data quality is low, so it screens out unusable numbers

where there is a pressing need to speak with customers quickly (for example, to stop them

falling down the debt chain), where non-predictive calling would not support this.

Other automated dialing:

‘ratio’ dialing2 is used by a small number of respondents, when calls are very short and

predictive dialing will slow things up especially at the start of the day when contact rates are the

best. This method is said to allow a quicker response to increases in call drop rate.

2 Ratio dialing: a ratio of lines-to-agent is set, i.e. for each agent, the dialer will have been told to place a number of calls, so a

3:2 ratio will have 3 calls placed for 2 agents. This is a simple method of automated dialing as it does not need a pacing algorithm, but needs close monitoring by the dialer manager as the ratio will not alter unless it is manually changed and risks making abandoned calls if it is not regularly updated.

34

While the productivity benefits possible through predictive dialing are considerable, businesses need to

be aware that unless managed correctly, predictive dialers can quickly lead to high levels of call

abandonment and silent calls as there are not enough agents available to handle the live contacts. UK

regulations currently state that no more than 3% of callers can be abandoned in this way, and there is

currently at the time of writing (March 2016) an extensive ongoing review into how silent and

abandoned calls can be minimized further.

Additionally, overuse of aggressive predictive dialing algorithms can put extreme pressure on agents,

leading to burnout and high levels of agent attrition and consequent recruitment costs, as well as

generally lower levels of service quality.

35

OUTBOUND OUTCOMES

A series of questions was asked to respondents from outbound contact centers about the typical results

that they had from their ongoing outbound activity and/or campaign. Slightly over half of calls made

were answered - either by an answer phone or by a person - with those carrying out debt collection

activities having the lowest answer rate and those carrying out customer service activities the highest.

Figure 15: Proportion of calls answered, by outbound activity type (UK)

Outbound activity type

% of calls answered

Customer service 68%

Customer surveys 65%

Warm sales 60%

Cold sales 59%

Debt collection 44%

Other 62%

Average

53%

Large operations were less likely to have their calls answered – they are more likely to call for longer

hours rather than just the peak hours.

Figure 16: Proportion of calls answered, by size (UK)

Contact center size

% of calls answered

Small 60%

Medium 51%

Large 47%

Undisclosed 51%

Average

53%

36

Of calls answered, responses showed that 49% were answered by a person and 51% by an answer

machine / voicemail.

Figure 17: Of the calls that were answered, how many were by a consumer? (by outbound activity type) (UK)


% of calls answered, that were answered by a consumer

Customer surveys 85%

Customer service 64%

Cold sales 57%

Debt collection 41%

Warm sales 38%

Other 65%

Average

49%

Figure 18: Of the calls that were answered, how many were by a consumer? (by contact center size) (UK)

Contact center size

% of calls answered, that were answered by a consumer

Small 51%

Medium 53%

Large 45%

Average

49%

37

1 in 8 of the calls that were answered by a consumer were then hung up by that consumer, rejecting the

call. This is far higher in those carrying out debt collection and cold sales activities.

Figure 19: Of the calls that were answered by a consumer, how many were hung up by the consumer when an agent was available? (by

outbound activity type) (UK)


% of calls answered by a consumer, that were hung-up by a consumer when an

agent was available

Debt collection 22%

Cold sales 10%

Warm sales 2%

Customer surveys 1%

Customer service 0%

Other 3%

Average

12%

In 1.1% of cases where the call was answered by the consumer, a recorded message was played as no

agent was available, with this figure being the highest in the heavily-predictive worlds of debt collection

and cold sales.

Figure 20: Of the calls that were answered by a consumer, how many had a recorded message is played as no agent was available (by

outbound activity type) (UK)


% of calls that were answered by a consumer, and an agent is

not available, where recorded message is played

Debt collection 1.7%

Cold sales 0.9%

Warm sales 0.8%

Customer surveys 0.3%

Customer service 0.0%

Other 0.3%

Average

1.1%

38

15% of calls answered by an answer machine ended in a recorded message being left on the answer

machine. Those carrying out debt collection and warm calling activities appear to be the only activity

types doing this of the survey respondents.

Figure 21: Of the calls that were answered by an answerphone, where a recorded message is played, by outbound activity type (UK)


% of calls that were answered by an answerphone, where a

recorded message is played

Debt collection 25%

Warm sales 17%

Cold sales 0%

Customer service 0%

Customer surveys 0%

Other 0%

Average

15%

It is interesting to note that 85% of respondents answering this question did not play a recorded

message to an answerphone. The majority stated that they did not use AMD and therefore the call will

be passed through to an agent who would either leave a message or hang-up depending on the business

requirements.

39

AGENT UTILISATION RATES (UK)

The majority of respondents calculate agent utilization rate as a proportion of the time spent talking to

end-users, divided by the amount of time available to talk. For example, if an agent spends 30 minutes

in the hour talking, and they are logged in to the system for 50 minutes (with a 10 minute break), then

the majority of contact centers calculate this to be a 60% utilization rate (30/50).

Most respondents do not include spending time before the call looking at contact data, or adding wrap-

up notes after the call to be a part of agent utilization, stating that utilization rates are only calculated

based on the % of time spent in a 'talk' state on the dialer as a % of the total time the agent was

working, and does not include any time updating customer records or waiting for calls.

However, most of the higher (70%+) results in the chart below also include wrap-up time (e.g. Talk +

Wrap, as a % of Talk + Wrap + Idle). For most respondents that split out wrap-up time from call time,

wrap is usually between 15-20% of the call time.

Figure 22: Average outbound agent utilization rates (UK)

Agent utilization rates

1st quartile 70%

Median 56%

3rd quartile 42%

Mean 56%

30% or lower5%

31-40%14%

41-50%25%

51-60%20%

61-70%13%

71-80%16%

Over 80%7%

Average agent utilisation rate

40

AGENT UTILISATION RATES AND DIALLING MODES (UK)

Analysis of agent utilization rates were carried out against the main dialer mode employed by

respondents, in order to investigate whether any dialing mode has a correlation with agent utilization.

For example, as predictive dialing is a highly automated process, it might be expected that this mode

would clearly yield the highest utilization rates.

However, there are more variables than just dialer mode that will affect utilization rates, and which

themselves may encourage an outbound operation to use one mode over another. For example,

respondents state that predictive dialers are more likely to be used than other modes in cases where

data quality is low, and there have already been multiple attempts made to contact a customer.

Different businesses will have their own views on the balance between efficiency and quality, and the

amount of wrap-up time that may be required by various business activities will be different, and will

affect utilization as well (if included in the utilization calculation).

The overall agent utilization rate (i.e. all responses, regardless of dialing mode and method of

calculation) is 57%, or 34.2 minutes per hour.

When considering only those respondents who consider talk-time, but not wrap-up in their

calculations, this figure is 51% (30.6 minutes per hour)

For respondents who include both talk time and wrap-up in their calculations, the utilization

rate is 68% (40.8 minutes per hour).

In order to see whether and by how much dialing mode can be said to affect agent utilization, the

utilization rates were calculated for respondents using particular dialing modes. It was found that

amongst contact centers which calculated utilization through only talk-time and which used mainly

predictive dialing had an average utilization rate of 62% (37.2 minutes per hour), compared to the

respondent base as a whole, who had a 51% utilization rate. This implies a clear increase in agent

utilization time through predictive dialing.

It is interesting to note that industry statistics on dialing mode efficiency suggest the following to be

reasonable estimates3, ceteris paribus:

manual dialing: 12 minutes of talk time per hour (20%)

preview dialing: 18 minutes of talk time per hour (30%)

progressive dialing: 25 to 35 minutes of talk time per hour (42% - 58%)

predictive dialing: 35 to 45 minutes of talk time per hour (58% - 75%)

It should also be noted that many respondents stated that predictive dialing is very likely to be used for

more difficult ‘end of project’ calls where customers have been called many times already, with the

initial attempts made using IVM, and high quality data being originally called in preview or progressive

modes. As the quality and age of the data is different depending on the mode used, the fact that there

are numerous variables changing should strike an even greater note of caution.

3 ContactBabel estimates, based on a mix of secondary research with dialer manufacturers and primary ContactBabel research

41

DIALLING ACTIVITY: TIME OF DAY (UK)

Contact center respondents provided information about the hours in which they carry out outbound

calling, and indicated the peak times where they were making most calls.

In the working week, calling tends to start at 0800 or 0900 and carry on for 12 hours until 2000 or 2100.

Calling before 0930 was almost always carried out for debt collection.

By 10am, 85% of respondents are making outbound calls, with 72% finishing by 8pm. By 9pm, all

respondents have finished calling.

Figure 23: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Mon-Fri (UK)

29%31%

71%74%

85%88%

91% 92%

99% 99% 100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%

0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1%4%

7%10%

12%

25%

29%

72%

76%

100%100%100%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

0800 0830 0900 0930 1000 1030 1100 1130 1200 1230 1300 1330 1400 1430 1500 1530 1600 1630 1700 1730 1800 1830 1900 1930 2000 2030 2100 2130 2200

Cumulative opening and closing hours Mon-Fri

M-F start M-F end

42

Figure 24: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sat (UK)

Only around 30-40% of outbound respondents stated that they called on Saturdays.

Saturday calling was usually carried out in the morning, tailing off after 1pm. By 9am, most respondents

were calling, with around one-third stopping by 1pm, with a gradual tailing-off of activity throughout the

afternoon, with debt collectors the most active. By 6pm, almost all outbound calling had stopped.

20%

27%

80% 80%

100%100%100%100%100%100% 100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%

0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

7%10%

37% 37%

47% 47% 47% 47%

60% 60%

67%

73%

93% 93%97% 97% 97% 97%

100%100%100%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

0800 0830 0900 0930 1000 1030 1100 1130 1200 1230 1300 1330 1400 1430 1500 1530 1600 1630 1700 1730 1800 1830 1900 1930 2000 2030 2100 2130 2200

Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sat

Sat - start Sat - end

43

The great majority of respondents do not call on Sundays. Of those that do, calling begins at 10am and

tends to finish between 2pm and 6pm.

Figure 25: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sun (UK)

When looking at peak calling hours, this differs somewhat depending on the type of calling being carried

out:

Debt collection respondents state that they have an outbound calling peak in the early evening,

between 5.30pm and 8pm, with many operations also stating that there are peaks in the morning as

well, particularly between 10am and 12 noon.

Amongst respondents that carry out sales to existing customers (for example contract renewals, cross

selling and upselling), an evening peak is even more noticeable. Many respondents report the period

between 4.30pm and 7.30pm has more volume, with very few reporting significant sales call volumes

before 12 noon.

For respondents carrying out cold calls, there were less obvious peaks, with calls spread out across the

day, perhaps as for these types of sales campaign / outbound activity, there are likely to be more targets

to aim for.

0% 0% 0% 0%

100%100%100%100%100%100% 100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%

0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

33% 33%

50% 50%

67% 67% 67% 67%

83% 83% 83% 83% 83% 83%

100%100%100%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

0800 0830 0900 0930 1000 1030 1100 1130 1200 1230 1300 1330 1400 1430 1500 1530 1600 1630 1700 1730 1800 1830 1900 1930 2000 2030 2100 2130 2200

Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sun

Sun - start Sun - end

44

Different segments of the contact list are likely to be available at different times: at the simplest level,

retired people are likely to available all day, and people of working age during lunchtime and the

evening. Of course, for anything remotely associated with B2B, evenings and weekends should not be

considered. Published research4 suggests that the best time for B2B cold calls is the early morning

(before 9 am) and towards the end of the working day (4-5pm), outside of core meeting hours.

It is important to take into account external events, such as sporting events within a city (for example,

calling specific demographics during an important football match is unlikely to yield anything positive),

and if at all possible, getting the customer to state their preference early in the business relationship in

terms of availability and preferred channel will be positive for all concerned. ‘Warming them up’

through an earlier SMS message is also a tactic to be considered.

To make the customer segmentation strategy really work requires considerable amounts of data on

customer demographics, purchasing history and preferred channels and contact times, and businesses

should look to extract such information from their sales intelligence application and match it with

outbound calling outcomes and if possible, the elements of dynamic scripting that tend to work best

with such customers.

4 Sung Hyun Kwan Business School in association with Kellogg School of Management

45

DIALLING ACTIVITY: MAXIMUM NUMBER OF ATTEMPTS (UK)

As might be expected, the maximum number of attempts made to contact a customer or prospect

differs significantly depending upon the activity being carried out. Sufficient data on three outbound

activities - debt collection, warm calling (sales to existing customers) and cold calling (sales to new

prospects) were available to allow detailed analysis of call attempts and the time left between calls.

Those involved in debt collection, as we might expect, are determined to speak to specific individuals,

and almost half of them make multiple calls on the same day (with a few making as many as six calls per

day to the same individual). In the main, they will wait a minimum of four hours between calls, although

several mention that if an engaged signal is received, they will ring back within 15-30 minutes as the

chances of successful connection is higher. There are instances of respondents making up to 100 calls

per month to a specific number, although on average, making two or three calls per week is much more

common. Several respondents pointed out that if a message is left or a call dropped, they would not call

back within 72 hours.

Figure 26: Call attempts by activity type (debt collection) (UK)

Maximum calls per

consumer per day

Length of

campaign / live data

(days)

Maximum calls

in total campaign time

Time left between

calls (if engaged tone) - hours

Time left between

calls (if no engaged tone) -

hours

1st quartile 3 28 20 2.25 72

Median 2 21 10 0.5 4

3rd quartile 1 7 6 0.38 4

Mean 2.2 21 18 1.3 24

High 6 90 90 4 72

Low 1 2 3 0.25 2

46

Those respondents involved in calling existing customers, for example in order to cross-sell, upsell or

renew contracts, are less likely than debt collectors to call as many times, although they have a higher

average attempt per customer per day figure (although the research base for this was only 6

respondents, so should be treated with caution).

Typically, calls will be placed every two or three days for a three- or four-week period, with around 8

calls over this period being average. Having said that, some respondents do indicate that they call more

frequently, although none make more than 12 calls in total.

Figure 27: Call attempts by activity type (warm calling – sales calls to existing customers) (UK)

Maximum calls per

consumer per day

Length of


(days)

Maximum calls


Time left between

calls (if engaged tone) - hours

Time left between

calls (if no engaged tone) -

hours

1st quartile 3 28 10 n/a 14

Median 3 28 8 0.5 4

3rd quartile 3 18 8 n/a 4

Mean 3.5 22 8 0.5 9

High 8 35 12 0.5 24

Low 1 3 3 0.5 3

Respondents carrying out sales calls to new prospects will call multiple times in a week - around three or

four being average - with a couple of respondents carrying out very significant focused calling, with

around 10-15 calls being placed to the same potential customer.

Figure 28: Call attempts by activity type (cold calling – sales calls to new prospects) (UK)

Maximum calls per

consumer per day

Length of


(days)

Maximum calls


Time left between

calls (if engaged tone-hours)

Time left between

calls (if no engaged tone -

hours)

1st quartile 3 32 18 n/a n/a

Median 3 28 10 0.38 4

3rd quartile 2 11 3 n/a n/a

Mean 3 25 18 0.38 3.4

High 3 56 100 0.5 4

Low 2 5 3 0.25 2

47

RING TIME AND CONNECTION TIME

MINIMUM RING TIME

The survey showed that the mean average ring time industry-wide is 22 seconds, with cold selling

tending to ring the longest and ‘other’ the shortest. It can be seen that the small sample size of some

outbound activity types of skewing the mean results somewhat (particularly in the case of customer

surveys), so median averages have been included as well for greater clarity. It seems fair to note that

those involved in sales to new customers (i.e. cold calling) are more likely than other sectors to let calls

ring longer.

Figure 29: Minimum mean and median ring time before call termination, by outbound activity type (UK)


Mean minimum ring time before

call termination (seconds)

Median minimum ring time before

call termination (seconds)

Cold sales 26 25

Customer surveys 23 15

Debt collection 22 24

Customer service 21 20

Warm sales 20 21

Other 17 18

Average

21.9 20.0

The majority of respondents who stated why they set a particular minimum amount of time before call

termination explained that there was a sweet spot around 18 - 20 seconds: they referred to the UK

regulator’s policy on calls ringing for a minimum of 15 seconds, and many answer machines kick in after

21 seconds. It was also noted that studying historical maximum wait times indicated that ringing for

longer than 20 seconds rarely results in much improvement, and increasing answer machine rates would

also ‘lock out’ the record with regard to redial rules.

48

DIALLING ACTIVITY: THE ROLE OF MOBILE

The majority of mobile users have access to a smartphone, meaning a large proportion of customers will

want to contact businesses through these devices, whether via the telephony element of the device, or

via the company’s website or mobile app. Taking into account the use of tablet computers to access the

Internet, the ‘mobile channel’ may actually be the first port-of-call for many customers, especially those

in the younger demographics.

The dual, mutually-supporting drivers of high-speed mobile networks and the proliferation of

smartphones means that provision of services via a mobile channel offers businesses and consumers the

opportunity to make a step-change in the way that they communicate with each other. This new world

of communication allows businesses to consider whether functionality such as multimedia streaming

and videoconferencing could give them a competitive advantage in the customer service world.

Gathering, understanding and using the contextual data that can surround the mobile consumer will be

key to pushing the uptake and functionality of this channel forward. The plethora of channels

immediately available to the mobile consumer - including voice, web browsing, SMS, social media, and

web chat - encourages the customer to act immediately for all their service or information

requirements, rather than waiting until they are in front of a desktop computer.

In the US, the majority of current call plans make the recipient pay for an incoming call, which means

that the caller has to be sure that the recipient actually wants to receive the call. Survey respondents

make 28% of their outbound calls to cellphones and this figure will certainly rise further over time.

Respondents in a 2015 survey reported paying a mean average per-minute rate of 2.16c to call a

landline, against 2.37c per minute to a cellphone (medians are 1.9c and 1.98c respectively).

The same double pricing structure is also applied to SMS messages, meaning that the current low usage

of business-to-customer SMS (and the lack of interest in growing this channel) is very understandable,

with SMS being perhaps best suited to proactive customer service, where being sent information such as

notification of travel delays or a danger of being overdrawn is actually worth a customer paying for. It is

worth noting however, that respondents stated that their SMS volumes are expected to rise

significantly.

Further information about servicing the Mobile Customer can be found in “The Inner Circle Guide to

Multichannel Customer Contact”, and “The Inner Circle Guide to Self-Service”.

Both reports are available free of charge from www.contactbabel.com.


49


WE’RE INTERESTED IN INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY, BUT CONCERNED ABOUT AGENT BURNOUT AND INCREASED ATTRITION. DO YOU HAVE ANY POINTERS ON BEST PRACTICE?

One best practice is to treat each agent uniquely and not as one-size-fits-all.

Some agents excel in one subject or type of interaction or another by having the

ability to deliver different interaction types. Agents who want variety have the ability to do different

things and agents who are very focused on sales have the chance to do what they are best at doing.

Some customers tend toward having everyone do everything which leads to agent turnover. A second

best practice is to empower agents to have a more active role in deciding how to best satisfy a

customer’s needs. When agents have been properly trained, they should have the flexibility and power

to act in the best interest of the customer.

1) Ensure that your KPI’s filter down from the organization’s mission

statement – If your key focus is delivering excellent Customer service, then AHT

should not be an agent KPI. They should indeed be focused on metrics associated with delivering

excellent customer service. Also ensure that the real-time data displayed encapsulates this – you would

want the data to motivate your agents as opposed to ‘turning them off’.

2) Reward and recognize your people – Gamification can help with this. Introducing the concept of

gamification into your contact center can enthuse and motivate your people. Create a fun and

competitive environment to keep your agents motivated, focused and challenged.

3) Empower agents - They are your front line and a subject experts. In the age of strict regulations,

agents need to feel valued and have the ability to apply their own knowledge and personality to calls in

order to service the end customer. Give them the power and ability to deliver excellent customer service

as opposed to them having to refer to Team Leaders all of the time.

4) Care about your agent’s wellbeing – When agents feel valued and looked after, they perform better.

Think about ‘time out’ zones/areas. Invest in training. More and more contact centers are providing

amenities such as discounted gym passes or indeed an on-site gym for their agents.

5) Ask your agents – Do you really know how happy your agents are? If not why aren’t you asking them?

This can be done in a number of ways including an on-line survey. The important thing is to invest the

time and find out what they really think. How can you make plans to improve and change things if you

don’t ask? Make sure this is taken seriously and that agents feel that they can be honest (use a 3rd party

to engage). Then use this information to make changes.

50

If you just turn up the productivity dial agent burnout can be a problem. To avoid it,

make sure that you keep a close eye on effectiveness as well as productivity – for

example, if you are making lots of calls but not reaching your target audience then

your agents will be unhappy.

Use the data management tools incorporated in modern outbound and blending systems: these help

you address the right audience at the right time and be able to mix your communication channels to

give you agent productivity, the right business outcomes and a work blend that avoids agent burnout.

The role of the contact center agent is undoubtedly a demanding one. With

targets to meet, increasing numbers of interactions to handle, new channels to

master and customer experience always the top priority, managing contact center staff to avoid stress

and burnout is critical for business success. There are many strategies that contact center managers can

use to improve agent engagement. Here are a few ideas to keep contact center staff happy and

productive, without pushing stress levels up, and motivation levels down.

Focus on quality, not quantity

Placing more emphasis on KPIs such as customer satisfaction scores and first call resolution rather than

focusing on cost per call and average handle time can help to make the role of advisors more rewarding

and varied. Empowering agents to solve a customer’s issue in the first call itself, regardless of whether

that call then takes longer, can give the agent a far greater sense of achievement than making several

repeat calls, it also increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Use technology to lighten the workload

Leveraging technology and automating processes helps drive efficiency levels as well as ensuring call

volumes are maintained. With automated predictive dialing, every time a call is made, a screen pop of

the required script and customer details appears, enabling agents to have the right information at their

fingertips to handle the call successfully and maximize the chance of a positive outcome.

Use call scripting effectively

Providing agents with call scripts is an easy and efficient way to keep them on track and to speed up

their call handling time. Providing training to enable agents to balance the use of call scripts with their

own unique interactions can help to make the role of the agent more rewarding, and the customer feel

that they are being listened to.

51

Working closely with our customers, Enghouse Interactive continues to invest in

design and the ease of use of its solutions including the development of new

applications and integration to key systems. One of the best practices for agents is

to use the live analytics client alongside their outbound solution to ensure they self-coach, making each

interaction count, and helping the agent to remain motivated.

54

ANSWER-MACHINE DETECTION

Answer Machine Detection (AMD) is a type of technology that allows dialers in predictive mode to

recognize calls that are picked up by an answer machine, and stop the outbound agent taking that call,

keeping them free to speak with actual customers. The purpose of this was simply to present agents

with the greatest number of live contacts. The negative experience of the customers answering the

phone that were incorrectly identified as being answer machines and then hung up on (‘false positives’)

was rarely considered.

Most AMD solutions usually work by:

Detecting a long string of words in one burst such as “Hello, we’re not available, please leave a

message after the tone …”, deducing from the patterns of noise and silence on the line whether

an automated message is being played when a call is connected. This is known as the ‘cadence’

method, but there are other ways in which AMD can work5

Identifying a live caller who may answer by saying “Hello?” and then waiting for a reply.

However, AMD may cause problems and is not 100% accurate:

There will be a pause or delay while the system tries to connect an agent, which may lead to the

called party hanging up

the AMD solution may incorrectly flag a live person as being an answering machine, hanging up

the call. The effect of this ‘false positive’ is that the customer will effectively get a silent call

which can be frustrating and worrying for the majority of the public who are unaware of how

outbound technology works.

The FCC has responded to increased numbers of complaints about silent and abandoned nuisance calls

made as a result of AMD: as a result, a set of rules was designed in order to reduce the number of

abandoned or silent calls.6

Cadence AMD – analyzing from the patterns of noise and silence on the call whether an answer phone

message is being played – relies upon an accurate assessment of whether a call has been answered by a

human or answer machine within the two-second window currently allowed by the FCC, which does not

give enough time to both detect 100% of answer machines and exclude all live contacts, leading to silent

and abandoned calls. In order to remain compliant with the FCC (and prove it), there is also a great deal

of management and reporting to be carried out, reducing the productivity benefits.

The rate of silent calls - where AMD falsely detects that an answer machine is present – can by their

nature only be estimated, otherwise they would not have been abandoned. This requires companies to

5 See http://www.ultracomms.com/products/amd for an example 6 https://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/policy/Telemarketing-Rules.pdf

http://www.ultracomms.com/products/amd

https://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/policy/Telemarketing-Rules.pdf

55

test their systems and analyze recordings to estimate the rate of silent calls, which gets taken from their

overall abandonment rate, which is a maximum of 3% of calls, meaning the dialer can only be run at a

maximum rate of 3% minus the estimated false positive rate, further reducing productivity gains. An

alternative solution to trying to detect every answering machine is only to remove calls if the systems is

100% certain of that an answer machine is present.

Of those US outbound respondents that use AMD, one-third employ it all of the time, particular the case

in large operations. Only a small minority pick and choose the times they use it (some contact centers

only employ it in peak calling times, where customers or prospects are most likely to be available, so as

to maximize live contacts). A very substantial proportion of outbound users do not have AMD

functionality in their solution, especially those in small and medium operations.

Figure 30: Use of answer machine detection (AMD)

As part of a ContactBabel survey of UK outbound contact centers, respondents were asked what their

experience had been when they had restricted or switched AMD off and on to see what the impact upon

productivity and compliance had been. It was generally felt that there was a significant improvement in

life contact rates when AMD was in place, and that agent morale and performance dropped

considerably when AMD had been turned off, due to a large increase in the instance of answer phones

presented to agents. Some respondents noted that they used AMD only at specific times during the day,

and when the data that they were calling on was of questionable quality. However, there was a general

acknowledgement that the nature of most AMD solutions will produce false positives, and that

legislation requiring recorded messages and/or an IVR option to speak to an agent would assist the

customer experience without damaging productivity.

15%

33%

50%

33%

4%

3%

3%

4%

6%

3%

4%

4%

3%

3%

63%

56%

27%

47%

11%

6%

13%

11%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Small

Medium

Large

Average

Use of answer machine detection (AMD), by contact center size

Yes, and we always use it Yes, and we sometimes use it Yes, but we rarely use it Yes, but we never use it No AMD functionality Don't know

--- Thought Leadership ---

There’s more to outbound diallers than just higher call volumes – are you making the most of yours?

Outbound diallers can achieve far more than just increasing the throughput of calls. The latest features in cloud-based solutions can help to create a far more efficient, economic and compliant contact centre environment, while ensuring customer experience is not compromised.

This may not just mean actually increasing volume, but instead, a better quality of call for both the recipient and the agent. For instance, recent technology developments have made answering machine detection (AMD) a far more exact science than the hit-or-miss cadence solutions that contact centres have been using for years.

AMD is very topical in 2016, since Ofcom’s recent consultation on its ‘persistent misuse’ policy has put the spotlight back on nuisance or abandoned calls and how contact centres can best manage outbound dialling without infringing Ofcom guidelines. This has led to a re-focus on the effectiveness of AMD solutions, which were originally introduced as a means to improve efficiency, although ironically this has not necessarily been the case and can make Ofcom compliance an administrative headache.

On one hand, automatically connecting agents to more customers helps to streamline the whole outbound process; on the other hand, the more calls an operator makes, the greater the chance they will connect to answer machines when using traditional cadence AMD systems. The resulting impact on call abandonment is something Ofcom has been watching closely in order to protect end consumers. Their recent consultation on silent and abandoned calls invited comment from the industry and the results of the consultation are eagerly awaited.

Cadence-based AMD has always been limited by the inherent inaccuracies of a machine assessing whether or not a call has been answered by a human within Ofcom’s two-second permitted window. This, together with the testing, monitoring and reporting required by Ofcom outweighed any potential productivity gains, thus leading many organisations to cease using AMD altogether.

While it may be difficult to predict any future regulatory requirements, the fact is that AMD technology has developed considerably in recent times, meaning that contact centres can have the best of both worlds: an increase in outbound calls reaching real recipients, while at the same time, staying well within Ofcom’s guidelines, without onerous testing and reporting procedures too.

With much higher accuracy rates (99.9%), new algorithm-based technology (developed by Ultracomms) can enable an uplift in staff productivity of over 10 per cent, since agents reach fewer answering machines and have more valuable conversations with customers. The call connection delay and false positives associated with cadence AMD can also be avoided with the right technology.

The net effect is that abandoned calls from false positives are almost entirely eradicated, making it easier for contact centres to comply with Ofcom guidelines whilst still filtering out a considerable proportion of wasted agent calls.

Call blending comes into its own

Another area of innovation in outbound dialling is the evolution of call blending. While not new, this technique has really come into its own since the advent of cloud-based solutions, by removing the challenges of sharing workloads between diverse departments and different locations. With cloud based call blending solutions, the geographical limitations of remote management are removed while complete control of customer experience and advisor activity is retained.

Call blending gives contact centres the flexibility to deliver both inbound and outbound calls seamlessly to appropriately skilled agents, based on call traffic at any time. When inbound call volumes are lower, the dialler will generate more outbound calls depending on the number of available agents, and when inbound traffic increases, the dialler will automatically reduce the number of outbound calls in order to ensure agents are available to take inbound calls.

Using the dialler’s complexed algorithms to adjust to the flow of call traffic dynamically enables contact centres to increase agent productivity by using the same teams to handle both inbound and outbound calls. This can help to improve customer service by reducing call queuing, provide a more varied and challenging experience for the agent, as well as ultimately reducing operating costs for the organisation.

With developments in AMD, call blending and other areas of outbound technology, call centre organisations are in a strong position to improve the way they work, have more meaningful conversations with customers, improve the agent experience and reduce unnecessary costs. Outbound diallers have become a de facto tool in the contact centre and it is easy to take them for granted: so for anyone who has not taken a fresh look at what their outbound dialler is able to achieve, 2016 could the time to do so.

http://www.ultracomms.com

57

USE OF CLI / CLID

The presentation of CLI / CLID (calling line identification) is required for US telemarketers, and it is illegal

to ‘spoof’ CLID (make it appear that the call is originating from a different number).

In the UK, DCMS (the Department of Culture, Media and Sport) want to make outbound callers provide

an accurate CLI and the ICO (information Commissioner’s Office) supports this, so it is likely to become

law at some point in 2016.

CLI is in any case presented by 93% of UK respondents to ContactBabel’s outbound survey, so any

change to regulations is likely to affect rogue calling organizations. Some respondents, often from the

debt collection sector, mentioned that localized CLI (i.e. those that appear to have originated from the

same town or city as the called party) tend to have improved answer rates, and that calls clearly

originating from UK operations are also likely to have improved results.

Around a third of UK outbound contact centers use multiple CLIs, which allow them to route a customer

calling back to a specific department, client, product, brand or campaign, and also to provide local

support. Some of the debt collecting respondents state that debtors learn to recognize specific CLIs, and

that alternatives are used to improve answer rates.

58

THE USE OF IVM (INTERACTIVE VOICE MESSAGING)

Interactive Voice Messaging (IVM) is often used alongside live outbound calling, with an automated

message inviting the recipient to enter into conversation, either now or at a later time.

Around a third of outbound contact centers in the UK use IVM, with those in the debt collection industry

most likely to do so. Respondents within the industry state that they use this in order to give as many

people as possible the chance to be connected to an agent before the downstream collections process

takes over: unlike calls to new customers (cold sales) for example, there is a limited time period for a

debt to be settled at a specific stage before it is escalated. It is also seen as a way to clean lists and

collect the easiest debts before the respondent switches dialing mode to predictive dialing.

By far the most prevalent use of IVM is where a recorded message is played that asks specifically by

name for a particular customer, asking them to press 1 if it is them in order to be transferred to an

agent. If no key presses are detected, a message will be left with the caller’s name and telephone

number, asking them to call back. This may be looped to avoid partial recordings being made. Businesses

will ask the customer to identify themselves through their date of birth or account number before any

information is shared with them.

Some contact centers state that they will make sure an agent is available to take the call if 1 is pressed,

others that any IVM returns that are abandoned will not be called for another 72 hours at which point a

live agent will be made available.

IVM is seen as less intrusive than live outbound dialing. It can be personalized, and the customer can

choose to interact with the company at that time, advise a better time to contact or simply hang up. For

the debt collection industry, a significant proportion of customers that enter collections are able to

make a payment to bring their account up to date, exiting the collections process within the same

month. IVM enables companies to automate outbound interactions with this segment of customers and

thus enable live call center resources to focus on speaking to customers with more serious financial

difficulties or more complex arrears queries, which is beneficial to both customer and company.

IVM is less expensive than employing agents and can be particularly useful in small teams where

predictive dialing is not possible due to the risk of high call abandonment rates. IVM is also effective at

cleaning data, for example, when attempting a phone number for the first time, IVM helps cleanse the

database of bad or dead numbers and provides an instant ‘opt-out’ process for removal of Do Not

Contact numbers.

It also allows customers to know who the organization is that are trying to contact them, and to press 1

to speak to them which is especially useful in the case of false AMD detection. IVM can also be used to

assist with fraud prevention and credit card checking, as it is a timely and rapid method of informing the

customer that there is a potential problem.

59

USE OF BROADCAST MESSAGING

Automated messaging or ‘broadcast’ messages are calls made with the sole purpose of making a

recorded announcement, rather than to connect a consumer to a live agent immediately. Examples

include a recorded sales or marketing message, or a recorded information message which is not an

‘Agent Unavailable’ message.”

Broadcast messaging is carried out by far more of the large operations than smaller ones. Debt

collection operations respondents in particular stated that they use broadcast messaging to drive

inbound call volumes, as it is seen as another approach to take with customers who are difficult to

contact directly.

60

COMPLIANCE WITH REGULATIONS

The US has a vast number of regulations regarding outbound calling, depending upon the type of

outbound activity carried out, the vertical market in which the activity is carried out, whether

automated or broadcast dialing is used, and even the time of day or day of the week that calls are made.

There are also specific state regulations to consider as well as overall federal laws.

The outbound industry has had increasing regulations applied to it over the years, with the Telephone

Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) at the forefront of regulation. It restricts making telemarketing calls,

using automatic telephone dialing systems and artificial or prerecorded voice messages (also referred to

as robocalls), and sending unsolicited faxes.

An excellent summary of the TCPA changes and additions over the years can be found here.

The telemarketing sector is also ruled by the Federal Trade Commission Telemarketing Sales Rule (FTC

TSR) which can be found here. It includes information on specific abandonment rates, caller identity

requirements, and Do Not Call lists.

For debt collection, the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) regulates outbound activity, and

includes the use of illegal contact, harassment and threats and other legal issues. The regulation can be

found here.

At a state level, there are often requirements to register as a telemarketing organization, and to follow

specific state regulations. This is a useful point of reference.

Whether a call is placed to a landline or cellphone is also an issue. Information can be found here and

here.

There are also rules about recording calls which differ between states and depending upon the nature of

the business. There are good backgrounds to these issues here and here.

http://www.callminer.com/wp-content/whitepapers/CM-DialingLeg-Guide-September-2013-FINAL.pdf

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-reform-proceedings/telemarketing-sales-rule

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/fair-debt-collection-practices-act

https://www.sba.gov/content/telemarketing-laws

http://www.marketingresearch.org/issues-policies/best-practice/calling-cell-phones-tcpa-and-ethical-best-practices-researchers

http://www.americanbar.org/publications/blt/2013/05/01_smith.html

http://contactcompliance.com/tcpa-cfpb-hipaa-regulations-clarified/

http://blog.zoomint.com/blog/know-the-rules-of-call-recording

61


WHAT IMPACT DOES CURRENT AND FUTURE LEGISLATION HAVE ON OUTBOUND, AND HOW DO YOUR SOLUTIONS ADDRESS THIS?

The use of automated dialing is falling under increased scrutiny from OFCOM

and organizations are having to adapt their use of technology to stay within the

guidelines. Noble participates in OFCOM consultations and are an active member of many industry

groups (such as the CBI, Direct Marketing Association, etc.), this ensures that we understand what

legislation is being proposed and ensure Nobles suites of products have the necessary tools to enable

Contact center to continue to utilize the productivity gains of automated outbound systems whilst

ensuring they are operated within legalistic guidelines.

At the time of writing the consultation phase of Ofcom’s “Review of how we use our

persistent misuse powers: Focus on silent and abandoned calls” has just ended.

Assuming that the final guidance will reflect information contained in the

consultation, Rostrvm Solutions supports the review and the clarification that it will provide.

We particularly welcome the added guidance on Interactive Voice Messaging (IVM) which, if used

sensibly, extends managed-contact opportunities with customers.

The detail in the consultation document suggests several changes to be taken into account. In reality,

any contact center that is following the current (2010) guidelines – and the spirit of them too - shouldn’t

be overly concerned. That said, contact centers operating outside, or even on the outer limits of, the

current guidelines need to take a long, hard look at their operational practices. The rostrvm dialer has all

the controls you need to achieve Ofcom-compliant dialing.

There are other regulators to consider such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Any

outbound system needs to manage data-related issues. Again rostrvm includes the facilities you need to

comply – checking your lists against Telephone Preference Service, de-duplicating data and managing Do

Not Call lists.

Also, dialer managers need to consider carefully their campaign strategies and, if they haven’t done it

already, move from the old 1990s-style ‘load-up-the-dialer and step-on-the-accelerator’ techniques and

adopt a more precise and targeted approach – we call it Precision Contact.

Precision Contact uses the available tools to target your audience



and the right people – making sure your calls are handled by appropriately-skilled agents.

62

Legislation provides necessary guidelines for operators and service providers to

the industry, ensuring acceptable standards of conduct are maintained and that

end-consumers’ interests are protected, and their views are heard.

Ultracomms has been working with contact center organizations in the UK, monitoring and examining

the dialing activity of clients and advising on all areas of Automated Calling System (ACS) use, from

productivity improvements to operating within the regulatory guidelines relevant to their industry

sectors for over a decade. Ultracomms’ campaign support team proactively advises clients on how to

ensure their dialing activity remains in line with the relevant regulations, and the unique patent pending

answer machine detection solution, AMD+ enables clients to increase productivity, without infringing

Ofcom’s guidelines on call abandonment. With much higher accuracy rates (99.9%), the new algorithm-

based technology can enable uplift in staff productivity of over 10 per cent, since agents reach fewer

answering machines and have more valuable conversations with customers. The call connection delay

and false positives associated with cadence AMD can also be avoided; ensuring users remain well within

Ofcom’s permitted 3% abandonment rate.

Enghouse Interactive outbound solution, offers customers a very strong system

with a wide spectrum of finely graduated settings for contact center operations.

We always support our customers with all questions around compliance and

legislation standards and offer advice to observe country specific rules. Enghouse Interactive is active in

the relevant OFCOM consultations and the software can be used in a fully compliant way.

The climate of legislation in Outbound has been confusing due to varying

interpretation and confusion in updates to the law. As for the future, we hope

that clarification will bring more certainty and comfort within the industry. Unfortunately, the changes

in the law have negatively impacted the good actors instead of targeting the bad actors that give the

industry a bad name. inContact maintains close ties to industry groups and specialty law firms so we can

keep abreast of upcoming changes.

63

COMPLYING WITH REGULATIONS

Outbound contact centers were asked to give their opinions of the reasons for non-compliance with

regulations, and what they considered to be the main drivers of silent and abandoned calls.

A top-level categorization of drivers is shown below (placed in order of frequency):

poor dialer management

rogue operators

agent behavior

targets and KPIs

poor data.

Poor dialer management

Outbound contact centers note that abandoning calls can happen as a result of dialer pacing being too

aggressive, or agents spending too long in unavailable time, in conjunction with too little monitoring and

slow dialer readjustment. It is recommended that the dialer is warmed up in preview mode before

moving to full predictive mode, to avoid causing dropped calls at the start of the shift due to the mass

logging-in of the resource pool. This should ensure that dropped calls are low from the outset, and

abandonment rate will be under the threshold throughout the shift rather than having to try to recover

this in a suboptimal way towards the end of a shift.

Overdial settings should only be used where dialer managers are confident that the creation of high

connect rates can be sustained by agents. Where an outbound-only campaign is taking place, agent

levels can be fairly well predicted, but in a blended inbound/outbound environment, the necessity to

balance the outbound abandonment rate while reacting to inbound call spikes requires very careful

management, and the introduction of minimum agent volumes for the outbound campaigns can assist

with this process.

It is also important to have a sound understanding of the data that is being called, and wherever

possible analyze the correct calling periods for this. Understanding the customer prospect list to

optimize the contact preferences and availability times if possible can greatly assist with contact rates.

Moving between pools of variable data quality can very quickly increase call abandonment rates, so

extra management time at these threshold points is crucial.

64

Rogue operators

It is an unfortunate fact that some companies blatantly ignore regulations, withholding CLI in order to

obviate complaints from consumers. Proposed regulations around the accuracy and ubiquity of CLI aim

to reduce these issues, although rogue operators calling from offshore are unlikely to be deterred by

this. The planting of monitored /seeded telephone numbers and the aggressive tracing and investigation

of any contact center calls that have failed to present a valid CLI will assist in identifying the rogue

operators who are responsible for considerable proportion of nuisance calls.

Agent behavior

An increase in abandoned calls can be in part attributable to agent activity, for example not adhering to

correct procedures when logging out for breaks (closing the application rather than requesting the dialer

to log the agent off means that the dialer algorithm is working off incorrect assumptions). This can be

exacerbated by the lack of constant monitoring, and unfocused dialer and line management.

Targets and KPIs

Judging the success or otherwise of cold calling or marketing campaigns through assessing volumes or

call attempts per day can lead to overly-aggressive dialer management, which is likely to push up the

abandonment rate considerably. There can be pressure put on operational and dialer management if an

outsourcer is rewarded solely through results rather than agent hours billed, for example: the risk is that

the focus changes to call throughput rather than call outcome. This is a particular risk in organizations

which are calling large volumes of untargeted data, for example generalized PPI or personal injury

campaigns. Low contact rates can also occur if there has been a long period of time since customer

consent was given, or if consent was assumed rather than stated explicitly.

65

Many outbound solution providers offer their customers a set of tools to offset risk and ensure

compliancy. Detection tools can apply different outbound strategies automatically depending on

whether a landline or mobile number is being called, the time of day, day of week and any public

holidays.

Some countries specify the maximum number of attempts that can be made to reach a customer in a

specific timescale, and any dialer solution should have this functionality. A multichannel solution can

identify and deliver campaigns based on the customer’s original opt-in information and observing

behaviors such as a consumer replying to SMS messages but not to mobile calls.

It is also necessary to be able to screen against national Do Not Call databases, data expiration dates and

to comply with state and regional dialing rules. The increased use of mobile and smart phones means

that it is possible to reduce or eliminate the number of calls made to a device that is any different time

zone, for example when the customer is on holiday.

Web: www.enghouseinteractive.com Tel: +1 602 789 2800 E-Mail: [email protected]

increase in agent productivity using outbound

contact center technology - so spend less time dialing, and

more time speaking.

of people base their decisionto buy solely

on the ogranization’sreputation for

customer service.

The single most popular outbound activity in

contact centers is proactive customer service - a strong

brand builder as well asan effective call

avoidance tactic..

67

CALL BLENDING

Call blending is an element of outbound calling which has had to fight against the conventional wisdom

of the traditional contact center industry, which implies that the more one can segregate the contact

center into a series of production lines, the better-run the operation will be.

A contact center handling different processes involving customer service, sales orders, and outbound

telemarketing will have different groups of agents with specific skills for these areas. Some agents are

more capable and adaptable than others, and can be used as blended agents. For example, these agents

may have a primary responsibility to handle inbound calls, but when the inbound call volume drops, the

dialer will send a message to these agents indicating that they have been switched to outbound mode

and start offering outbound calls to them. Where relevant, systems will prompt a script for the

outbound calls to run on the agent desktop and depending on the call volume in the inbound queue, the

agents will be switched automatically, improving productivity. Results can include increased agent

productivity, streamlined staffing, and improved customer service. However, this process needs to be

understood and managed carefully, as not all agents are adept at dealing with both inbound and

outbound calls, and if there is a constant switching from inbound to outbound and back again, the agent

may lose concentration and the productivity may go down.

A structured blended environment, where agents are moved seamlessly and dynamically between

inbound and outbound, is used in only 16% of this year’s respondents’ operations. As usual, large

contact centers are far more likely than smaller operations to use this type of approach. Small

operations are more likely to operate blending on a manual, ad-hoc basis. A substantial proportion of

both medium and large operations use dedicated teams to handle only either outbound or inbound.

Figure 31: Use of call blending by contact center size

7%

38%

16%

77%

60%

24%

53%

17%

40% 38%30%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


Use of call blending by contact center size

No, we have dedicated and separateinbound and outbound agents

Yes, but in an informal, manually-assigned way

Yes, in a formal and structured way(automatically switching based oncall volumes)

68

It is interesting to put the use and type of call blending against key contact center performance and

operational metrics, such as average speed to answer, which is - as usual - somewhat less in formal,

blended environments than in dedicated and more ad-hoc environments, as agents are moved between

tasks quickly and seamlessly.

Figure 32: Average speed to answer, by call blending environment type

Call blending environment

Average speed to answer (seconds)

Blending used in a formal and structured way 24

Blending used in an informal, ad-hoc way 30

Dedicated and separate inbound and outbound agents 32

Not applicable - no outbound calls made 55

MULTIMEDIA BLENDING

When considering call blending, it is also worth looking at how non-voice interactions can fit into a

blended environment too.

There is no general agreement within the industry on how best to deal with email, although there are

genuine reasons to encourage email/voice blending. On one side, there is a case made that letting

agents answer email makes the job more interesting for them, lowering attrition and improving skills.

The other side to this says that the skills required by email agents are different from voice agents, and

that it is difficult to find the agents to do both jobs. Both sides make sense logically, and historically, of

those contact centers which use voice/email blending, only around 1 in 5 have experienced problems

finding the right staff for these types of role, a figure that decreased each year that it was surveyed.

The great majority of respondents in most sectors allow at least some of their agents to carry out both

email and telephony. However, email requires certain skills, including grammar and punctuation, which

not every agent has, even with assistance from an email management system's response template.

On average, 59% of agents in a blended multimedia environment are allowed to do both email and voice

work, a figure which had been growing year-on-year, but which has steadied recently.

69

Those in small and medium operations are much more likely to use the same agents to handle email and

telephony, probably because there is not the option to have the specialized teams found in large contact

centers, which are much more likely to have a dedicated group handling email.

Figure 33: Use of multimedia blended agents by contact center size

Contact center size

Respondent contact centers

allowing multimedia blending

Proportion of agents answering both voice and email (only where applicable)

Small 96% 76%

Medium 85% 45%

Large 64% 39%

Average

83% 59%

Simply because a contact center uses the same agents for email and voice does not mean that all

operations use the same level of multimedia blending. For some operations, multimedia blending is a

strategic decision which has been invested in with the right levels of technology and training being

provided. For others, it is a necessity, with agents encouraged to answer emails in slack call times. Small

and medium operations - which in the past may not have had sufficient email volumes or the

investment available to formalize the blending by forming a universal queue to deal with all types of

interaction - are now as likely to use a universal queue as the ad hoc method. Many larger contact

centers prefer to use dedicated email groups.

However, this preference of many larger contact centers to form specialized multimedia groups may not

provide the same levels of service. Past data has indicated a formalized blending environment, such as a

universal queue, has a beneficial effect on email response times. Respondents using a formal blended

environment reported that 45% of emails are handled within 1 hour, with a further 44% being dealt with

inside a day.

The ad-hoc approach is less successful at very rapid response, with only 15% of emails having had an

average handle time within 1 hour, although a further 65% were handled in a day.

Dedicated email-only agents of the kind used in many larger contact centers answered an average of

19% of emails within the hour, with a further 65% handled within a day.

70


WHAT BENEFITS ARE THERE FROM CALL BLENDING? WHAT EFFECTS CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE ON PRODUCTIVITY AND AGENT ENGAGEMENT?

Blending helps to ensure that every opportunity to please customers, boost

productivity and optimize resources is taken by prioritizing contact to suit demand

and resources. Being able to choose what you blend enables greater output to be

gained from the same number of staff, as they can be switched to different tasks.

Call blending generally takes a couple of forms:

Blending customer contact by direction - most typically increasing outbound calling when

inbound traffic is low, to ensure that agents are always active.

Blending different communication channels – for example combining telephone activity with

handling emails, text messages and social media.

Both forms of blending lead to increased agent activity and ‘raw’ productivity gains. But experience

shows that translating those gains into clear business benefits requires consideration of your audience.

Simply increasing outbound calling when inbound traffic is low will enhance agent productivity but

won’t result in successful contact if you’re calling at the wrong time. Usually, the best time to make

outbound contact with your target is the same time as your inbound call peaks.

The most effective blending is achieved with a mix of contact channels. For example, during an inbound

call volume trough, send text messages or emails to attract more inbound calls. At the same time ensure

that your dialer campaigns are targeting the right audience, such as segmenting your audience towards

retired people during the day.

Blending ensures real progress is made, customers feel appreciated and ‘idle time’ is a thing of the past.

Organizations often need to share workload between departments and run into

limitations around the geographical location of staff, capacity into sites, or

simply the technology platform's ability to manage the pacing and connection of inbound and outbound

calls. This can lead to call abandonment and poor customer experience, resulting in many organizations

avoiding this potentially beneficial way of working.

Call blending, properly implemented, gives contact centers the flexibility to deliver both inbound and

outbound calls seamlessly to appropriately skilled agents, based on call traffic at any time. When

inbound call volumes are lower, the dialer will generate more outbound calls depending on the number

of available agents, and when inbound traffic increases, the dialer will automatically reduce the number

of outbound calls in order to ensure agents are available to take inbound calls.

71

Using the dialer’s complex algorithms to adjust to the flow of call traffic enables contact centers to

increase agent productivity by using the same teams to handle both inbound and outbound calls. Many

Ultracomms clients have found that they’re able to reduce their overall advisor head count as the

efficiency gains of an intelligent call blending implementation far outweigh the costs of idle advisor

hours. This can also help to improve customer service by reducing call queuing, provide a more varied

and challenging experience for the agent, and reduce operating costs for the organization.

Call blending enables you to handle outbound and inbound calls in one common

context, giving agents a seamlessly ability to regulate outbound call volume based

on inbound traffic. For example: when inbound traffic is low, outbound calls are

automatically generated for a specified campaign without the need for the agent to change campaign

login or move campaigns. This reduces failure rate and increases agent productivity time as they don’t

need to logoff, login, change, or move campaign. The software is easy to operate which means lower

training costs. Having blended environments means, there are no issues with data synchronization

between both inbound and outbound. Results can include increased agent productivity, streamlined

staffing, and improved customer service.

The main goals of contact blending are:

The ability to handle inbound spikes with fewer staff

Drive consistency and ownership for outbound and inbound contacts through intelligent, shared

routing.

Providing for varied work for the agents who thrive on different experiences.

Increased agent productivity by sharing selected agent resources when SLAs allow.

72

In the blended contact center, both inbound and outbound contacts (telephone

calls, emails, chat, text, social media, etc.) are routed to the same agent pool

(with inbound calls taking precedence over outbound activities).

Call blending gives contact centers the ability to deliver both inbound and outbound calls seamlessly to

agents. When inbound call volumes are low, outbound calls can be automatically generated. When

inbound traffic volumes increase, the dialer dynamically slows the number of outgoing calls to meet the

inbound service level.

The blended environment offers business benefits which can include - operational effectiveness, such as

staffing (which has a direct impact on service levels and satisfaction) and agent burnout, as well as

providing a more holistic service experience to the customer. Blended environments can also offer

optimized productivity and service levels as well as a consistent level of service offered to all customers.

73

MULTICHANNEL OUTBOUND STRATEGIES AND TECHNIQUES

Around 90% of outbound calling is done by agents, with 10% via automation. The opportunity exists for

automated outbound service to expand - such as sending reminders and notifications to customers

through an automated process - thus significantly reducing the cost to the business while improving the

overall customer experience. Many customers will choose to seek clarification or a status update at

some point in the buying process through making an inbound interaction. By sending a pre-emptive

outbound message, the business is proactively assisting the customer to manage their interaction.

57% of US contact center respondents do not use recorded messages for any purpose, whereas SMS

messages are used by around half of respondents, mainly for notifications and reminders. Only 39% of

respondents do not send automated emails at all. Email is used particularly for outbound customer

satisfaction surveys, with recorded messages being used most often for reminders, as are SMS

messages.

Figure 34: Use of automated outbound communication for proactive customer service

Businesses should consider how customers prefer to receive information: for example, SMS messages

for delivery notifications or appointment reminders may be preferred, whereas email may be more

suitable for order updates. Live outbound calls might be reserved for circumstances requiring immediate

action or for more complex situations.

25%

18%

7%

57%

16%

10%

6%

51%

30%28%

42%

39%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Reminders (e.g. appointments,contract renewals)

Notifications (e.g. deliveries) Customer satisfaction surveys No automated interactions throughthis channel

Use of automated outbound communication for proactive customer service

Recorded messages SMS Emails


The contact centre’s purpose has changed from transactional activity to one where your customers can

contact you for a wide range of reasons and through a variety of communication channels – you can talk

to your clients on the phone, by email, text message, chat, social media … the list goes on.

Your customers are demanding choice but your contact centre needs to balance meeting their wishes,

satisfying service needs and optimising costs.

Let’s take an example: your customer sends you an enquiry by email; how do you respond? If you focus

on the channel then it would seem obvious to reply by email. Whilst this may be an effective response

channel for a simple enquiry, when you are dealing with customer- and case-specific enquiries an email

response may open the door to a time-expensive series of emails. Text based ‘conversations’ with your

customers pose other problems: If your client tweets about your business how do you respond

professionally and effectively in 140 characters in a public environment? How do you verify the identity

of a web chat caller? How do you link text messages to clients in your Customer Relationship

Management System?

The answer is often to shift the channel back to the telephone. If your client writes to you with a

complex question then the most effective customer service response is to pick up the phone and talk.

All multichannel contact centres need a dialler and blending

Diallers in contact centres used to be about mass contact – for example using a predictive dialler to

support debt collection.

Today’s precision dialling technology means that requests for contact such as emails, tweets and chats

can be fed into the dialler to deliver a fast, personal response to customers whilst managing and

monitoring your most important resource – your agents.

rostrvm OutBound lets you blend SMS (text message, web, social, chat and email contact with your

OutBound dialling campaigns

http://www.rostrvm.com/

75


ARE OUTBOUND AND CALL BLENDING SOLUTIONS SEPARATE FROM OTHER MULTICHANNEL INTERACTION, OR HAS THERE BEEN ANY MOVE TO INTEGRATE THESE CHANNELS TOGETHER?

We are certainly seeing a move towards the integration of outbound and

blending solutions with other multichannel interactions, however, the desire to

do so, and the success of the implementation depends on largely on how the integration of these new

channels with the organizations current infrastructure is handled.

Certain types of contact require specific agent skills, and the ability to switch between handling, say an

outbound sales call, and customer query via webchat successfully is dependent on the level of

knowledge of that particular agent.

Whilst technology advances and customers use of smart devices drives the need for organizations to be

able to handle multiple forms of inbound and outbound communication, we have learnt from our own

interactions with our customers that relationships are still built on the telephone or face to face. The use

of web-chat, social media, SMS and email have an increasingly important place in the mix, but are

mostly used for more transactional communications, such as gaining information or making complaints.

At the moment, for companies the voice call is still the most accepted and used

way to communicate with their end user / customers. The multichannel contact

center is growing rapidly as all industries tackle the world of communications

from email, SMS, webchat, voice to social media. This has mainly been within inbound environment but

we are seeing this cross into outbound as well.

However, interestingly, outbound and call blending solutions tend to stand alone in a call center

environment; this is less because of technical reasons and more to do with cultural reasons. Outbound

calling activity typically requires a certain kind of agent – which are always managed, trained and

incentivized very differently to inbound customer service agents. The integration of all multichannel is

available but if looking at predictive outbound dialing this requires a very focused way of working. The

processes, reporting and management information system may also differ but can be integrated into the

overall system to be consistent across all channels and traffic.

76

InContact uses a multi-channel queue to blend different types of interactions:

inbound voice, outbound voice, Chat, email, SMS, social media and work items.

Our customers are increasingly moving toward a multi-channel strategy where patrons are given the

choice of how they want to be contacted.

Depending on the tool you use, Noble Systems have solutions that blend

inbound and outbound calls, but contact centers can also choose add-ons that

make it easier to manage wider multi/ omni-channel activities.

These include tools that bring social media communications and live chat under the same umbrella as

telephone and email.

Modern outbound and call blending solutions incorporate multichannel

interactions. Increasingly dialer campaigns combine telephone calls with text

messages and emails to cover the complete customer journey and experience. For

example, if your customer calls after receiving your email your contact center agent needs to be able to

see the email concerned at the time of the call. Breaking down channel silos is a key component of

customer satisfaction.

77

THE ROLE OF SCRIPTING

The variable capability of agents is a contributory inhibitor to quality improvements, and the increasingly

complex and variable nature of agents’ work means that rigid, linear scripting is no longer appropriate

for many contact centers. One possible solution is to look at dynamic scripting applications within an

overall unified desktop environment, as well as understanding agent training needs through call

recording and analysis, and delivering the right training and in-call information.

Scripting has a mixed reputation, rightly or wrongly, with inflexible outbound sales scripts being

particularly disliked. However, a dynamic scripting environment, sometimes referred to as a workflow -

where the help provided on the agent's screen changes depending on who the customer is and what

they actually want, applicable to both inbound and outbound work - can be beneficial to agent and

customer alike, supporting complex interactions where multiple systems and media are required.

Applications that define each step of the call interaction flow and present the relevant data to the agent

allows agents to take advantage of pull-down menus, on-screen buttons, pop-up windows, inheritance

mechanisms, and fill-in-the-blank parameters. Workflows guide agents dynamically through dialogues

with customers which change as required, while managing contacts, controlling interactions, and

updating databases. In a large operation, there may be distinct groups of agents (e.g. a large dedicated

sales outbound team) that use scripting whereas inbound agents may not. Large contact centers, by

their nature and also because of generally higher attrition rates, may have more requirements to help

new agents learn the ropes.

Insurance, finance and outsourcing respondents are amongst the greatest users of scripting, although

not necessarily for 100% of calls, or agents: scripting may be used widely in the financial industries for

legal disclaimers, terms and conditions, etc.

Figure 35: Use and type of scripting, by vertical market

50%

38% 36%33%

25%

14%

27%

50%

63%

9% 11% 13%7%

16%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Use of static and dynamic scripting, by vertical market

Static scripting Dynamic scripting

78

Small contact centers are less likely to implement dynamic scripting, and as agents in smaller operations

will tend to have to handle a wider range of queries - as agent groups tend to be less specialized than in

larger contact centers - it could be viewed that the relatively low use of flexible scripting is

disadvantaging them. As might be expected, larger, outbound operations are the most likely to use

dynamic scripting, particularly in the outsourcing industry.

Figure 36: Use and type of scripting, by contact center size

Figure 37: Use and type of scripting, by contact center activity

22%

52%

27%

4% 5%

35%

16%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Small (<50 seats) Medium (50-200 seats) Large (>200 seats) Average

Use of static and dynamic scripting, by contact center size


25%

33%

5%

27%

12%

20%

75%

16%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Inbound Mixed Outbound Average

Use of static and dynamic scripting, by contact center activity


79

Those respondents who used scripting were generally enthusiastic about the benefits they had received.

In particular, the assistance with compliance that scripting provides was particularly well-thought-of, as

was the consistency of data capture (as the same information is collected each time, with no short-cuts

or missed questions). Many respondents found that scripting was effective or very effective at

standardizing interactions with customers - of course, this only helps quality of the 'average' interaction

is high to begin with.

Secondary benefits around reducing call handling times (through a structured call flow) and particularly

as an agent training tool were also reported, with around half of respondents also saying that scripting

was an effective tool for assisting with cross-selling and up-selling. Using scripting to facilitate call wrap-

up was still a net positive, but is seen as being less useful than other factors.

It seems fair to say that while overly-scripted conversations are frustrating for both caller and agent, a

dynamic script or prompt which guides an agent through a conversation and provides relevant

information and suggestions is certainly worth considering and tends to yield positive results,

particularly if the level of ‘hand-holding’ that the script provides can be tailored to the experience of the

agent.

Despite these positive responses from users, scripting has had a bad name, engendered by the

uncomfortable-sounding scripts often used by outbound sales agents, particularly those from offshore.

Part of this problem is that the agent can sound robotic after delivering the same spiel dozens of times,

but perhaps as important, there is also the fact that outbound sales calls are generally not well-received

by customers, so anything that is associated with them (be it scripting, offshore agents, silent calls, etc.)

will have a negative connotation to overcome in any case.

One of the biggest objections to scripting is that every conversation is different. While this is certainly

true, readers should be aware that contemporary solutions offer a whole spectrum of scripting, from

tight to loose, with the latter simply offering checkpoints within the conversation: much of the

negativity around scripting comes from familiarity only with the tight, constrained version, and as this

chart shows, contact center management strongly believe that neither customers nor agents like

scripting (and seemingly, neither do the people at the top of the organization, who appear to hand

down non-scripting edicts).

Scripting is much more than a series of dialogue prompts, as it is now more about designing the

customer experience and journey for a particular type of interaction - for example, making an insurance

claim - using design sessions fitting together workflow, data sources and dialogue. People with less

experience of modern-day scripting often think the robotic ‘scripted conversation’ experience is what

scripting creates, and indeed, many of the respondents to this questionnaire believe that there are too

many variables to anticipate within a conversation and that letting agents make the best decision about

the conversation is really the only way to handle things. However, real-time decision engines are an

example where online resources can be leveraged to work within the contact center as well: real time

responsiveness in an online environment is achieved through automated decision-making built on a set

of business rules which identify pre-defined customer profiles and the solutions, products and data that

are suitable for presentation to the customer.

80

The design environment that new scripting solutions provides can use existing back end resources

without further development, so scripts no longer have to anticipate every possible alternative. Data

gathered during conversations, combined with customer profiling, trigger appropriate responses which

can be immediately presented to the customer, which is beneficial for customer and agent alike. As

such, dynamic scripting can be considered as one part of a group of solutions aimed at reducing the

complexity of the agent's desktop while improving the quality of the interaction. The next section looks

at optimizing the quality of customer interactions through a unified agent desktop, a key supporting

feature of which is the ability to define call scripts, either as a flow of data capture screens, or as a set of

actual words or prompts. Simple, non-technical tools enable supervisors and managers to define these

call flows, the data required and the scripts/prompts to be used.

81


HAVE YOU NOTICED ANY CHANGES IN HOW SCRIPTING IS BEING USED? HOW DO BUSINESSES TEND TO USE THIS?

Mostly scripting is used to provide detailed best practice workflow to agents to

ensure efficient and complete call process. The ability for scripting to be used

along with integration with your customer backend CRM systems provides an

efficient way to create and operate campaigns without complex data import and export processes.

Making speech analytics part of your outbound solutions continues to help shape the script both in real

time and historical to improve agent efficiency and wording.

Businesses desire to have a unified agent experience that incorporates the agent

script. The evolution is inContact’s MAX (My Agent eXperience) agent interface is

to provide the necessary context of the interaction so that the agent can focus on the necessary

information for that contact. This allows the customer to drive what information is available throughout

each contact. We find that our customers are relying less on a fully produced script and instead are

using scripts to cue agents in guiding customers to a more natural interaction.

Over the past 10 years businesses within the financial sector as an example

have become increasingly regulated. This has had an impact on what an agent

can and cannot say during a call. Scripting therefore has to satisfy these regulatory boards e.g. Ofcom,

FSA etc. Naturally, the scripts also have to then consider how to service the customer in the most

natural way.

Best practice would be to write scripts with the customer in mind (and any regulatory requirements)

whilst still enabling your agents to feel empowered and be subject experts. Avoid ‘entire scripting’ at all

costs. The conversations need to be natural and flow easily.

82

Thankfully scripting has moved on a long way from stilted word-for-word speeches.

Today’s ‘scripting’ systems support contact center agents by providing guidance on

what they are expected to achieve and presenting relevant data at the right time. Of

course there are times in the process when exact scripts need to be used – such as compliance

statements in a financial transaction; graphical script presentation allows mandatory statements to be

highlighted.

Modern scripts also capture extended Management Information without adding overhead to the agent’s

core task. This means you can use champion-challenger techniques to identify the best routes through a

call to achieve your business aims.

Call scripting is an essential element of any outbound campaign. With often just

one opportunity to get important information across to a call receiver, the

content of your call script and ability to adapt quickly to differing campaign requirements can be crucial

to ensuring successful call outcomes.

The Ultracomms cloud platform has been developed with call scripting functionality built in. Depending

on the nature of a contact centers’ requirements, scripting can follow defined templates which are held

in the platform, or be tailored by the development team to suit individual campaigns. The inherent

flexibility of the cloud solution means that call scripts can be simply and quickly amended should clients

need to adapt a campaign, and for clients with their own development functions, scripting can be

managed in-house, enabling them to make immediate changes and respond to changing demands

instantly.

83

CALL-BACK & CALL-ME REQUESTS

ContactBabel carried out a large-scale survey of the public that explored why customers notoriously

hate queuing to speak to a contact center agent, yet seemed far more acceptant to wait in an actual

physical queue, often for a longer time.

Figure 38: Reasons given for dislike of contact center queuing

Reason for disliking queue

Average score from 10 where 10 is “extremely frustrating”

% of public scoring this at a maximum 10

Not knowing how much longer you'll have to wait

8.7 61%

Repetitive announcements

8.0 45%

Having to restate account information already given earlier in the call

8.0 45%

Can't do anything else in the meantime

7.9 46%

The music you have to listen to

7.3 39%

Apart from the fact that customers have a lot of strongly felt reasons for disliking phone queues, the key

finding from this table is that 61% of the public hate not knowing how much longer they will be waiting.

This is less of a problem when waiting in a shop to speak to an assistant, as although they cannot give

you an exact statement of when someone can help, the queuing system allows a customer to see how

many people are ahead of them, to estimate their own wait time, and exercise some level of control

over the situation. This makes queuing psychologically easier for the customer, even if the actual

waiting time is significantly longer than it would be in a contact center queue.

The phenomenon of 'Dentist-Chair Time' - time which seems to stretch out to infinity - is very much

active in the contact center world. ACD statistics from thousands of contact centers over many years

indicate that an average wait time is around 20-30 seconds. However, when the public was asked to

estimate the time they usually (not exceptionally) spent waiting to speak to a contact center, the

average answer was 11½ minutes - 27 times longer than the reality.

84

Clearly, trimming 10% off a queue time isn't going to make a lot of difference to the perception of the

caller, even though it may be a very difficult task for the contact center to carry out. If customers aren't

informed of wait time, they may become discouraged and frustrated as hold time drags on. This can lead

to increased abandonment and even if the caller does decide to hold on, this experience starts the call

off badly leaving the agent with a lot to make up. Customers waste time complaining about their

experiences and may even ask additional questions on the call so that they ‘get their money's worth’.

If customers are given the estimated wait time, they may decide to abandon immediately or may judge

that the wait is acceptable and remain on the line to speak with an agent. This alleviates some customer

frustration but means that some of the callers which abandon may not call back - ever - and it doesn't

solve the fact that customers are still having to wait. One solution is to implement a virtual queuing

system, which not only provides customers with information about current queue conditions but also

presents them with various active options, such as remaining on hold or choosing to be called back

when it is their turn.

There are several different varieties of virtual queuing systems: the "First-In, First-Out" (FIFO) system

keeps the customer's place in line by monitoring queue conditions until the estimated wait time hits a

set target, at which point it intercepts incoming calls before they enter the queue, informing customers

of the likely wait time and offering the option of receiving an outbound call in the same amount of time

as if they had personally waited on hold.

At this point, customers choosing to remain on hold go directly into a queue. Customers who opt for a

call-back are prompted to enter their telephone number and possibly some extra details that can be

used for agent selection and skills-based routing, and are then asked to hang up. Virtual placeholders

keep the customers' places in line and the virtual queuing system launches an outbound call to the

customer at the agreed time. When the call-back is answered by the customer, the system checks the

right person is on the line and ready to talk. If this is the case, the call is routed to the next available

suitable agent, who handles it as a normal inbound call.

By replacing real hold time with this virtual version, customers are free to do other things, thus

removing four of the five problems that they have with queues - unknown queue times, hold music, the

inability to do anything else and repetitive announcements.

Scheduled call-back options differ from a FIFO experience, in that customers do not keep their place in

queue, but are called back at some time in the future that is more convenient for them (for example,

when they know they will be back at their desk and available to take a call).

85

There are several types of scheduled virtual queuing:

Datebook-type scheduling systems allow customers to schedule appointments for days in the

future, with times blocked-out that are unavailable for scheduling, and limiting the number of

call-backs available. This system also allows customers that reach a contact center out-of-hours

to schedule a call-back during normal working hours

Timer scheduling systems promise a call-back after a specific amount of time, regardless of

queue conditions. While this ensures an on-time call-back for the customer, a surge in call

volume or staff reduction due to a shift change can create problems for the contact center's

queue, lengthening wait times for other callers

Forecast-based scheduling systems offer appointments during times that are expected to have

low call volumes. These times may not be convenient for the customer, and the contact center

runs the risk that their scheduling may be inaccurate.

Respondents were asked to state which types of call-back were presented to callers. The majority of

respondents that offered call-back functionality allowed callers to request a FIFO call-back (i.e. acting as

a placeholder in the queue), with a minority allowing customers to specify a scheduled time.

Figure 39: Types of telephony call-back offered to customers

Type of call-back

Proportion of respondents offering call-back that use this

FIFO (first-in, first-out) - holds the caller's place in the queue, then calls once they are at the front

72%

Forecast-based (called back at a time to suit the contact center) 33%

Datebook (caller can specify a day to be called back on) 28%

Timed (called back at or before a specific time, regardless of queue conditions)

17%

As a whole, respondents who offered call-back found that there was roughly a 50-50 split in the

requested call-back types (i.e. FIFO placeholder versus a type of delayed call-back). On analyzing the

contact center activity type (i.e. sales or service), those callers making sales enquiries were far more

likely to want a placeholder-type of call-back. This could possibly be explained by the differing states of

mind of customers calling to purchase something, or to make a query or payment. The former are more

86

likely to have chosen to call the contact center to make a purchase that they are enthusiastic about,

and/or which is time-sensitive, and as such, want to speak to the business as soon as possible.

The use of a website 'call-me' button (which initiates an outbound call at a time specified by the

recipient) is weighted towards operations that carry out significant sales, but is present only in the case

of 7% of this year’s respondents. We would expect to see this increase significantly, and play an

important part in providing customer support via mobile / smartphone channels. To be fully effective,

callback requires the context of who the customer is and what they’ve been trying to achieve, as well as

not inconveniencing the customer too greatly by demanding that they use different channel to suit the

processes of the business.

22% of respondents offer a telephony queue call-back option, with this being particularly the case in

large operations with high call volumes.

The proportion of respondents announcing the position of the call in the queue has stayed around the

25-30% mark this year. Again, large contact centers seem far more likely to use this functionality.

Just over 30% of respondents use screen-popping functionality, putting information about the caller and

possibly their requirements on the agent desktop as the call is delivered.

Figure 40: Use of website and queue call-back options and queue position announcements, by contact center size

19%

22%

13%

3%

43%

14%

14%

10%

36%

46%

39%

11%

31%

28%

22%

7%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Screen-pop from IVR or ANI information

Announcement of queue position or likely wait time

Call-back option in phone queue

Call-back button on website

Use of call-back options, queue position announcements and screen pop, by contact center size

Average

Large

Medium

Small

87

Respondents indicate that telephony call-back tends not to be universally available to callers, with

businesses only offering it after a certain period of wait time or once the queue becomes so long that it

triggers the functionality to be offered.

Of those who are offered a call-back, respondents report around 50% of callers chose this option,

although the research base for this question was too low for any deeper analysis.

Figure 41: Proportion of customers in telephony queue offered call-back

Virtual queuing and call-back, when implemented - and explained properly to customers - can be a win-

win for both business and customer by:

Increasing customer satisfaction

Reducing average speed to answer

Reducing call abandonment rates

Reducing call lengths as customers should spend less time complaining and adding-on

unnecessary queries "while they're on..."

Reducing toll-free costs, as virtual queuing time does not incur telephone charges.

Fewer than 10%53%

10-25%23%

More than 25%12%

Don't know12%

Proportion of customers in telephony queue offered call-back

88

Respondents offering telephony call-back functionality stated clearly that is was most useful for

managing call volumes and spikes in busy periods, and thus improving customer satisfaction and

experience. Being able to spread calls out over the day and allow callers to keep their place in the queue

- without actually having to queue – is seen by users as being of great use to both company and

customer.

Figure 42: Effectiveness of telephony call-back functionality

Although the number of responses received to a similar question about website call-back was too small

for confident analysis, it is worth noting that respondents believed web call-back was most useful for

improving the customer experience and for maximizing sales opportunities.

Respondents did not tend to believe that telephony call-back made much of a positive impact on sales

opportunities, so businesses may consider implementing a website call-back option to capture more

revenue.

75%

75%

19%

19%

13%

19%

19%

38%

31%

56%

6%

6%

25%

50%

31%

19%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Managing call volumes (e.g. managing & avoiding spikes)

Improving customer satisfaction & experience

Reduce toll-free costs

Maximizing sales opportunities

Reducing agent stress and pressure to achieve KPIs

Effectiveness of telephony call-back functionality

Very useful Somewhat useful Not useful Don't know

89

Queue management and call abandonment rates

Offering an in-queue call-back option seems to have a positive effect on call abandonment rates, with

those doing so having an abandoned call rate around 20% lower than those who do not offer this

option, similar findings to previous year’s figures.

However, announcing the position of the caller in the queue seems to have much less of a positive

outcome, with very similar call abandonment rates.

A tentative conclusion can be drawn that call abandonment rates can be reduced best through actual

actions that benefit customers, such as calling then back. Simply providing them with more information

about the queue situation (which may be negative) could encourage customers to abandon the call and

ring back later. However, having this knowledge and actively being able to choose what to do may well

make the customer think more positively about the company (in that they haven’t had to waste any

great amount of time) but without a call-back option the customer will not have managed to do what

they set out to.

90

OUTBOUND IN THE CLOUD

While the pay-as-you-go, or monthly rental model which was one of the main attractions of cloud /

managed services is still an attractive proposition, it is far less important today than it was three or four

years earlier. Solution providers point out that CPE deployments can now often be paid for in an Opex

model, and that the movement to cloud is more about the functionality, agility and scalability that this

model offers.

It is also the case that operations have generally become more complex, certainly in the number of

channels offered and the proportion of interactions going through them. It is no longer possible for

many companies simply to focus upon voice, and the attendant need to provide a single view of

customer regardless of channel acts as an inhibitor to the siloed approach.

Looking at inhibitors to cloud-based solutions, concern over data security is still one of the most

important factors holding back the movement to cloud, although solution providers point out now that

the concerns that potential customers hold seem to be much more specific to their business, rather than

being a wide-ranging, generic fear of losing control.

One of the main differences to have occurred in the past three or four years is that cloud is now seen as

a genuine alternative to CPE for even the largest of enterprises, not just smaller operations. Some

solution providers have stated that they originally focused their product and marketing efforts on the

small and medium contact center sectors, but have been surprised by the interest shown by those with

many hundreds (if not thousands) of agents, and have changed their strategy and marketing approaches

appropriately. There is an increased familiarity and trust in cloud-based solutions, both in decision-

makers’ personal (i.e. non-business) lives, and in the prevalence of cloud-based enterprise applications,

which is meant that cloud is no longer a particularly tough sell.

Solution providers note that there has been great growth in cloud solutions that support outbound sales

activity, where the pay-as-you-go model allows outsourcers to have some control over their profit

margins depending on the amount of work that they have, as well as benefiting from the immediate use

of added functionality that cloud-based solutions provide. It is common for cloud providers to tightly

integrate with CRM and contact management packages (e.g. Salesforce.com), and adding dialing

functionality supports the consultative style of selling, giving agents the opportunity to read up about

customers before they dial. This is not just the case for traditional contact centers, but also for

organizations which may not see themselves as having a contact center, but which carry out large

amounts of sales communication with customers and prospects, albeit in perhaps a more informal

environment. Cloud-based solutions offer such enterprises the benefit and efficiency of the contact

center world, without the high levels of sunk cost and operational and technical expertise that a CPE

solution would demand.

In the US, 29% of respondents using dialers have a cloud-based solution, which is expected to rise to

46% by 2018.


3 Best Practices for Boosting Your Outbound Results with the Cloud

Outbound dialing technologies have undergone a recent revolution to accelerate sales, boost agent productivity,

and increase customer satisfaction – and cloud contact center solutions are leading the way. If you’re looking to

improve your results, here are three best practices to consider implementing for outbound dialing:

#1: Utilize No Pause, Predictive Dialing: You might assume that simply making more calls is the answer for

increasing sales. However, it won’t help if you’re using a traditional outbound dialer with the tell-tale, two second

pause.

Often these types of legacy dialers result in more hang-ups than connects. A better approach is using a cloud contact

center solution’s no pause, predictive dialer which eliminates awkward delays in greeting the customer. Agents are

connected before the customer answers, which helps start the call off positively and increases connect rates.

#2: Give Customers Truly Useful Information: Consider your goals with outbound calls – are you giving customers

useful information, or are you only pitching products? Successful contact centers are taking the first approach, such

as proactively contacting customers to let them know, for example, their balance is two days overdue. With a cloud

contact center solution you can also take an omnichannel approach to customer communications, such as sending

them helpful information via text.

#3: Use Your CRM to Drive Your Dialer: Rather than using your dialer to manage call records, why not integrate it

with your CRM for an up-to-date, closed loop system? In this approach, the CRM sends customer records to the

cloud contact center solution’s dialer, and as agents enter updated call information, the data is fed back into the

CRM for a single source of truth about each customer.

This is especially useful for ensuring changes to customer records are taken into account before calls are made. For

instance, if a customer makes a payment early in the day, the CRM won’t send their contact information to the

dialer for an afternoon collections reminder call.

Cloud Contact Center Solutions: Scalable and Cost-Effective

If you’re using an on-premise system, it might sound daunting to implement these changes. A cloud contact center

solution, however, is cost-effective and scalable making it easy to implement and roll out these features without

purchasing additional hardware. Isn’t it time to take your outbound campaigns to the next level?

About inContact inContact (NASDAQ: SAAS) is the cloud contact center software leader, with the most complete, easiest and most reliable solution to help organizations around the globe to achieve their customer experience goals. inContact continuously innovates in the cloud and is the only provider to offer a complete solution that includes the technology – customer interaction platform as a service – as well as an expert service model and the broadest partner ecosystem. Recognized as a market leader by Gartner, Frost, Ovum, IDC and DMG, inContact supports over 6 billion interactions per year for enterprise, midmarket, government organizations and business process outsourcers (BPOs) who operate in multiple divisions, locations and global regions. To learn more, visit www.incontact.com. Media Contact: Gavin Gustafson [email protected] (801) 320-3323

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SAAS

http://www.incontact.com/

mailto:[email protected]

92


HAS THERE BEEN MUCH UPTAKE OF CLOUD-BASED SOLUTIONS? IS THIS MAINLY DOWN TO COST, OR ARE THERE OTHER BENEFITS AS WELL?

Yes. Cost is certainly a driver because the customer can expand and contract as

needed with the CAPEX model. In addition, customers are buying cloud-based

solutions for security, easier maintenance, high availability and redundancy, scalability and single system

image.

The demand for cloud services over the past few years has exploded.

Cloud services now contribute to the majority of enquiries we get as a business, which although price is

a factor, the speed of installation and the reliability/ security of the Noble Systems data centers are a big

factor as well. For example, with the Noble Inbound 100 solution clients now get peace of mind with

100% SLAs, including 100% uptime.

Cloud-based solutions are proving to be very popular. In Rostrvm Solutions’ case the

majority of new customers have employed cloud-based systems over the past year.

However, the reasons for selecting cloud aren’t usually cost – indeed cloud is often

more expensive over the long term.

Key benefits of cloud are:

It’s quick and easy to turn on – so users can prove the business benefit of innovative contact

strategies without expending too much time or money.

It’s flexible – for example location-independent, work-from-home strategies are easy to set up.

It’s up to date – cloud systems always make the latest software and services available to users,

giving a competitive advantage.

But cloud isn’t appropriate for everyone; for example, contact strategies that demand real-time

integration with on-site databases may not be suitable.

93

Cloud based solutions are now widely used in the contact center industry,

enabling organizations to utilize their flexibility, capacity, resilience and financial

benefits rather than investing in an on premise technology with a limited shelf-life and expensive annual

maintenance and upgrade costs.

There are many benefits of cloud solutions beyond reduced cost of implementation. The flexibility built

into cloud solutions means they can be seamlessly integrated, whatever existing infrastructure is in

place, and without the capex implications of costly (and often complicated) hardware upgrades.

The dynamic nature of cloud platforms also means that they are infinitely scalable, giving organizations

the ability to add or reduce capacity as required, per campaign, or at peak times. All the very latest

features and upgrades can be deployed simply and quickly, and calling patterns and service levels can be

monitored remotely to ensure accurate reporting for management, and also for regulatory compliance.

Actually SaaS / Cloud based solutions are the business with most accelerated

growth. Beside cost benefits we determine other important advantages:

One common managed system for multiple call centers

Opportunity to combine disparate small call centers and large virtual call center centrally

Offer a full operation to our customers without the need to manage the technology and just pay as

you go

Flexible working time and location (home office) for agents

Provide high level of process standards

Increased resilience

More efficient use of admin staff because the platform administration and maintenance is being

looked after by the vendor, not the call center.

94

THE FUTURE OF OUTBOUND

While predicting the future with any sort of accuracy is by its nature impossible, there are various

ongoing themes and drivers that seem to point the outbound industry in a specific direction:

Driven by consumer complaints, there is likely to be a greater focus and regulation on reducing

or eliminating abandoned calls and enforcing accurate CLI/CLID. The forthcoming EU GDPR

(General Data Protection Regulation) is likely to make outbound more difficult through

restricting access to personal information

The boundary between inbound and outbound is likely to merge even further, with outbound

(including email, SMS and smartphone notifications, as well as telephony) becoming an integral

part of customer care

Outbound has already moved a long way away from the traditional cold calling model, and

increased knowledge of customer preferences and personalization will be vital to outbound’s

rehabilitation with customers. While the majority of businesses currently use some form of

contact list segmentation (for example, looking at gender, age and customer status), increasing

amounts of customer data and the analysis of call outcomes means that customer segmentation

techniques will become more sophisticated and effective

There is likely to be a greater emphasis placed upon the automation of outbound contact:

understanding and analyzing the perfect time to communicate with customers and their

preferences for channel may mean that the right agents are either unavailable or that this is an

unsuitable way to communicate with these customers

Although for many businesses it can be enough of a challenge simply to pair a live agent with a

live contact, we would expect to see leading-edge adopters consider personality matching

techniques in the future. Solutions exist where the personality profiles of customers and agents

can be identified, and the resulting customer and agent segmentation can allow the business to

have certain types of agent calling customers with the same personality type, increasing

empathy, customer satisfaction and revenue. We would also expect to see a greater increase in

personalized service by pairing agents and customers who have spoken together before

As more people use a smartphone as their primary means of communication, businesses must

continue to re-evaluate the best means of communicating with customers based upon the

individual requirements and activities. An omnichannel approach, which can detect the time and

method by which the customer has contacted the business previously, can analyze and predict

the most successful ways of doing so in the future. It is likely that a multiple channel approach

will become popular, such as sending an email or SMS first, seeing whether the customer

interacts with it, and then placing an outbound call at an appropriate time

95

The analysis of big data and the attendant timely recognition of potential opportunities and

triggers means that outbound communications can become welcomed as adding to the

customer experience: in effect, the business provides the customer with information or an

opportunity to communicate before they realize they even need it. This proactive approach will

be driven by a more sophisticated understanding of the customer’s thought processes and

closer analysis of customer preferences and the results that similar groups of customers have

experienced through this method before. Analysts talk about “the moment of opportunity”, and

although identifying and acting upon this with the right resource will be a difficult journey for

organizations to fulfil, it leads to potentially great benefits for both customer and business

The inbound contact center world has changed greatly over the past decade, with the former

focus on call duration having been moved very firmly into the background, with a focus now

being on customer satisfaction and first contact resolution. This change has been as a result of

many of the low value calls having been shifted to self-service (whether via phone or web),

leaving the more complex, high-value, high opportunity calls. We would expect to see a similar

pattern develop within the outbound industry: not only are there far more personalized

customer service calls being made, but also the opportunity now exists to make personalized

outbound sales calls as well. The wealth of information potentially available about the customer,

their likely intentions and even their type of personality gives salespeople greater opportunity to

engage successfully and make a sale. In tandem with sophisticated customer profiling and

solutions that screen out unanswered calls or voicemails, the opportunity exists for outbound

calling to be less of a scattergun, high-intensity approach, and more about delivering relevant

services and offers to the customer at the correct time. Conjecturally, this may already be

happening, as it is noticeable that the agent attrition rate in outbound contact centers

(historically extremely high), has seen a considerable decrease in both the UK and US over

recent years, suggesting that the nature of the work has changed

There are great opportunities to improve the dynamism of scripting depending upon the

direction of the conversation and the customer profile. Static scripts should perhaps now be

used only for the most inexperienced of agents, and the success or otherwise of specific

dynamic scripts should be assessed and fed back into the system, allowing a greater

understanding of what works, to whom, and when

There will be greater sophistication in the monetization and quantification of proactive

customer contact. Not only does the proactive engagement of the customer or prospect reduce

inbound call volumes and costs, but it also has a positive effect on revenue and customer

loyalty. At the moment, this can be difficult to quantify but we expect large organizations to be

able to analyze and justify in terms of profitability what can be a considerable expenditure.

96


ARE YOU SEEING A CHANGE IN THE NATURE OF OUTBOUND CALLING? HOW ARE YOUR SOLUTIONS DEVELOPING TO ADDRESS THIS AND WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE IN TERMS OF FUTURE FUNCTIONALITY FROM OUTBOUND SOLUTIONS?

We are seeing a change in the way customers are being contacted, outbound

voice calls are still the most commonly used channel but we are seeing the

use of other channels such as SMS and email becoming more common place. This is all to do with

improving the customer journey. This starts with understanding your customers and ensuring you

contact them on their preferred channel. Solutions are adapting to this by providing multichannel

communication options funneled into a universal agent view.

Outbound calling used to be a ‘numbers game’ - make more calls and you’ll make

more sales, collect more debt etc. Outbound calling is changing to improve

customer contact and is incorporating Precision Dialing, which uses intelligence

gained about contacts to optimize dialing activities. Precision Dialing gives you the optimum chance of

making contact with your customers because you dial:



and the right people – making sure your calls are handled by appropriately skilled agents.

To use intelligence you’ve gained about each customer to program your dialer you need good

management reports and records. Look at individual customer records and use your information about

when inbound callers called you to decide when to call them. Think about it – if a person calls you at,

say, 4pm it’s a good bet that they will be receptive to you calling them around that time.

One thing about outbound that’s unlikely to change any time soon is that, no matter how a person

contacted you – Twitter, email etc. – if it’s a complaint it’s ALWAYS better to respond using the phone –

social media is too public and a call resolves the issue faster than email.

97

We are certainly noticing that clients are using their outbound dialing strategies

to better manage the whole customer experience, for example, to focus on

quality of calls and not quantity. In some sectors quantity will always be king, for example PPI and debt

collection, but in other sectors the quality of the call, from speed of connection to an appropriately

skilled agent to a follow-up SMS confirming a transaction or appointment, could be the difference

between repeat business or a customer lost to a competitor.

One of the key benefits of cloud based solutions for outbound dialing is that they can be adapted to

changes in demands from customers very quickly, and new features deployed seamlessly as needs

change. Proactive campaign monitoring and advising clients on how to optimize their dialing activity is

becoming increasingly important in differentiating one cloud offering from another, and this has been

one of the underpinning strategies for Ultracomms. The flexibility of cloud solutions means that they can

be developed and tailored to each individual client’s needs, rather than a client buying an ‘off the peg’

solution and making it fit their infrastructure and campaign requirements.

The use of real-time data feeds from CRM and sales platforms are also increasing and this can

significantly improve the quality of customer interactions and help increase the overall productivity of

individual calls as time isn’t wasted updating records or searching for historic contact information.

Certainly as technology advances, we expect to see further integration of multichannel functionality to

help deliver a more rounded customer experience. The possibilities are endless when it comes to cloud

based solutions and we will continue to develop our platform and services based on collaboration with

clients, to help them stay at the forefront of their respective sectors.

Outbound dialing is getting more sophisticated regarding legislation and user

behavior. People now have more than one phone number and more than one way

to contact you. Therefore, it´s a challenge for an outbound dialing solution

provider to place the personal voice call in the right position in the mix of different contact possibilities.

Users are becoming more careful in the use of data, and tend to increase retry periods in order to

reduce the nuisance to customers. The future of outbound communications is all around being pro-

active, using big data to help guide to guide targeted conversations, for example contacting customers

to alert them to a potential problem or inform them of a development or issue.

We are seeing outbound change from a lead generation and sales channel to a

proactive outbound notification. Being proactive in outreach allows companies to

reinforce the positive relationship by providing what the customer needs before they have to ask. This

trend is driving a better customer experience and brand loyalty, while improving the sentiment toward

outbound contacts.

98

SUPPLIER DIRECTORY

99

Aspect Software helps companies around the world deliver remarkable customer experiences across

every conversation and every channel by helping them align their engagement strategy with today’s

growing consumer expectations. We do this by creating greater customer understanding and simpler,

more engaging transactions and interactions that drive deeper customer loyalty—all through a single

software platform. As the global leader in customer engagement solutions, our unified interaction

management, workforce optimization and back-office solutions seamlessly orchestrate people,

processes and touch points for today's top brands in aviation, financial services, healthcare,

manufacturing, telecommunications and retail.

Wherever you're looking to remove communication and workflow barriers or automate more

productive business processes, Aspect solutions allow you to build on your existing customer contact,

workforce optimization and enterprise technology investments so you can put the contact center

squarely at the center of the customer experience.

Contact Aspect Software for more information:

Website: www.aspect.com

Call: 1-888-791-5931

Email: [email protected]

Follow Aspect on Twitter at @Aspectsoftware

Read our blogs at: blogs.aspect.com

http://www.aspect.com

http://www.aspect.com/


http://www.twitter.com/Aspectsoftware

http://blogs.aspect.com/

100

Enghouse Interactive Outbound Capabilities

Introducing Enghouse Interactive Outbound Communicator for proactive customer engagement

For many businesses, proactive outbound customer communication is a key factor for success. Automated

management of outbound calling campaigns provides a powerful tool for streamlining those critical, high

volume business processes. With an advanced solution for outbound communications, organizations can grow

and strengthen their customer relationships and uncover new sales opportunities - turning every customer

conversation into a fruitful one.

Why be reactive when you can be proactive?

Waiting for your customers to contact you and only servicing them when they do is unproductive,

unpredictable and creates issues with managing resources through peaks and troughs of traffic.

Typically, the relationship with your customers involves a series of events over time. These events can be

customer driven, such as new purchases or requests for support. Other events - contract renewals,

appointments, and service outages - may be triggered by your organization. Some of these events are

unpredictable in their nature but many are not, and it is these that provide the opportunity for you to be

proactive in your customer engagement.

ncrease your productivity – Agent productivity could be increased by as much as 200%. Your agents spend

less time dialing, and more time speaking.

Be compliant – Variable limits provide compliance with all national and international regulatory rules

including OFCOM

Delivers a high level of accuracy with an award winning answer machine detection

Allows you to flexibly implement complex communication processes and events into your customer

communications

Increase profitability – Short set-up time for new campaigns giving you lower costs and greater flexibility.

This gives agents more time to call and make money!

German engineering at its best

Enghouse Interactive’s award-winning Outbound Communicator with predictive dialer technology offers high

performance, extraordinary flexibility and user-friendly operation for your dynamic outbound campaigns. The

software allows you to quickly set up and implement tailored campaigns without extensive programming skills,

and complete them successfully while making the most efficient use of available resources, saving time and

costs.

Make every call a success

Enghouse Interactive has a full range of solutions to support all your communication requirements - combining

market-leading technologies with a thorough understanding of our customers’ needs across hundreds and

thousands of successful implementations.

Contact us to find out how we can help you.

Web / Telephone: +1 602 789 2800 / E-Mail: [email protected]

http://enghouseinteractive.co.uk/products/contact-centre/contact-centre-outbound/

http://enghouseinteractive.co.uk/products/contact-centre/contact-centre-outbound/

http://enghouseinteractive.com/


101

inContact is the cloud contact center software leader, with the most complete, easiest and most reliable solution to help organizations achieve their customer experience goals. As a cloud technology pioneer exclusively in the cloud since 2005, we operate in North America, Latin America, Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia Pacific countries. Our customers are from small-medium sized businesses, large enterprises, business process outsources and government, including over 110 Fortune 500 and Global 2000 customers. With unparalleled customer satisfaction, we assist more than 175,000 agents with over 6 billion interactions per year.

inContact helps turn the customer experience into a competitive advantage by delivering a purpose-built cloud suite that helps organizations achieve their business goals with greater ease and reliability.

inContact helps you:

1. Make your customer experience a competitive advantage

Customer experience is the new battleground. We’ll help you understand exactly what your customer wants and help you get there faster and easier, with greater flexibility and confidence than ever.

2. Achieve your performance goals

Our purpose-built solution and deep expertise help you reach your customer experience goals and meet the broad, evolving business objectives of the modern contact center.

3. Unlock the true potential of the cloud

Only inContact uses the latest cloud technology to unify omnichannel routing and workforce optimization, creating a single, proven solution that’s as reliable and scalable as it is cost-effective and flexible.

inContact’s cloud contact center solutions include:

o Customer Interaction Cloud, including:

Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

My Agent eXperience (MAX)

CRM Integrations

Personal Connection™ Outbound Dialer

Supervisor On-The-Go™

Blended Predictive Dialer

Network Connectivity

Reporting & Analytics

inCloud Apps

Workforce Optimization (WFO)

Workforce management (WFM)

Quality Management

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

inView™ Performance Dashboards

Workforce-Intelligent Contact Center

Speech & Desktop Analytics

o Expert Services

o Partner Ecosystem

inContact (NASDAQ: SAAS) is the cloud contact center software leader, with the most complete, easiest and most reliable solution to help organizations around the globe to achieve their customer experience goals. inContact continuously innovates in the cloud and is the only provider to offer a complete solution that includes the technology – customer interaction platform as a service – as well as an expert service model and the broadest partner ecosystem. Recognized as a market leader by Gartner, Frost, Ovum, IDC and DMG, inContact supports over 6 billion interactions per year for enterprise, midmarket, government organizations and business process outsourcers (BPOs) who operate in multiple divisions, locations and global regions. To learn more, visit www.incontact.com.


http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SAAS


102

Noble Systems is a global leader in the customer communications industry, providing innovative

solutions for Unified Communications, Business Process Management and Analytics.

Tens of thousands of agents at 4,000+ client installations worldwide use Noble platforms to manage

millions of customer contacts each day.

Noble offers a unified suite of multi-channel inbound, outbound and blended contact processing,

strategy planning, and resource management tools for companies of all sizes.

Our CPE, CaaS and innovative premise/cloud hybrid platforms include ACD, predictive dialling, blended

processing, recording and monitoring, IVR, messaging, interaction analytics and workforce management.

Contact:

Lee Allum

w: [email protected]

t: +1 (404) 851 1331

w: www.noblesystems.com


http://www.noblesystems.com/

103

Rostrvm Solutions is a British software company. We design, develop and support rostrvm, a modular

suite of applications for managing and blending all of your inbound and outbound communications, with

clear and accurate reporting, available on any device.

For multichannel, blended contact

rostrvm provides intelligent, data driven, skills-based routing for your contact center. Whether it’s

precision dialing, effective call queuing or multi-site, multichannel contact handling, everyone is looked

after.

To track your progress, rostrvm’s performance management tools deliver contact center and back office

performance metrics. You can see business outcomes and real-time and historical management

information across all contact media and supporting business processes. Added to that is call recording

for quality assessment, training and compliance.

Another key rostrvm feature is Desktop optimization. Streamlined desktops with integrated functions

save time and money. Our applications for the contact center and back office will ensure your operation

is totally efficient.

The rostrvm suite is a truly integrated platform that supports increased functionality. It will overlay your

existing systems both in the Cloud and on your site so you don’t have to throw away your investment

but can enhance it cost effectively and with minimal risk. We provide support and improve any IT

environment and telephone system.

Our commercial frameworks will really benefit your business; rostrvm works on site or hosted in the

cloud and can be acquired on a capex, opex, subscription or pay-per-use basis. It’s completely scalable

and facilitates requirements like remote working.

As a privately-held company Rostrvm Solutions maintains a strong culture of independence, which is

increasingly rare in our market sector. We see our independence as a major benefit to our customers

and partners - it guarantees the openness of our technology and the objectiveness of our approach and

advice

Our dedicated team of experts, based in Woking, Surrey, have over 30 years’ experience in the field and

are skilled in delivering tailored solutions and a unique combination of benefits that leave our

competition standing.

As a result, we have very loyal and long-standing customers, who rely on us for the provision and

support of their core contact handling and process management functions.

Find out more

Visit www.rostrvm.com to read our case studies and learn more about our products, services and

customers.

Or why don’t you drop us a line or give us a call to arrange a meeting? We’ll make it worth your while!

Call us on +44 (0)1483 494 690. Email: [email protected]

Rostrvm Solutions Limited, Dukes Court, Dukes Street, Woking, Surrey GU21 5RT United Kingdom




104

About Ultracomms

As the first cloud-based contact center technology and services provider in Europe, Ultracomms

provides customers across the UK with outbound, inbound and blended contact center solutions. From

inception in 2004, our unique approach has been based on continual collaboration with customers and

partners to develop feature-rich platforms, ensuring clients remain at the forefront of the rapidly

evolving contact center market, as well as helping them comply with industry standards and regulations.

From our offices on the south coast of England, our in-house R&D and support teams provide clients

with access to the very latest technology and the highest levels of support, to ensure they get the best

possible results.

Our healthy financial track record has enabled us to invest in a robust cloud infrastructure across three

geographical locations, ensuring the customers receive a reliable and consistent experience with

Ultracomms.

Contact:

w: www.ultracomms.com

a: The Granary, Cams Hall Estate, Fareham, Hampshire PO16 8UT (UK)

t: +44 (0) 207 965 0207

e: [email protected]

http://www.ultracomms.com

http://www.ultracomms.com/


105

ABOUT CONTACTBABEL

ContactBabel is the contact center industry expert. If you have a question about how the industry works,

or where it’s heading, the chances are we have the answer.

The coverage provided by our massive and ongoing primary research projects is matched by our

experience analyzing the contact center industry. We understand how technology, people and process

best fit together, and how they will work collectively in the future.

We help the biggest and most successful vendors develop their contact center strategies and talk to the

right prospects. We have shown the UK government how the global contact center industry will develop

and change. We help contact centers compare themselves to their closest competitors so they can

understand what they are doing well and what needs to improve.

If you have a question about your company’s place in the contact center industry, perhaps we can help

you.

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.contactbabel.com

Telephone: +44 (0)191 271 5269



Documents

The Inner Circle Guide to Outbound & Call Blending · providing call-back functionality. Debt collection also still forms a key part of the outbound industry. Outbound calling is