According to Fortune.com, an American works an average of 34 hours per week. As this may seem long enough for others, the people in the sales industry have other things to say. With a daily work schedule that is normally packed to its brim, an agent needs all the help he or she can get. And when it comes to the tedious tasks of telemarketing, nothing beats the efficiency a sales predictive dialer injects into the sales process.

Why is a Predictive Dialer System Important in Sales?

Every agent’s life revolves around one thing: their quota. It’s the number that could easily dictate their future in the industry. Meet or beat it, then you’ve done your job. One of the many tools that aid agents to achieving their quotas is the predictive dialer. A predictive dialer for sales is the single most convenient way to collect leads; and eventually, transform these leads into opportunities.

What Are The Elements of a Good Predictive Dialer System?

Given the vast abundance of predictive dialer software that’s available, there’s great responsibility for you to filter through the weeds. Each brand comes up with certain quirks that make their product stand out, but don’t be too caught up with these marketing strategies. It always pays to be extra cautious when choosing the right program for your company. Here are a few things to keep in mind when selecting your predictive dialer according to software solutions company Ameyo:

1. Local Presence Caller ID

A personalizing feature that allows agents to alter their outbound caller ID’s to that of the contact’s area code. Having your area code altered to match your contact person’s will allow for an increase in the chances of your calls getting picked up.

2. Custom Dialing

With so many numbers in their contact lists, your agents only have so much time in their day to go through all of them. Sometimes, not everyone in your list of leads is necessarily call-worthy (i.e. toll-free numbers). These numbers have to be eliminated to avoid wasting time, and this is just what this feature does. It fishes out these unwanted numbers from your list to provide you with an efficient automation of calls.

3. Retry Logics

Leave it up to your predictive dialer to ensure that your contacts are automatically redialed. This feature gives you the option to dictate to your dialer the following: which numbers you’d want to call again, how long should it wait before redialing, or how many times will it keep trying to dial the specific contact.

4. Dial Time Zone Restrictions

If you’re company has ventured overseas then your dialer should be resilient to your clients’ various time zones. This feature improves the rate of your answered calls, thus increasing your chances of turning that lead into an actual opportunity.

5. PACE (Pro-Active Connect Enhancer)

PACE is another crucial feature any dialer should have. The system this feature runs on manages your contact list and segregates your call priority. Basing its filtering on the frequency of your previous interactions with each client, it ensures both a relevant and systematic list of clients to call.

6. SMS and Email Integration

Your dialer should have a feature that conveniently feeds you template SMS and Emails to send to your clients. Prior to sending, the dialer offers you a quick preview of the message. This feature allows you to optimize the number of clients you reach on the daily.

7. TCPA Compliance

TCPA or Telephone Consumer Protection Act prevents overly eager telemarketers from constantly calling clients. Your dialer should be equipped with a feature that filters out contacts listed under the “Do Not Call” registry, and call those who have freely offered their contact details for telemarketing offers.

8. Seamless CRM Integration

A dialer that comes with this feature allows for agents to scan through their clients’ account, past conversations, and tickets among many others. This easily profiles clients for the agent to study before dialing the number.

9. Disposition Codes

Conveniently filter through your contact’s list with status updates on the outcome of your previous calls. Remarks like “Busy,” “Answering Machine,” or “Disconnected” makes both agents and supervisor easily distinguish the reliable contacts.

10. Answering Machine Detection

A call landing on an answering machine is probably one pet peeve every agent has in common. No need to worry about answering machines when your dialer is equipped with a feature that automatically leaves a pre-recorded message to clients who use answering machines.

How Do Call Centers Benefit From Predictive Dialers?

A predictive dialer for call center shifts the whole landscape of outbound marketing. This piece of technology not only arms call centers with competitive advantages like: improving an agent’s productivity or increasing an agent’s contact rate; but also, it benefits the company in certain areas like:

  • It singularizes outbound sales and inbound customer service. Predictive dialers coupled with an automated call distribution system allow a prompt assignment of calls to which agent is available. This also allows callers to queue up in case the agent is momentarily dealing with another client.
  • It creates a harmonious work relationship between the agents and the administration. With the predictive dialer’s feature of distributing calls, the separation of work load among agents is rendered unquestionable by supervisors.
  • It assists supervisors in monitoring their agents’ performance. This is done by call monitoring and recording interfaces that will allow supervisors to assess which areas their agents have to improve on.
  • It cuts on cost as it eschews both a private branch exchange (PBX) setup and a call log operator who also routes calls to agents.

Is Your Call Center’s Predictive Dialer the Right One?

Different call centers cater to different industries, but one thing grounds all of them together: the fast-paced nature of work. Thankfully, a call center predictive dialer aids them by taking bits of work load off of their backs through its many beneficial features. Before you equip your call center with its very own software make sure to ask yourself these guide questions:

  • Are there business-related notifications I need to be simultaneously sending to a large volume clientele?
  • Are my agents consumed more with telemarketing than they are with face-to-face transactions?
  • Are my telemarketing strategies supposed to be rendered all at once?

Today, a gamut of predictive dialer software is present for companies to take advantage of. Names like RedCloud, Nuxiba, Voicent, Mojo Dialer, and Vanilla Soft are the common software brands used by most. These are the names you should take advantage of when you want to optimize your agent’s telemarketing efforts. There are other brands out there that you can also pick as your company’s software, but always remember to check these two things laid out for you in this article: the elements of a good predictive dialer, and the applicability of a predictive dialer to your company.

As Patrick Barnard of TMC News puts it, predictive dialers are the ‘unsung hero’ of the call center industry. Much as this software contributes so much to the smoothening of the telemarketing process, it rather is neglected for this same benefit it contributes to a company. It’s high time that we give due recognition to a part of operations which could possibly spell the difference between between failure or success.