3 benefits of using Inbound – Outbound call blending

Many call centers suffer because they completely separate the duties of calling outbound numbers and answering inbound calls. Inbound – outbound call blending is a telephony software solution that increases the productivity of an entire call center by allowing individual sales representatives to handle both inbound and outbound calls.

Sales reps who wish to perform both inbound and outbound calls log into an inbound call receiver and mark themselves as available to take incoming calls. While waiting to receive calls the rep can then log into an outbound initiative in their telephone dialer. By doing so the rep will continually be routed new outbound calls.

When an inbound call is received, inbound – outbound call blending technology routes that call to an available sales rep and disconnects that rep from the outbound dialing initiative (not a call). When the sales rep is finished with that call he is then able to jump right back to making outbound calls.

Screen pop is another type of CTI (computer telephony integration) software that increases the usability of inbound – outbound call blending. CTI screen pop creates a live data link between the sales rep and the company’s CRM for each inbound call. Screen pop detects the caller id of the incoming call and compares that to the CRM database. When a matching entry is found, screen pop opens a new window displaying all of the contact information and history for that phone number. If the incoming call’s caller id does not match an existing entry in the CRM, screen pop opens a blank window instead. The sales rep can record all of the relevant information inside this window which will be saved within the CRM.

This inbound – outbound call blending solution offers the following benefits:

First, businesses stay more productive during down time. By having the same sales representatives take inbound calls while making outbound calls, the amount of inbound calls slows during the work day the sales rep is able to stay just as busy. This creates a significant increase in net calls made and taken per day, per rep.

Second, businesses can spend less on payroll. Since inbound – outbound call blending allows sales reps to take care of both inbound and outbound calls, fewer employees need to be hired to cover both responsibilities.

Third, sales representatives can respond more intelligently to incoming calls. With the uses of CTI screen pop, sales reps are able to have all of the information they need on each incoming call to respond to that lead as effectively as possible.

Contact Managers, what can they do?

Any sales team that sales remotely depends on fresh leads and contacts. A contact manager system keeps all of these leads in order and keeps sales reps selling.

Contact manager systems organize and control all of the tasks and processes associated with creating, contacting, and selling to leads. These systems, which are also called customer relationship managers or CRMs, start their job with lead capturing. A third party lead generation company is certainly one location that a contact manager can upload lead information from. Another productive source of leads is the company website. Contact managers can be programmed to gather information from web forms filled out and submitted on the internet. The information on these web forms are gathered and stored within the CRM and that lead is then qualified based on the information available.

A contact manager system organizes contacts into three separate categories (sometimes referred to as “buckets”). The contacts with in these three categories – leads, prospects, and customers – can have specific tasks assigned to them, or these contacts can be split into smaller groups within their category. Using a CRM a sales representative can interact with a whole group of contacts at once, such as sending them all an identical email or fax message.

Contact managers act as calendars to keep track of meetings or call-back appointments with contacts. Syncing with email systems like Microsoft Outlook and reminding agents of important meetings is only the beginning of what a CRM can accomplish.

Contact managers are the central piece of software that supports many of the other telephony software that allows call centers to function. Power dialers pull lists of leads from the CRM and upload all important data from a call there. Automatic call distribution, or ACD, routes inbound phone calls to the best available agent that is free when the call is received. Contact managers can also be the most reliable basis for business reporting. The real time analytics that a contact manager calculates allows for an accurate interpretation of data to show the underlying trends of the current sales market.

Contact managers also aid sales agents in fulfilling the needs of their contacts. One way that a customer relationship management system does this is with its prewritten email templates and voice messages. These emails or voice messages can be left by the CRM whenever the need arises, stopping the sales agent from wasting calling time in order to send emails to clients and contacts. A contact manager helps with all parts of inside sales.

5 benefits of using CTI Screen Pop with Autodialers for Remote Sales Reps

Screen pop is a useful tool for sales reps that make outbound calls and receive inbound calls.

Screen pop is a form of CTI – computer telephony integration. This refers to any technology that enables a computer and a telephone work together. CTI includes a large number of telephony tools.

Screen pop is a feature of lead management CRMs and telephone dialing systems. Screen pop is especially useful when inbound/outbound call blending is being used.

Inbound/outbound call blending works as follows; first, the sales rep becomes available to receive incoming phone calls. The sales representative then signs in to an outbound autodialer initiative. The autodialer will continue to route new leads for the sales rep to call whenever he is available.

When an inbound call is received by the call center, and the sales rep is between calls, he is automatically marked as unavailable in the outbound autodialer initiative. The inbound call is then routed through to the sales representative.

When this call is routed, CTI screen pop is activated. The screen pop creates a live data link between the company CRM and the incoming call. Key information from the call is immediately captured within the CRM. The caller ID of the incoming call is compared to those stored in the lead management CRM, and the information stored on the incoming call is displayed on screen for the answering sales rep. If there are no records available within the data base a blank screen is displayed. The sales rep can record more contact information and notes on the phone call directly into the screen pop and those changes are saved within the CRM.

There are several important benefits from using CTI screen pop:

1. Sales reps can answer inbound calls knowing much more about those callers. This could include what search engine they visited the company website from and which keyword they had searched for, their company name, their phone number, and more.
2. Sales reps have instant access to prior conversations and the dates and times of those previous calls.
3. Sales reps can immediately capture inbound call data and mark the record for future use.
4. Sales representatives can appropriately response to calls coming from multiple inbound initiatives because of the relevant information presented to him at the start of each call.
5. All information gathered is stored within the lead management CRM’s centralized database, allowing any sales rep to have instant access to all relevant data on any specific caller.

Call Center Auto Dialers

Inside sales is the process of collecting leads, making contacts, and closing sales from a remote location – typically over the telephone. This differs in several ways from outside sales, where sales professionals meet with their prospects face to face. Because it is different inside sales professionals need to utilize sales technologies in order to be the most effective, and compensate for the personal touch. An auto dialer is one such technology that is essential to productive inside sales call centers.

Call centers need to make as many quality calls in a day as they possibly can. A high number of outbound calls also allow call centers to contact individual leads numerous times, if necessary, in order to convert as many customers as possible. Many call centers use ratio auto dialers or predictive auto dialers because of the high level of calls that can be made each day with these solutions.

Ratio and predictive dialers both burn through a large number of leads very quickly because both types of dialers dial more leads than there are available sales agents to take those calls. This is done to account for the number of calls that are not answered or busy. These auto dialers also come with a percentage of dropped calls. For B2B call centers that have a more complex sales process and typically a higher profit on each call, dropped leads are not an option. In this case a power dialer is the only type of auto dialer that should be used.

Power Dialers call only one lead for each sales agent at a time. When a call starts to ring it is routed through to the agent. If the answering machine picks up the auto dialer can be instructed to leave a prerecorded message while the sales agent takes another call. Since these B2B sales are complex and could require a significant amount of time, the power dialer will not begin dialing other leads until the sales agent finishes his call. This solves the problem of burning through leads, dropped calls, and lag time.

Companies using a power dialer can expect to triple their daily call volume compared to manually dialing, but cannot dial the same volume of leads that a company using a ratio or predictive dialer can in a day, which for B2B companies is not necessary. What this kind of auto dialer may lack in shear call volume it more than makes up in its ability to provide each lead with a quality sales experience.

Key features of a Lead Management CRM

A lead management CRM allows sales representatives to effectively use other telephony tools. The CRM is able to triple sales productivity by integrating there numerous telephony software tools into a single, easy to implement, software platform.

The simple interface of a lead management CRM allows sales reps to easily complete their required tasks. Everything a sales representative needs to do can be done within one computer window. From here he can choose to disconnect from the phone dialer, move on to the next call, schedule a call back appointment, view call reports, send an email, and a number of other key tasks.

The technology used by a lead management CRM also helps a sales rep know the best time to contact a web-based inquiry in order to contact, qualify, and close a sale. It uses what is known as web form callback technology to do this. The web form on any website can be programmed to capture the data from the form and transfer it to the CRM. Once in the customer relationship manager, the phone number is immediately routed to a sales rep. The CRM also makes the newly generated and captured lead a high priority for the sales rep to call, ensuring that the call is placed within minutes of the lead submitting information and demonstrating interest. According to a study with Insidesales.com and MIT, when leads are contacted that quickly, the contact rate increases upwards of 800%.

Lead management CRMs add further time saving features with automated voice messaging technology. During the calls when a lead is unable to be contacted, prerecorded messages can be left by the dialer while the sales rep moves on to the next call. Prior to making calls sales representatives can create a whole library of prerecorded voice messages, and have these messages checked for quality control. When a voice mail machine is encountered the sales rep only has to click a button on their screen to have one of those messages left while he moves onto the next sales opportunity. This keeps sales reps talking to live leads, not dealing with machines that can’t make a purchase.

Lead management CRM is a powerful productivity enhancing software solution that is suitable for both B2B and B2C remote sales. Users need very little training before using a CRM for their sales calls, and it has an immediate impact on any remote sales organization.

Online Customer Relationship Managers

Online Customer Relationship Managers provide all of the functions a remote sales team needs to successfully operate. These online CRMs have telephony software solutions, such as power dialing and voice messaging, built right into them. These technologies are designed specifically for businesses who sell to other businesses through their website or over the phone.

Customer Relationship Managers provide a platform for organizing and managing all of the different processes related to inside sales. An online CRM is one specific type of customer relationship manager and is also called a hosted CRM. The software needed to run the CRM is stored on a host company’s server and is accessed over the internet. Using an online-hosted CRM frees an organization from needing to developing its own system and database. Additionally, the information stored in the CRM can be accessed from any computer with internet access. This can be especially convenient when sales agents work remotely and not all in one physical location.

Some of the key featuring that an online CRM includes are power dialing, voice messaging, fax, and email marketing.

A power dialer is also called a phone dialer or an auto dialer. Dialer software will automatically calls through a predefined list of phone numbers and patches them through to available sales reps. This automation software frequently triples the amount of calls each agent is able to make in a typical work day.

Voice messaging technology allows a sales agent to save a previously recorded voice message within the online CRM. By saving and using only their most compelling voice messages a good first impression can be guaranteed with each message left. Voice messages can also be designed allowing listeners to press a button on their own phone in order to prevent further calls from reaching them or to automatically patch them through to an available agent.

Fax and email messaging serves a similar purpose as voice mail. Carefully crafted templates for both kinds of messages can be saved in the online CRM. These templates can be sent to a contact that a sales rep is speaking to as soon as the contact requests additional information. Alternatively, these messages may be sent in place of a voice message. Since these messages are saved with the Customer Relationship Manager they can be sent by the system quickly with little extra work from the sales representative.

Recession Solution? Auto Dialer!

Rising unemployment rates and sinking consumer confidence affects business to business companies, just like any other. In these slouching economic times, all businesses have to look at new ways to reach their targeted audiences.

An inefficient business can still turn a profit in a good economy, but a recession can painfully highlight all the failing areas in a company. One such area is manually dialing sales leads instead of automating the process using an auto dialer.

An inside sales call center who’s sales professionals manually dial all numbers can at times perform reasonably well when a greater percentage of contacts convert into clients. In a typical well-run B2B call center a sales professional, whose primary responsibility is lead generation, can be expected to make 40 or 50 calls each work day. That’s if he was dialing manually. Once that same sales professional switches to using an auto dialer he can expect to be making 170 to 350 calls each workday.

An auto dialer works like this: First the auto dialer has a contact list of leads loaded into the database. The auto dialer will then automatically place a call to each number on that list. Once dialed, the call is routed through to an available sales agent who takes the call as the number is ringing. If the call is busy or not answered, the auto dialer system can be used to send fax, voicemail, or email. By doing all this, auto dialers not only reduce the wasted time spent manually dialing, but also eliminate much of the wasted time spent dealing with busy signals and voice messaging systems.

A hosted auto dialer solution adds even more value to this system. By contracting with a hosted auto dialer provider the maintenance, development, and set up of the dialer is completed by the host company. Also, no software needs to be downloaded on company computers. Instead the auto dialer software is accessed through the internet. This allows sales professionals to work from any location with a telephone and a PC connected to the internet. A hosted dialer solution works with whatever hardware a call center may currently be using.

Inside sales operations can continue to grow in a difficult financial recession, but only when smart telephony technology is used. An auto dialer is such a solution that eliminates much of the wasted time in call centers.