Auto dialers are powerful software tools used in inside sales. The purpose of an auto dialer is to give the sales representative the ability to dial more quality leads in a day as he or she could without the technology. Numerous companies provide auto dialer software for call centers and individual sales people to use in their work.
To operate, an auto dialer needs to be programmed with a list of phone numbers. If the sales company uses a CRM (customer relationship manager) this call list can be uploaded from the list of leads within the CRM database. As these numbers are called by the auto dialer the CRM displays for the sales rep all available information on the lead, including contact info and previous contact history. These numbers are routed to and answered by the best available sales rep. This greatly reduces the amount of time individual sales representatives spend looking up a leads’ contact information, manually dialing the phone numbers, and sitting through ring tones, busy signals, and answering machines.
Some auto dialer providers require their customers to purchase and host the auto dialer software on their own computer system. Others may require special hardware to be bought and installed to use their auto dialer system. These practices can drive up the cost of acquiring an auto dialer, significantly.
An alternative to this is a company that provides a hosted auto dialer. These hosted dialers require no on site software hosting, instead all of the necessary software and databases are housed on the host company's servers and accessed through the Internet. An online hosted auto dialer also requires less specific telephony hardware as some other auto dialer providers. Hosted auto dialers only require a telephone, a phone line, and a computer with Internet access.
Auto dialers are able to be integrated with other telephony software. A CRM can be used to upload and save data on the leads and customers dialed. Email and fax messaging solutions can be used to send important messages to contacts right from the dialer interface while the sales rep is still on the phone with the contact. Inbound-outbound call blending allows sales representatives who are using an auto dialer to also receive incoming business calls.
In addition to online auto dialers, there are several different forms of these telephone dialers, such as the power dialer that strategically dialers one lead per each available sales rep at a time. Regardless of the type of auto dialer, they are used for one purpose – make more calls and close more sales.