What is an Outbound Call Center?
An outbound call center is a business operation that makes outgoing calls to customers and prospects. Organizations have a number of reasons to make outbound calls, including sales, collections, surveys, research, fundraising, and proactive customer notifications. Regardless of the reasons, all outbound call centers focus on having clean calling lists, high connect rates, and high conversion rates.
Outbound call centers have become increasingly regulated, mostly in response to consumer backlash over receiving unwanted phone calls. Although individual states may have their own unique laws, there are two primary federal laws/regulations that all outbound call centers need to abide by – the Do Not Call (DNC) Registry and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). DNC established a registry of phone numbers that outbound call centers are restricted from calling. TCPA created rules about outbound dialing methods, pre-recorded messages, calling hours, and more. Outbound call centers that violate either of these may face substantial fines.
Outbound call centers typically use software tools called Dialers that increase efficiency and effectiveness by automating some or all of dialing process, as well as support keeping them compliant with the regulations mentioned above. For example, predictive dialers not only automate phone number dialing, but they also use sophisticated algorithms to predict agent availability to optimize agent utilization by ensuring they stay busy and not sitting idle. They can also automatically suppress phone numbers that are on the DNC registry. Integrating predictive dialers with CRM applications makes them even more effective because that allows agents to see customer information that leads to a more relevant, personalized call.
How NICE can help
NICE CXone is the market leading contact center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world to help them consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences. CXone is a cloud native, unified suite of applications designed to help a company holistically run its contact center operations.
For outbound call centers: NICE CXone Personal Connection is a patented proactive predictive dialer that generates more revenue and fewer hang-ups. It gives Inside Sales teams an easier way to attain quota by connecting with more prospects faster, and helps Customer Service reduce inbound calls through personalized, low cost proactive outbound notifications.
The CXone platform also provides pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic contact center software solution capable of improving customer experiences regardless of interaction channel for companies of all sizes.