Outbound Call Centers: From Robocalls to Gamification
Noble Systems' Chris Hodges discusses the value of outbound calling technology and gamification in the call center.
When discussing outbound call centers, many people think of robocalls, the frustrating outbound calls you likely don’t want to receive from companies with which you likely don’t have any relationship. But putting robocalls aside, there are plenty of valid reasons for outbound call centers.
An outbound call center is one where agents make outbound calls (manually or automated) to former or present customers on behalf of a business, government, political or charitable organization, or client. Calls made from the center may involve telemarketing, sales, or fund-raising. Other calls may include contact list updating, surveys, or verification services.
Outbound Technology
To learn more about outbound calling products, especially given the introduction of GDPR in the EU and CCPA in California, I contacted Chris Hodges, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Noble Systems. Hodges has 35 years of experience in this field, and his company Noble Systems has received the 2018 Market Leadership Award for Outbound Dialing Systems from Frost & Sullivan, making him an excellent resource on the topic. I asked Hodges several questions about outbound technology’s value and his responses follow.
Outbound dialers improve business outcomes by empowering agents with the tools to be more efficient and productive. Sales, debt collection, telemarketing, cross-selling, and market research are a few everyday examples of the numerous use cases for which these solutions apply.
For contact center agents, call management, list control, and workflow management reduce idle time by increasing right-party contacts and first-call resolutions. For contact center managers, real-time monitoring capabilities provide supervisory control and the visibility to observe agents, ensuring quality and accuracy.
A significant business benefit of outbound solutions is compliance; tier-1 offerings are compliance-ready for “Do-Not-Contact” laws and legislative regulations like TCPA and the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). Violating these regulations can result in heavy fines.
What about GDPR in the EU and CCPA in California?
Solutions should be built with data security and encryption to ensure personal customer data stays private. For GDPR specifically, organizations that leverage technology manage their customers’ data and lists, so handling (keep reading...)