What is Power Dialing?
Let’s start with the basics! A power dialer automates outbound calling so a live agent can make a high volume of calls in a short period of time, much faster than with manual dialing. Often associated with call centers, power dialers can also help other types of sales-based businesses, regardless of how many users or agents they have.
A great power dialer should integrate seamlessly with your preferred customer relationship management system, or CRM. Call data flows instantly to your CRM, allowing for a comprehensive history of lead interaction. smrtPhone’s power dialer, smrtDialer, requires a CRM integration. It’s made for businesses that are already at the stage where they’re organizing, monitoring and growing their sales pipeline.
Power dialing allows you to call multiple numbers at once, which increases the likelihood of connecting with a person. (Don’t worry, there are systems in place to account for multiple connections at once!) The success rate of a good power dialing campaign depends on multiple factors such as a quality lead list, an engaging agent, and calling at the right time.
Power Dialer Analytics: KPI Reports Show You What’s Working – and What Isn’t
Key Performance Indicators, or “KPIs,” are how you measure the success rate of your power dialing campaigns. The more robust and customizable they are, the better. An easy way to separate the different clusters of data are by Team, Number and Campaign. We’ll go over the ways to learn from your power dialing campaigns so you can make informed, data-driven decisions.
Power Dialing Campaigns Rely on Effective Agents and Teams
In the first part of this KPI Reporting series, we went over many of the ways to evaluate the effectiveness of your team’s outbound calling. In this blog, we’ll focus more on the KPIs specific to power dialing.
How do you measure whether your agent is doing well? You can use call monitoring to listen in on live calls, or call recordings to listen after the fact. But if you want an overview of productivity over a set period of time, KPI Reports are the best source of data.
Here’s some examples of useful data points to compare and contrast:
- smrtDialer Calls: How many calls an agent made
- smrtDialer Talk Time: How many minutes an agent spent engaged with a live person
- smrtDialer Answer Rate: Percentage of calls connected, versus those that didn’t
- smrtDialer Avg Call Duration: An average of how long an agent spends on the phone with a person
- smrtDialer Answered Calls: How many calls were answered
- smrtDialer Session Count: Number of sessions an agent engaged in
By looking at comprehensive data, you’re more likely to pinpoint what’s going on with an agent. For example, if an agent makes fewer calls than some of her peers, but has a longer average call duration and higher answer rate, it may mean she’s excelling rather than lazy. You’d initially miss this if you only checked in on the number of smrtDialer calls she made.
Conversely, if an agent makes many calls yet has a low answer rate, it may be an issue with the lead list, and not due to lack of effort. Reporting allows you to holistically view performance from many angles, so you know your next decision is a smart one, and not a guess.
By looking at agent data, you learn who may need extra training, as well as who is a shining example of how to do things right. You could learn information that surprises you, or it will confirm what you already know. Either way, you can bring hard data to your team to create goals and provide actionable feedback.
Phone Number Metrics: Using the Right Phone Numbers in High-Volume Calling Campaigns
You may be surprised to find out that the phone numbers you’re using can affect the success of your power dialing campaign! Ultimately, you want to boost answer rates and avoid “wearing out” phone numbers. Phone carriers can lower your trust score if you make a high volume of outbound calls in a short period of time from one number. Utilizing a number pool ensures your phone numbers are used an even number of times, making them less likely to wear out or be flagged.
But how do you keep track of which phone numbers are being used and leading to answered calls? KPI reports, of course.
It’s important to keep track of which phone numbers are being used so you know which numbers should go in your number pool. Additionally, you may want to carefully select which area codes go in your number pool, to increase answer rates. If people recognize the area code as local, they may be more likely to answer.
Use KPI reports to see how often a number is picked up, how many calls and sessions have already been made from a number, and use this information to either “rest” a number or throw it into your next power dialing campaign.
Learn Which Power Dialing Campaigns are Successful
Which of your power dialing campaigns are worth the time and money you’re spending on them? Lead lists, call usage and agent labor are expenses that you want to make as lean as possible. But what’s the first step in figuring out how to spend your money? Look at the power dialing campaigns you’ve already finished!
First Step: If you want to see the effectiveness of a specific lead list, you could select the Campaign to analyze and plot out smrtDialer Calls and smrtDialer Answer Rates. Compare it to other Campaigns to get a sense of whether it’s under-performing.
Next Steps: Stop using the lead lists that are consistently yielding dead numbers, uninterested people, and don’t connect. Once you have enough data, you can change where you obtain your lead lists and do better scrubbing. We advice to focus more on quality of lists rather than quantity.
First Steps: View a Campaign graphed out by statuses (such as Converted, Voicemail, or Not Interested) to get a quick visual overview of how many leads may have come out of a particular Campaign.
Next Steps: Similar to the example above, this data can help you analyze not only the quality of your lead lists, but also your agent performance. If you’re seeing a lot of connections that lead to “not interested,” it could be time to listen to recordings or monitoring an agent’s next campaign. Maybe your agent needs more training, or a better call script to close the deal.
First Step: To get a sense of when most of your power dialing campaigns yield answered calls, check out the Outbound Answered Calls report, which shows which days and times of the week you more consistently connect with a person.
Next Steps: If it turns out most of your answered calls are happening around the same time every week, schedule your agents then. Save money by being intentional with how many hours you schedule your agents, or save your agent’s time by freeing them up to do other things during your slow periods. It may even be time to staff up if you find out how many more campaigns you could schedule, if you had the agents!
First Steps: To learn how many calls in a smrtDialer campaign are actually answered, check out your Answer Rates report. You’ll learn the volume, as well as the timeframe of the answered calls. You can compare multiple campaigns at once, or hone in on one in particular.
Next Steps: If not many of your calls are answered, but you’re confident in your agents and your lead list, maybe your smrtDialer Campaign settings need adjusting. If your Ring Time is too short, people may not have enough time to answer. Your Call Script could be need improvement, or you can enable recordings to ensure the scripts are followed. Or it’s possible using more lines at once will yield a higher volume of calls, and therefore more answers. Check those settings!
Customizable Reports to Fit Your Business
The beauty of customizable reports is that you can build graphs that show information you want to see. There are dozens of metrics to compare, displaying information in whatever unique combination makes sense for you. It could be important to see how many of your agents made calls over five minutes on a specific date. Maybe you’re curious how many text messages were sent compared to those received over the course of a month. Build what makes sense for you!
smrtPhone’s KPI reports are customizable by agent, date, campaign, phone number, length of call, and more. Plus, they are downloadable and views are savable for efficient tracking over time. Plus, we constantly build new features and reports based on user feedback, so let us know what you need!
Your next power dialing campaign may land you a sale, and it will definitely give you data. Make sure you are using it to build your business strategy as you grow.
Happy Power Dialing!