When you are in charge of managing an outbound contact center, you have a lot of responsibility resting on your shoulders. It’s up to you to ensure that all outbound calls that are made from your center are not only courteous, but also incredibly successful. So what does this look like on a practical basis?

1. Use analytics and metrics

Analytics is important because if you can’t measure a problem, it hard to know how to fix it. In addition, it’s always great to know exactly how the calls made by your teams are progressing so you can track the successes that you are enjoying. Investing time and money into programs that can create data for you may seem counter intuitive, but the insights that you have been missing will pay dividends if used properly. The data that you collect should directly feed into the training program that you are utilizing for incoming staff at your outbound contact center – and for ongoing training for your current staff.

A few key metrics to know (both per agent and per your whole outbound call center): calls per day, conversion rate, appointments scheduled, average talk time

2. Improve your agent efficiency

It doesn’t matter if one of your agents is making an 800 calls a day if they aren’t converting any sales. That is why it is essential that you improve your agent efficiency when it comes to your actually goal, such making a sale or setting an appointment. You can start doing this by using the analytics that we spoke of earlier, but apart from that you need to ensure that the scripts that your outbound call center are using are concise and to the point. Monitoring the coaching the agents is pivotal so you know your message is getting across to prospects.

3. Motivate your team

Nothing holds a company back like a demotivated team. Studies have shown that the number one reason why productivity and efficiency can fail in a business is because the members of staff there simply do not feel that they are being motivated. What is in it for them? What can a member of your staff in your outbound contact center gain if they improve their call skills, or convert more calls? If you do not have anything in place, then that may be why you are not seeing an increase in growth. Consider monetary based rewards, contests, goals, or friendly competition.

4. Understand failures

So, something didn’t work. Don’t spend too long complaining about it – see this is a chance for you to learn something. Go through the steps that lead you and your team to that failure. Did you try something new that didn’t quite pay off? Did you follow the script, but something come up that you were not expecting? By understanding and learning from the failures of your outbound contact center experiences, you can ensure that they do not happen again in the future.

5. Celebrate successes

Last but by no means least, celebrate your successes! There will be times where you and your team make a marvellous break through, and the entire outbound contact center should know about it. Shout about your successes, and ensure that your customers and competitors know about them too. Your successes should drive you all forward to further successes, but if no one knows about them, why would they?

As you can see, managing an outbound contact center can become a highly complex project, but one that can reap in the benefits if you put the time, effort, and skills into establishing the best practices and ensuring that its day to day running is always improving. Before long, you will have it down to a predictable science and find yourself requiring more staff in order to pick up the heavy workload that you have built up for yourselves!