📘 The Guide: Choose the perfect outbound sales software for your call center

These 14 key criteria help you find the right outbound sales software to grow your call center business

1. Cloud VS on-premise solution

Cloud-based software has big advantages for call centers and sales teams of all sizes: scalability, flexibility, automatic updates, data integrity, no up-front costs and the ability to work from anywhere.

While a traditional on-premise system can give more detailed control of your infrastructure, the control comes with disadvantages: cost of hardware, cost of updates, cost of adding capacity and security risks from outdated software and systems.

For small businesses, cloud software means easily adding or removing seats and not having to worry about servers and data warehousing.

2. Compliance with regulation

Your calls, data and transactions all need to comply with all relevant national and international guidelines and regulations. For companies that operate in the EU, for example, GDPR determines how and where personal data should be handled and stored.

Most countries also have their own regulation that you need to meet. For example, if you are operating in Germany, your data needs to be stored in Germany. In Sweden, all deals made over the phone need to be confirmed via another channel. Don’t risk a hefty fine from your regulator.

Don’t risk losing clients over data security. Choose software that is compliant out-of-the-box, that keeps you one step ahead of regulations.

3. VoIP calling

When your team is making hundreds or thousands of calls per day, the cost of every call counts. The latest VoIP technology offers low-cost, high-quality calls. In addition to lowering your costs, the best VoIP-enabled software gives you flexible routing options and configurable caller ID. VoIP enables your agents to work remotely from anywhere in the world while making low-cost calls to your target country.

The right software provider will take care of all your VoIP needs, so you don’t have to worry about bolt-on software, negotiating separate subscriptions or setting up infrastructure.

4. Automatic, Power and Predictive Dialers

The dialer is fundamental to call center software. In fact, many people refer to their CC software as their dialer. If you are running a sales team, it is ideal to be able to dynamically assign different dialer modes to different campaigns and agents in a couple of clicks.

Call center software typically includes a choice of dialer modes. Standard ones include Automatic, Preview, List and Manual dialers. Compared with a manual dialer, an automatic dialer can triple the efficiency of your agents. Predictive and Power dialers can further improve the efficiency of calling in various situations.

5. Real-time monitoring and reporting

The modern call center, and even a small sales team, creates a vast amount of data every day. There are dozens of potential metrics to monitor, so you do not want to waste time on finding important statistics or reporting routines.

The modern call center, and even a small sales team, creates a vast amount of data every day. There are dozens of potential metrics to monitor, so you do not want to waste time on finding important statistics or reporting routines.

6. Multi-site and outsourcer-readiness

Even if you are a small sales team, you could be serving different clients with varying needs. To keep customer data separate, it is important that your outbound sales software supports different customer profiles.

For larger call center operations, the ability to add home workers to the team, distribute and share contacts lists between different offices, and easily integrate with client-side ordering and logistics systems, are all must haves.

7. Tiered access rights and permissions

In large organisations, or where a client or CxO demands visibility to operational performance, it is essential to give access to dashboards, analytics and reports. The best solutions give you the power to customise the view of every user.

If you are a small sales team, this might sound unnecessary. But, as soon as you have a client that wants real-time stats, with tiered access rights you can choose to show them only the stats that matter. As you employ team leaders, you can limit their view to their own team and give them access to campaign creation and other tools.

8. Dynamic scripts

Depending on the complexity of the product or service you are selling, your script can have a massive effect on handling time, sales and your bottom line.

Sales scripts can range from simple product benefit reminders, right up to interactive, multiple-choice scripts with data entry. Script tools really show their worth when you can analyse your script’s performance, fine tune it and see your results improve.

9. Advanced contact management

How your software handles your contact lists is a massive factor in your productivity, in terms of admin time and effort, as well as agent efficiency. The best software includes rapid list management, filtering and editing; sync with client-side lists, CRMs and DNC databases; and intelligent prioritisation and performance analysis.

With advanced contact management tools, you can automate post-call contact handling based on the reason for ending the call. This ensures, for example, that the contact is not accidentally contacted again if they are not interested.

10. API for extensions

The only thing we can be certain of is change. It’s good to know that your software can grow with you. New technologies, especially around big data, machine learning and automations, have massive potential for call centers. One example is automated voice recognition software that can help analyse changes in your team’s sentiment.

Whether or not your software vendor has an open API also points to their attitude and approach. Will you be limited in the future? Will you be able to take advantage of new ideas and new innovations from other companies?

11. Blended inbound

So, you are working on pure B2C or B2B outbound sales. But what happens when your new client asks you to handle order or delivery enquiries, technical support or installation troubleshooting?

Blended inbound means agents can seamlessly switch between incoming and outbound customer interactions, and even handle emails while on calls.

12. Remote listener with live whisper

Remote listening is not standard in call center software. It should be. It can be the difference between a deal, or no deal. It is especially useful when training new agents as you can listen in on calls, whisper to the agent or even barge in on the call in case of an emergency.

The best call center managers need easily accessible remote listening, with the option to advise an agent or actively join the call.

13. Integrations to CRM and other systems

Many organisations are tied to their CRM. For inside sales teams, it is commonly essential to have the basics of contact data sync and automatic creation of leads and events in the CRM.

Easy integration with CRMs, ERPs and client-side systems is also vital for many call centers. Integrations enable e.g. advanced routing and prioritisation, historical contact and order data, and work with third parties, such as survey companies and affiliate marketers.

14. User interface and learning curve

If your new call center software requires more than 15 minutes of agent training, it is probably too complicated. A good software is fast and easy to use so agents can start calling practically immediately

Of course, agent training for specific campaigns, new clients and new call scripts is important. But, if your new call center software needs training time and money to get your agents up to speed, look for another solution.