The sales department in a call center performs a range of important tasks aimed at lead generation, increasing sales, and ensuring satisfaction of existing clients. The processes of handling inquiries, maintaining customer databases, and monitoring and analyzing results can be laborious and often quite routine. Fortunately, the automation of business processes has reached the sales departments of call centers.
Let’s explore the trends in call center automation and learn about modern software solutions that help make sales processes in call centers more efficient.
Trends and tools for call center sales automation
Automation and optimized business process outsourcing (BPO) have impacted all aspects of call center operations. Automation tools enhance and streamline tasks such as CRM management, call routing and distribution, call monitoring, forecasting, and key performance analysis. Our goal is to provide an overview of the most influential trends and technological solutions shaping the landscape of call center and sales department automation in the near future. So, let’s dive in!
Predictive call routing
Modern solutions for call centers utilize Automatic Call Distribution meaning systems, which are designed to route customer calls to the most suitable agents based on their skills or other predefined routing rules and criteria. Calls are identified using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems and directed to the agent best equipped to handle such requests.
With the capabilities of artificial intelligence, call routing systems have become even more sophisticated, evolving into predictive behavioral routing. The technology assesses the customer’s behavior retrospectively, their purchasing potential, personality type, agent rating, and other parameters to match the customer with the most suitable agent who is most likely to serve the customer optimally.
How will predictive routing help increase sales?
Predictive algorithms analyze subscriber data, including previous interactions, demographic indicators, and purchase history, to predict the most suitable agent for each call. By matching subscribers with agents who have the relevant experience or language skills, the chances of successful sales are increased. AI algorithms prioritize calls based on factors such as customer value or urgency, ensuring quick connections for high-priority subscribers to agents. Reduced wait times increase customer satisfaction and conversion rates.
Predictive call routing allows agents in call center sales departments to access necessary customer information before answering a call. This facilitates the provision of personalized services and individual solutions, which positively impacts sales.
According to Salesforce research, in the near future, more sales departments in call centers will be using behavioral routing to provide more personalized service and improve CSAT scores.
Voice bots and AI-powered chatbots
Voice bots based on artificial intelligence are one of the main trends in call center automation, which will become even more popular in the coming years. This is mainly due to the increasing customer expectations for fast support and multichannel interaction (phone, online chat, social media, or messenger).
Voice bots and chatbots allow contact centers to offer more accessible customer service with round-the-clock availability, while simultaneously increasing customer satisfaction and reducing support costs.
How voice bots and chatbots contribute to sales automation?
AI-powered chatbots play a crucial role in automating sales processes in call centers. By providing round-the-clock availability, they ensure that potential customers are engaged even during non-working hours, maximizing sales opportunities.
Voice chatbots, enhanced by AI capabilities, have broad prospects for automating numerous call center processes, including those in the sales department. Here are just a few of the most prominent examples of automation:
- Lead qualification and segmentation;
- Guiding potential customers through the sales funnel;
- Product and service recommendations;
- Appointment scheduling;
- Data collection.
Thus, AI-based chatbots automate various aspects of the sales process in call centers. By providing instant responses, personalized interactions, and valuable information, chatbots enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of sales operations, ultimately contributing to revenue growth. However, human support will not disappear anytime soon. When it comes to resolving complex issues, personal interaction remains the best way to achieve goals and maintain customer loyalty KPIs such as NPS, CSAT, CES, Retention Rate, etc.
Predictive power dialers
Predictive power dialler is powerful technological solution for contact centers, widely used in outbound call centers to automate the process of making outbound calls to customer databases. According to a report by Grand View Research, by 2028, the global market for predictive dialer software is expected to reach $12.2 billion USD (compared to $1.03 billion USD in 2020).
The predictive dialing system utilizes complex machine learning algorithms that “predict” agent availability and automatically adjust the dialing speed based on factors such as average call duration, call abandonment rate, the number of available agents at any given time, and so on. This allows for outbound dialing from a contact number database according to the desired scenario.
The key role of predictive dialer systems in sales automation
For outbound call centers focused on telemarketing, lead generation, or phone surveys, predictive dialer systems, such as power dialers, play a crucial role. Here are just a few examples of how these systems contribute to increased sales:
- Automatic dialing: the system automatically dials numbers from a contact list without the operator’s involvement. This promotes efficient use of agent work time and increases their productivity, positively impacting sales performance.
- Dialing speed: predictive dialer systems analyze various factors such as time of day, dialing history, and agent availability to optimize the speed of dialing numbers. This helps maximize the number of successful calls per hour of work time and enhances the efficiency of the outbound call center.
- Number verification: dialer systems can automatically verify numbers from the contact list to determine their validity and accuracy. This helps avoid wasting time dialing invalid or outdated numbers.
- Scripts and automated reminders: the dialer can be integrated with CRM outsourcing services to automatically display sales scripts. This helps standardize customer service processes.
- Results analysis: predictive dialer systems typically collect data on the number of successful calls, time spent on each conversation, and conversion rate. This data can be used to analyze the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, evaluate operator performance, and refine sales strategies.
CRM system as a sales automation tool
A CRM system is the ideal software for automating sales processes. It’s more convenient and reliable to use the same program for automation that you use to manage your customer database. In this case, there’s no need to aggregate and synchronize data from different systems for analysis, saving you time.
For example, a CRM system for the Sirius call center cloud platform will help organize an efficient multi-channel contact center with VoIP calls, web chats, messengers, and integration with social networks. It also enables outbound calling through predictive dialing software, creating complex IVR trees, and receiving detailed real-time analytics on a single-page web interface.
For a clearer understanding of how a CRM system automates sales, let’s consider lead generation, as finding potential clients is one of the most challenging tasks for an outbound call center. However, with CRM, you can:
- Set up personalized cold email campaigns.
- Set up campaigns via social networks and messengers integrated with CRM.
- Encourage potential clients to fill out feedback forms on websites.
Another prominent example of sales department automation using CRM systems is creating reminders and tasks for agents. A CRM system for call centers can send automatic reminders for scheduled calls, emails, or other actions. This ensures that agents don’t miss essential steps in the sales process. Automatic management of the sales funnel in CRM prevents contact duplication and lost potential clients due to lack of time and attention to them.
Sales automation in call centers: conclusions
Each stage in the business process is a separate task performed by a responsible employee. Automating these processes in the sales department of a call center saves time and, most importantly, brings in greater revenue. Furthermore, automation not only makes business processes more understandable for your team but also standardizes the customer experience, as each lead will follow the same path to purchase.
Automating processes and standardizing sales in the call center helps analyze the customer experience, identify key trends, and improve it if necessary. Additionally, automation tools allow for more accurate revenue forecasting.
The use of various automation tools, such as predictive dialing systems, AI-based chatbots, CRM systems, global IVR solutions and automated call management systems, enables the optimization of workflows, increases agent productivity, and boosts sales conversion.
