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“The Inner Circle Guide to Outbound & Call Blending”

© ContactBabel 2016

Please note that all information is believed correct at the time of publication, but ContactBabel does

not accept responsibility for any action arising from errors or omissions within the report, links to

external websites or other third-party content.

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CONTENTS

Contents ............................................................................................................................................... 3

List of Tables ......................................................................................................................................... 6

Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 9

Background to Outbound ................................................................................................................... 11

The Role of Outbound in Businesses Today .................................................................................... 12

Inbound & Outbound Activity ..................................................................................................... 12

The Nature of Outbound Activity ................................................................................................ 16

Outbound: Vertical Markets ....................................................................................................... 18

Outbound: Contact Centre Size................................................................................................... 20

Drivers of Outbound Automation ....................................................................................................... 21

Efficiency & Productivity ................................................................................................................. 21

End-user question #1: ................................................................................................................. 22

Apart from increasing the number of outbound calls being made, what benefits can automated

outbound solutions provide? ...................................................................................................... 22

Flexibility ......................................................................................................................................... 23

Customer Experience ...................................................................................................................... 23

Agent Engagement.......................................................................................................................... 24

HR Factors in Outbound ...................................................................................................................... 25

Salaries and Bonuses for Outbound Agents .................................................................................... 25

Agent Attrition ................................................................................................................................ 27

Agent Absence ................................................................................................................................ 28

Agent Recruitment Costs ................................................................................................................ 29

Outbound Automation: Implementation and Usage .......................................................................... 30

Outbound Dialling Practices ............................................................................................................ 30

Use of Diallers ............................................................................................................................. 30

Dialler modes .............................................................................................................................. 31

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Outbound Outcomes .................................................................................................................. 35

Agent Utilisation Rates ................................................................................................................ 39

Dialling activity: time of day ........................................................................................................ 41

Dialling activity: maximum number of attempts ......................................................................... 45

Ring time and connection time ................................................................................................... 47

Dialling activity: the role of mobile ............................................................................................. 48


We’re interested in increasing productivity, but concerned about agent burnout and increased

attrition. Do you have any pointers on best practice? ................................................................ 49

Answer Machine Detection ......................................................................................................... 50

Use of CLI / CLID .......................................................................................................................... 53

The Use of IVM (Interactive Voice Messaging)............................................................................ 54

Use of broadcast messaging ....................................................................................................... 55

Compliance with Regulations .......................................................................................................... 56

Dialling activity: TPS .................................................................................................................... 58


What impact does current and future legislation have on outbound, and how do your solutions

address this? ............................................................................................................................... 59

Complying with Regulations ........................................................................................................... 60

Call Blending ................................................................................................................................... 62

Multimedia Blending ................................................................................................................... 64


What benefits are there from call blending? What effects can we expect to see on productivity

and agent engagement? ............................................................................................................. 65

Multichannel Outbound Strategies and Techniques ....................................................................... 66


Are outbound and call blending solutions separate from other multichannel interaction, or has

there been any move to integrate these channels together? ..................................................... 68

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The Role of Scripting ....................................................................................................................... 69

Dynamic Scripting ....................................................................................................................... 69


Have you noticed any changes in how scripting is being used? How do businesses tend to use

this? ............................................................................................................................................ 74

Call-Back & Call-Me requests .......................................................................................................... 75

Outbound in the Cloud ................................................................................................................... 85


Has there been much uptake of cloud-based solutions? Is this mainly down to cost, or are there

other benefits as well? ................................................................................................................ 87

The Future of Outbound ..................................................................................................................... 88


Are you seeing a change in the nature of outbound calling? How are your solutions developing

to address this and what can we expect to see in terms of future functionality from outbound

solutions? .................................................................................................................................... 90

About Rostrvm Solutions .................................................................................................................... 91

About ContactBabel ............................................................................................................................ 92

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LIST OF TABLES

Figure 1: Inbound and outbound activity 2002-2015 .......................................................................... 12

Figure 2: Inbound and outbound activity by contact centre size, end-2015 (UK) ............................... 13

Figure 3: Outbound agent positions (equivalent), by contact centre size, 2015 (UK) ......................... 13

Figure 4: Outbound agent positions (equivalent), by vertical market, 2015 (UK) ............................... 15

Figure 5: Outbound activity (UK) ........................................................................................................ 16

Figure 6: Use of outbound calling, by vertical market ........................................................................ 18

Figure 7: Outbound activity by vertical market ................................................................................... 19

Figure 8: Use of outbound calling, by contact centre size................................................................... 20

Figure 9: Outbound activity by contact centre size ............................................................................. 20

Figure 10: Salaries by contact centre activity type (UK) ...................................................................... 25

Figure 11: Annualised bonuses paid to outbound agents ................................................................... 26

Figure 12: Annualised basic salaries & bonuses paid to outbound agents (mean/median/1st & 3rd

quartiles) ............................................................................................................................................. 26

Figure 13: Bonuses paid to outbound agents as a proportion of basic salary (mean/median/1st & 3rd

quartiles) ............................................................................................................................................. 26

Figure 14: Mean and median agent attrition by contact centre activity type (UK) ............................. 27

Figure 15: Historical mean agent attrition by contact centre activity type (with 2018 projection) –

(UK) ..................................................................................................................................................... 28

Figure 16: Short-term absence by contact centre activity type (UK) .................................................. 28

Figure 17: Recruitment costs by contact centre activity ..................................................................... 29

Figure 18: Use of automated outbound diallers, by contact centre size (UK) ..................................... 30

Figure 19: Use of dialling modes, by contact centre size (outbound operations only) ....................... 32

Figure 20: Use of dialling modes, by outbound activity (outbound operations only) ......................... 33

Figure 21: Proportion of calls answered, by outbound activity type .................................................. 35

Figure 22: Proportion of calls answered, by size ................................................................................. 35

Figure 23: Of the calls that were answered, how many were by a consumer? (by outbound activity

type).................................................................................................................................................... 36

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Figure 24: Of the calls that were answered, how many were by a consumer? (by contact centre size)

............................................................................................................................................................ 36

Figure 25: Of the calls that were answered by a consumer, how many were hung up by the consumer

when an agent was available? (by outbound activity type) ................................................................ 37

Figure 26: Of the calls that were answered by a consumer, how many had a recorded message is

played as no agent was available (by outbound activity type) ............................................................ 37

Figure 27: Of the calls that were answered by an answerphone, where a recorded message is played,

by outbound activity type ................................................................................................................... 38

Figure 28: Average outbound agent utilisation rates .......................................................................... 39

Figure 29: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Mon-Fri ................................................................ 41

Figure 30: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sat ....................................................................... 42

Figure 31: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sun....................................................................... 43

Figure 32: Call attempts by activity type (debt collection) .................................................................. 45

Figure 33: Call attempts by activity type (warm calling – sales calls to existing customers) ............... 46

Figure 34: Call attempts by activity type (cold calling – sales calls to new prospects) ........................ 46

Figure 35: Minimum mean and median ring time before call termination, by outbound activity type

............................................................................................................................................................ 47

Figure 36: % of outbound dialling carried out to mobile phones ........................................................ 49

Figure 37: Estimation of AMD accuracy .............................................................................................. 51

Figure 38: Use of answer machine detection (AMD), by contact centre size (UK) – only those using

automated outbound solutions .......................................................................................................... 52

Figure 39: Methods of checking TPS (n=91) ........................................................................................ 58

Figure 40: Use of call blending by contact centre size ........................................................................ 62

Figure 41: Average speed to answer, by call blending environment type........................................... 63

Figure 42: Use of automated outbound communication .................................................................... 66

Figure 43: Use and type of scripting, by vertical market ..................................................................... 70

Figure 44: Use and type of scripting, by contact centre size ............................................................... 71

Figure 45: The effectiveness of scripting............................................................................................. 72

Figure 46: Inhibitors to scripting ......................................................................................................... 73

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Figure 47: Reasons given for dislike of contact centre queuing .......................................................... 75

Figure 48: Types of telephony call-back offered to customers (only from respondents offering

telephony call-back) ............................................................................................................................ 77

Figure 49: Use of website and queue call-back options and queue position announcements, by

contact centre size .............................................................................................................................. 78

Figure 50: Triggers for offering call-back functionality ....................................................................... 79

Figure 51: Typical queue time before call-back is offered .................................................................. 80

Figure 52: Proportion of customers in telephony queue accepting offer of call-back ........................ 81

Figure 53: Effectiveness of telephony call-back functionality ............................................................. 82

Figure 54: Effectiveness of website call-back functionality ................................................................. 83

Figure 55: Dialler deployment model, by contact centre size ............................................................. 86

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INTRODUCTION

“The Inner Circle Guide to Outbound and Call Blending” is the 8th in the Inner Circle series of

ContactBabel reports. Other subjects include Cloud-based Contact Centres, Multichannel, Self-

Service, Interaction Analytics and PCI DSS Compliance, and can be downloaded free of charge from

here.

The Inner Circle Guides are a series of analyst reports investigating key customer contact solutions.

The Guides aim to give a detailed and definitive view of the reality of the implementing and using

these technologies, an appraisal of the vendors and products available and a view on what the

future holds.

The Inner Circle Guides are free of charge to readers. Research and analysis costs are borne by

sponsors - solution providers in the specific area of study - whose advertisements, case studies and

thought leadership pieces are included within these Guides.

Solutions providers have not had influence over editorial content or analyst opinion, and readers can

be assured of objectivity throughout. Any vendor views are clearly marked as such within the report.

As well as explaining these solutions to the readers, we have also asked the potential users of these

solutions whether they have any questions or comments to put directly to solution providers, and

we have selected eight of the most popular to ask. These branded Q&A elements are distributed

throughout the report and give interesting insight into real-life issues.

NB: statistics within this report refer to the UK industry, unless stated otherwise. There is a version

of this report available for download with equivalent US statistics.

“Small” contact centres are defined in the report as having 50 or fewer agent positions; “Medium”

51-200 agent positions; and “Large” 200+ agent positions.

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BACKGROUND TO OUTBOUND

The traditional outbound call was simply about selling more products to new and existing customers.

However, legislation and customer pressure impacted on cold calling, and the past years have seen

an increasing proportion of outbound calling being made to existing customers, either to deliver

customer care or to inform them proactively about events and circumstances which affect them, as

well as providing call-back functionality. Debt collection also still forms a key part of the outbound

industry.

Outbound calling is fundamentally different from inbound, and - facing significant and growing

cultural and legislative issues - must be managed sensitively:

the nature of outbound is intrusive and usually driven by the needs of the business rather

than the customer (except in cases of call-back requests and for proactive outbound service)

this means that customers are more likely to be defensive and wary of the purpose of the

call. Trust needs to be built very quickly in order to overcome this negative start point:

having the right information about the customer to hand will improve the experience for

both agent and customer

outbound work can be very hard on agents: few people actively welcome most outbound

calls, and persistent refusal, lack of interest and rudeness can be very wearing for agents,

especially if productivity-enhancing technology such as diallers are being used over-

aggressively. Management should consider ways of alleviating agent stress, through sensible

scheduling and call blending, judicious use of technology, focused training and improving

working environments, amongst other ways

especially where the technology exists to do so, it can be tempting to treat outbound calling

campaigns as an exercise in maximising call volumes and (theoretically) revenues. However,

this can result in brand damage and high staff attrition rates through over-pressured and

exhausted agents delivering poorer quality interactions

there has been a tendency to use offshore contact centres for low-value outbound sales

campaigns which would otherwise be unprofitable to run. However, the same high

standards of training and support are needed by offshore agents to do their job properly:

too many businesses simply put the agents on a dialler with an inflexible script in front of

them and then wonder why their customers and prospects become negative towards their

brand

tough legislation has emerged which is reducing the amount of cold calling which businesses

can do. Cold calling is illegal in Germany, and the Do-Not-Call register in the US and the

Telephone Preference Scheme (TPS) in the UK allow customers to opt out of receiving any

sales calls at all in theory.

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THE ROLE OF OUTBOUND IN BUSINESSES TODAY

INBOUND & OUTBOUND ACTIVITY

Since 2002, the reported outbound telephony activity increased from 29.8% to 33.7% in 2004, and

back to 32.9% in 2005, a high-water mark in the importance of outbound in the UK contact centre

industry.

In 2006, the figure fell to 29.1%, which was a decrease of 3.5% in actual numbers of outbound calls,

the first time that outbound calling from the UK has actually fallen, most likely as a result of a

reduction in cold calling from UK operations, driven by cost and legislation. Since then, the

proportion of work that was outbound declined quite consistently year on year until 2011.

Since 2011, there has been a slight rise in the importance of outbound and a stable point seems to

have been reached.

Figure 1: Inbound and outbound activity 2002-2015

70.2%66.7% 66.3% 67.1%

70.9% 71.0% 71.9%74.6%

79.3% 79.7% 79.3%76.9% 78.3% 77.7%

29.8%33.3% 33.7% 32.9%

29.1% 29.0% 28.1%25.4%

20.7% 20.3% 20.7%23.1% 21.7% 22.3%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Inbound & Outbound Activity 2002-2015

Inbound

Outbound

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Figure 2: Inbound and outbound activity by contact centre size, end-2015 (UK)

Agent positions

% of inbound activity % of outbound activity

10-25 agent positions 73.5% 26.5%





501-1,000 agent positions 74.2% 25.8%

1,000+ agent positions 79.5% 20.5%

Mean average

77.7% 22.3%

NB: the term “outbound agent positions (equivalent)” describes the number of exclusively-

outbound, full-time agents required. In practice, not all outbound work is done by outbound-only

agents, hence the need for “outbound agent equivalents”.

Figure 3: Outbound agent positions (equivalent), by contact centre size, 2015 (UK)

Size band (agent positions)

Outbound agent positions (equivalent)

10-25 agent positions 9,010





501-1,000 agent positions 37,926

1,000+ agent positions 21,320

Total

168,380

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In past years, the finance vertical market had the largest number of outbound agents, involved in

debt collection, persuading customers to change financial products (e.g. credit cards) and

increasingly, cross-selling and up-selling to existing customers. Businesses are aware that one of the

key moves towards increased profitability is to get customers purchasing multiple products, e.g. a

personal loan, a current account, a credit card and insurance from the same provider. However, the

sector is seeing an increased use of cross-selling on inbound calls, as well as direct mail and web-

based marketing, rather than an increase in outbound telephony, with offshore playing some role in

outbound as well. The sub-sector involved in calling about mis-sold products such as payment

protection insurance (PPI) is in part based offshore, and is not included in these figures.

The outsourcing and telemarketing sector is a key part of the UK’s outbound activity and is the

largest exponent of outbound calling, with campaign-based outbound for sectors such as finance,

telecoms and utilities still very important. It also does a significant amount of client satisfaction

checking and market research, all of which are outbound activities.

The services sector carries out a high proportion of outbound activity, especially around sales, as is

the case with the communications sector.

The retail & distribution sector uses outbound as a sales tool, calling existing customers, as well as

providing information about deliveries. However, the proportion of activity that is outbound is

below the industry average.

There is a low level of outbound calling in public services, as many of these operations are non-sales,

reactive helpdesk environments, which answer the public’s queries. As such, proactive outbound

campaigns are rarely needed.

Printing & publishing has a higher level of outbound activity than most other vertical markets,

caused by the large number of calls made by newspapers, magazines and directories in order to sell

advertising space.

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Figure 4: Outbound agent positions (equivalent), by vertical market, 2015 (UK)

Vertical market

Proportion of outbound agent equivalents

Outbound agent positions

(equivalent)

Outsourcing and Telemarketing 39% 37,050

Finance 21% 27,930

Communications 25% 26,250

Services 28% 20,720

Retail and Distribution 15% 14,850

IT 19% 9,310

Manufacturing 30% 8,400

Public Services 9% 5,760

Transport and Travel 14% 4,340

Printing and Publishing 47% 4,230

Utilities 9% 2,880

Medical 22% 2,640

Motoring 19% 1,995

Food and Drink 16% 1,600

Engineering and Construction 10% 425

Total

22.3% 168,380

In the past, there have been a large number of smaller contact centres which performed market

research and outsourced telemarketing activities on behalf of other clients. (Large outsourcing

companies are likely to be heavily involved in inbound client care as well as outbound campaigns).

The past few years have put great pressure on the profit margins of these types of 'commodity'

contact centres, with the result that a significant proportion have ceased trading, or at least,

reduced their headcount considerably. Furthermore, the effects of the Telephone Preference Service

(TPS), which also allows businesses to opt out of receiving telemarketing calls, puts pressure on the

outbound sector. As take-up of the service has grown (around two-thirds of UK households are

registered with the TPS), businesses which use cold-call telemarketing have been left with two

decisions: to continue their existing call-per-prospect activity (thus reducing the overall number of

calls they make, as more people opt-out), or make more calls per prospect, keeping the overall

volume up. The latter option may well alienate more people through pestering them with too many

calls, which may drive up the numbers registering on the TPS, making the pool of available prospects

even smaller. The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations, which has been

in force since the end of 2003, banned all unsolicited email and SMS messages to individuals, cutting

businesses’ direct marketing opportunities at a stroke. In previous years, there had been limited

fines for nuisance or silent calls, but the ICO and Ofcom are actively looking to improve compliance

through greater powers and fines.

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THE NATURE OF OUTBOUND ACTIVITY

For a number of years, the single most popular outbound activity been proactive customer service -

a strong brand builder as well as an effective inbound call avoidance tactic.

Having said that, the overall proportion of sales calls grew from 31% in 2014 to 38% in 2015,

although making sales calls to potential new customers continues its decline to 12% in 2015 (it was

24% in 2013), demonstrating that cold calling is not the force that it used to be.

Cross-selling/upselling is an important outbound activity (and bear in mind that this figure does not

include those many inbound service calls that are turned into cross-selling opportunities), with 14%

of outbound calls being made for this purpose.

Renewals calls account for 12% of outbound activity, and debt collection makes up 10% of the

industry’s outbound calls. Customer satisfaction surveys remain at levels last seen before the

economic downturn.

Sales to both new and existing customers are obviously still key reasons why companies carry out

outbound calls, and the hybrid method - customer service leading to a cross-sell/up-sell opportunity

- is seen a good way of circumventing the increasing numbers of people joining TPS. However,

businesses must be careful not to pester customers or abuse the relationship they have built up with

frequent calls about products and services that are not tailored to the customer. Increasingly,

turning an inbound service call into a cross-sell or upselling opportunity has become a widely-used

tactic.

Figure 5: Outbound activity (UK)

Proactive customer service (e.g.

notification of delivery, delays, problems, etc)

25%

Cross-selling or up-selling sales calls to existing customers

14%

Sales calls to potential new

customers (cold calls)12%

Renewals (sales calls to existing

customers)12%

Customer satisfaction surveys

10%

Debt collection10%

Other17%

Outbound activity

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The ‘Other’ segment accounts for a significant part of the outbound mix, and include the following

areas:

Call-backs (from call-back requests and answerphone messages)

Case management and ongoing customer care

Chasing contractors and suppliers

Fraud investigations

Gathering missing order information

Market research and surveys

Responding to complex customer questions sent via other channels

Return calls where the agent was unable to answer the question on first call

Saving customers that are or are at risk of cancelling contracts

Seeking authorisation from clients

Updating complaint status.

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OUTBOUND: VERTICAL MARKETS

82% of survey respondents carry out some form of outbound calling, with the TMT (technology,

media and telecoms), transport & travel, utilities and outsourcing & telemarketing sectors leading

the way.

As usual, the public sector lags quite some way behind the rest of the contact centre industry in

terms of its outbound activity, although for once, a majority of the 2015 survey respondents carry

out at least some outbound work.

Figure 6: Use of outbound calling, by vertical market

Vertical market

Proportion of respondents using outbound calling

TMT 95%

Transport & Travel 88%

Utilities 88%

Outsourcing 86%

Services 85%

Insurance 85%

Housing 83%

Retail & Distribution 79%

Finance 77%

Manufacturing 75%

Public Sector 61%

Average

82%

Vertical market patterns of outbound activity are very different from each other, and there is not

even a great deal of homogeneity within sectors, so these figures should be treated with some

caution. However, there are some interesting findings to bring out from the results of our 2015

survey of UK contact centres.

The majority of retail & distribution and utilities, and 44% of the manufacturing sectors’ outbound

activity is proactive customer service, advising of status, delays and deliveries, and providing

information up and down the supply chain, with the transport and travel and housing sectors are

also very involved in this.

Outsourcing and transport & travel respondents all report cross-selling and upselling being a

significant part of their outbound activity.

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The insurance, TMT and outsourcing sectors are the hungriest for new business and most likely to

cold-call (within the law, of course), with the former sector possibly driven by the uptake in web-

based sales lead capture via comparison sites, which provide qualified leads to be acted upon

immediately.

Once again, the utilities and housing respondents report very significant outbound activity

connected to debt collection.

The contract-based business models, often found in insurance (17%) and TMT (21%), are amongst

those most likely to be carrying out renewal sales calls to existing customers.

Figure 7: Outbound activity by vertical market

Outbound activity

FS HS INS MN OS PS RD SVC TMT TT UT Avg

Sales calls to potential new customers (cold calls)

11% 0% 16% 8% 22% 6% 2% 11% 18% 0% 15% 12%


14% 0% 17% 13% 27% 1% 12% 7% 19% 43% 2% 14%

Renewals (sales calls to existing customers)

4% 0% 17% 22% 12% 3% 14% 7% 21% 31% 3% 12%

Proactive customer service (e.g. notification of delivery, delays, problems, etc.)

20% 30% 25% 44% 17% 4% 55% 24% 19% 11% 51% 25%

Debt collection 9% 41% 2% 5% 8% 1% 1% 4% 10% 9% 25% 10%

Customer satisfaction surveys

1% 15% 15% 4% 3% 27% 1% 17% 7% 7% 1% 10%

Other 41% 14% 8% 4% 10% 59% 16% 29% 6% 0% 3% 17%

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OUTBOUND: CONTACT CENTRE SIZE

In 2015, there is little real pattern between contact centre size and the propensity to make

outbound calls: in the past, large contact centres were more likely to do so, but this has not been the

case for a number of years.

Figure 8: Use of outbound calling, by contact centre size

Contact centre size

Proportion of respondents using outbound calling

Small 81%

Medium 87%

Large 78%

Average

82%

A case could be made that variations in outbound activity are more closely linked to the type of

business (i.e. vertical market) than the contact centre size.

However, it is worth noting that sales calls in general are more likely to be made by larger operations

(52% of activity is sales-related, as opposed to only 32% in small contact centres). Correspondingly,

small operations spend far more time on proactively updating the customer.

Figure 9: Outbound activity by contact centre size

Outbound activity

Small Medium Large Average

Sales calls to potential new customers (cold calls) 9% 12% 17% 12%


11% 10% 25% 14%

Renewals (sales calls to existing customers) 12% 10% 15% 12%

Proactive customer service (e.g. notification of delivery, delays, problems, etc.)

33% 19% 19% 25%

Debt collection 10% 12% 8% 10%

Customer satisfaction surveys 9% 14% 6% 10%

Other 16% 24% 11% 17%

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DRIVERS OF OUTBOUND AUTOMATION

EFFICIENCY & PRODUCTIVITY

Automated dialling solutions, especially in predictive mode, have traditionally been about reducing

the time between the agent making live contacts, by eliminating manual dialling time, the time spent

waiting for the customer to answer the call and eliminating calls passed through to answer phones.

It is interesting to note that industry statistics on dialling mode efficiency suggest the following to be

reasonable estimates, if the list quality and time of day that calls are made were the same in each

instance:

• manual dialling: 12 minutes of talk time per hour (20%)

• preview dialling: 18 minutes of talk time per hour (30%)

• progressive dialling: 25 to 35 minutes of talk time per hour (42% - 58%)

• predictive dialling: 35 to 45 minutes of talk time per hour (58% - 75%).

In reality, each dialling mode will be used in different circumstances, making direct comparison very

difficult. The following section, on implementation and usage, gives an explanation and greater

detail into the advantages and disadvantages of each dialler mode, and how they are typically used.

Productivity is not simply about maximising live contacts: the effectiveness of the results is of course

of the utmost importance. Automated outbound solutions allow the business to analyse the most

effective times of day to call customer segments, tailor their scripts in order to increase positive

outcomes, and even to ascertain whether voice, text or email is the correct channel for the specific

customer or campaign. This management information also identifies the agents’ effectiveness,

identifying training requirements for underperforming agents, and providing opportunities to share

best practice from the top performers.

22

END-USER QUESTION #1:

APART FROM INCREASING THE NUMBER OF OUTBOUND CALLS BEING MADE, WHAT BENEFITS CAN AUTOMATED OUTBOUND SOLUTIONS PROVIDE?

An outbound solution delivers a lot more than simply increasing the number of

outbound calls being made. It also provides the tools to target activity and

deliver the management information needed to measure outbound business

benefits. rostrvm Outbound enables you to contact your audience:

at the right time – the best time to call;

with the right message and channel – modern campaigns mix telephone, text messages and

email;

and the right people – making sure your calls are handled by appropriately-skilled agents.

Outbound solutions routinely collect data such as the number of call attempts that don’t get

answered, connections to live callers etc. They also capture information that will give you insights

into campaign success and whether your contact is proving to be effective.

These solutions not only improve contact rates - they also support agents with integral agent

scripting systems to help them do and say the right thing, capture the relevant information and

provide links to supporting IT systems.

Today’s outbound solutions are highly flexible and user friendly, whatever you use them for, from

following up on abandoned inbound calls, upselling/cross-selling, customer satisfaction surveys etc.

They can ensure that real progress is made and customers feel appreciated.

23

FLEXIBILITY

Call blending - the process by which agents are switched between inbound and outbound queues

depending upon the operational requirements of the contact centre - offers businesses the

opportunity to deploy their resources flexibly to meet service levels. This capability can be enhanced

by automatically providing the relevant customer data to the agent desktop - whether in inbound or

outbound mode - reducing the need for manual searches of information, reducing handle time and

maximising productivity.

In terms of workforce management, real-time adherence and intraday functionality will mean that

the dynamic nature of much contact centre work will not impact upon the accuracy of management

information systems, being able to track and allocate resource to the necessary activity without

requiring significant amounts of manual reallocation.

Over many years of research, ContactBabel has analysed key performance metrics in operations that

use blended agents or dedicated outbound, and has found that there is often a direct correlation

between superior KPIs and a blended environment. This is investigated in more depth within the Call

Blending section of this report.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The idea of outbound calling being beneficial for the customer experience goes against the old-

fashioned view of outbound as making cold calls to sell home improvements or encourage PPI or

litigation claims.

In fact, the following section on outbound activity shows that proactive outbound service - keeping

customers informed - has grown very strongly over the past few years. Increasing volumes of

outbound calls are being made at the request of the customer, whether through a website ‘call-me’

button, or as a result of a callback request being made while within the inbound telephony queue. In

all cases, these forms of outbound communication are positive for the customer experience, and

when aligned with a judicious mix of non-voice outbound communication, such as email or SMS,

goes a long way to improving the customer experience while deflecting significant volumes of

inbound calls from otherwise-frustrated customers.

The section on call-me and callback outbound activity later in the report gives more detail on the

importance of this variety of outbound in improving the customer experience.

24

AGENT ENGAGEMENT

As well as improving certain key performance metrics, call blending seems to have a positive impact

on agent attrition rates. More information is given in the dedicated Call Blending section of this

report, and it can be hypothesised that a greater variety of work can improve agent engagement and

thus reduce staff attrition. It should also be noted that the outbound sector has experienced a

significant and ongoing drop in agent attrition rates over the past few years, and this may be linked

to a reduction in repetitive, highly-scripted calls, in favour of more personalised customer service

and sales calls.

By removing the tedious elements of manual dialling, outbound automation can improve the agent

experience by providing more live contacts and thus more opportunities to make sales or otherwise

reach performance targets. Of course, overly aggressive use of predictive dialling for long periods

can exhaust agents, which will quickly have a very negative effect on job satisfaction.

25

HR FACTORS IN OUTBOUND

SALARIES AND BONUSES FOR OUTBOUND AGENTS

As they become more senior, outbound contact centre employees have historically tended to get

paid a lower basic salary than their inbound equivalents, mainly because the former will usually

receive a much higher performance-related bonus.

Agents in inbound environments are reported to receive similar basic salaries as those agents more

involved in outbound work.

Figure 10: Salaries by contact centre activity type (UK)

£16,916

£18,130

£24,897

£39,530

£16,827

£18,618

£26,106

£40,082

£16,340

£18,851

£22,809

£35,864

£16,844

£19,043

£24,923

£39,375

£0 £5,000 £10,000 £15,000 £20,000 £25,000 £30,000 £35,000 £40,000 £45,000

New agent

Experienced agent

Team leader

Contact centre manager

Salaries by contact centre activity type

Average

Outbound

Mixed

Inbound

26

83% of outbound staff are paid a bonus, which is often around 10-15% of annual salary.

Figure 11: Annualised bonuses paid to outbound agents

Figure 12: Annualised basic salaries & bonuses paid to outbound agents (mean/median/1st & 3rd quartiles)

Basic annual salary

Annual bonus

1st quartile £18,000 £3,000

Median £16,000 £1,562

3rd quartile £14,798 £600

Mean £16,394 £2,192

Figure 13: Bonuses paid to outbound agents as a proportion of basic salary (mean/median/1st & 3rd quartiles)

Bonus as a proportion of salary

1st quartile 17%

Median 10%

3rd quartile 2%

Mean 13%

None17%

Less than £5007%

£500 - £1,0009%

£1,001 - £2,00029%

£2,001 - £3,00017%

£3,001 - £4,0005%

£4,001 - £5,0006%

Over £5,00010%

Annualised bonuses paid to outbound FTEs

27

AGENT ATTRITION

It is generally acknowledged that outbound customer contact can be a very difficult, high-pressure

job, which leads to stress and burnout, and thus more likely to see high levels of attrition.

Historically, there has been an acceptance that large volumes of outbound calling will often come at

the cost of high staff attrition, and that this is something which just has to be managed, and

outbound respondents will tend to be more geared-up to cope with high staff turnover.

However, recent year’s outbound attrition figures have been much lower than the historical norm,

which may be to do with the reduced amount of cold calling taking place in UK contact centres, with

growing levels of outbound customer care, and ‘warm calling’ being far more prevalent than 10

years ago.

Figure 14: Mean and median agent attrition by contact centre activity type (UK)

20%

26%

29%

22%

16%15%

20%

16%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

Inbound Mixed Outbound Average

Mean and median agent attrition by contact centre activity type

Mean Median

28

Between 2007 and 2011, outbound operations saw higher levels of attrition, but the gap between

inbound and mixed/outbound contact centre attrition rates has been much lower since. 2013 and

2014’s figures – indicating little difference between inbound and outbound operations’ attrition

rates – appears less of a statistical anomaly rather than perhaps being something structural, and

although a gap has re-emerged this year, it is not as notable as in the past.

Figure 15: Historical mean agent attrition by contact centre activity type (with 2018 projection) – (UK)

Contact centre activity 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2018

Inbound (75%+ IB) - - - - 33% 30% 18% 14% 19% 17% 16% 17% 20% 21%

Mixed (25-75% IB) - - - - 28% 23% 23% 18% 23% 26% 18% 26% 26% 24%

Outbound (75%+ OB) - - - - 40% 40% 56% 36% 35% 26% 19% 18% 29% 27%

Average 14.5% 14.9% 22.0% 23.0% 32.0% 28.0% 23.9% 16.0% 21.0% 20.0% 16.9% 18.9% 22.3% 24%

AGENT ABSENCE

Conventional wisdom would expect to find that those in high-pressure outbound jobs would have

higher unauthorised absence rates, but this difference has reduced considerably over the years in

line with attrition rates.

Figure 16: Short-term absence by contact centre activity type (UK)

Contact centre activity type

Mean agent absence rate (2015)

Median agent absence rate (2015)

Agent absence rate (2018 projection) – mean (median)

Inbound 6.4% 5.1% 5.2% (4.7%)

Mixed 6.6% 5.2% 5.4% (4.8%)

Outbound 5.9% 4.8% 6.2% (5.8%)

Average 6.4% 5.1% 5.5% (4.9%)

29

AGENT RECRUITMENT COSTS

As usual, outbound operations will tend to spend less to recruit a new agents compared to inbound

or mixed contact centres, with 59% of outbound respondents reporting that they spent less than

£500 per agent.

Figure 17: Recruitment costs by contact centre activity

19% 21%

59%

23%

30%

18%

12%

26%

16%32%

18%

19%

14% 3%

6%

11%

9%

6%

8%

8%

15%

6%

9%

4% 6% 4%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Inbound Mixed Outbound Average

Recruitment costs by contact centre activity

Don't know

Over £2,500

£2,000 - £2,500

£1,500 - £2,000

£1,000 - £1,500

£500 - £1,000

Less than £500

30

OUTBOUND AUTOMATION: IMPLEMENTATION AND USAGE

OUTBOUND DIALLING PRACTICES

USE OF DIALLERS

At the core of most outbound operations is the automated dialler, which can be deployed in

different modes depending upon the requirement of the business, its agents and the type of calls

that are being placed.

Automated outbound diallers are most often found in large operations which carry out reasonable

amounts of outbound work, as the efficiencies over manual dialling are so considerable that it will

often make commercial sense.

Outbound automation in the cloud is becoming increasingly widely-used, and this means the barriers

to usage are even less, with smaller operations also showing increased interest.

Although dialler usage in respondents from small UK contact centres is currently only 9%, a further

7% are actively planning implementation within the next 12 months. Many suppliers of this

technology are able to offer low-cost, scalable functionality in the cloud, and we would expect this

figure to increase considerably in the next couple of years.

Figure 18: Use of automated outbound diallers, by contact centre size (UK)

Looking at the type of outbound activity carried out, those involved in debt collection are most likely

to use automated diallers, and those involved in customer service the least.

8%

23%

49%

23%1%

10%

10%

6%

7%

8%

10%

8%

3%

4%

2%

3%

73%

46%

27%

53%

8% 10%2%

7%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


Use of automated outbound diallers, by contact centre size

Don't know / NA

No plans to implement

Will implement after 12 months

Will implement within 12 months

Use now, looking to replace/upgrade

Use now, no plans to replace/upgrade

31

DIALLER MODES

The following definitions of automated dialling are provided as guidance, although there is an

acknowledgement that some in the industry may refer to these modes differently.

Preview dialling: once an agent has indicated that they are ready for a call, information about the

call is presented to them. The number is then automatically dialled after a predefined period; the

agent is given time to preview the customer details before the call is launched. Calls where agents

need to be familiar with the context of the call or the customer history, or where the call may be of a

more complex and personalised nature are particularly suitable for the preview dialling mode.

Progressive dialling: once an agent has indicated that they are ready for a call, information about

the call is presented to them and the number is then dialled immediately. Call progress is monitored

by the dialler technology. Calls that do not result in 'ringing' are automatically and immediately

disconnected, whilst 'no answers' are disconnected after a predefined number of seconds. This

dialling mode enables contact centres to avoid abandoned calls, and may be used in conjunction

with predictive dialling in order to keep abandoned call rates within acceptable boundaries.

Predictive dialling: a predictive dialler launches calls at a rate such that the system connects to live

callers as soon as an agent completes the previous transaction, meaning that agents do not need to

listen to engaged tones or answer machines. The dialling rate for each campaign is controlled by a

pacing algorithm, which automatically monitors activity, and calculates when the next contact

should be dialled. The dialling rate is automatically adjusted to maintain a contact rate that is

theoretically synchronised with operator availability. The accuracy of predictive diallers improves as

more agents are using the system, as it means there are more data from which to estimate average

call length. As such, the best results are often seen in larger contact centre operations where

efficiency and cost per live call are of key importance to profitability.

32

The chart below shows that in surveys carried out with UK-based outbound contact centre

operations1, it was found that larger operations (200+ seats) are more likely to be using full

predictive mode (73% of their outbound activity), as they will tend to have the agent and data pools

deep enough to make better use of this, although the gap between small and large operations’ use

of predictive is not as wide as might be thought, and is perhaps more dependent on the type of

calling being made. (It should be noted that these figures apply to the outbound sector of the

industry, not the entire contact centre industry).

Figure 19: Use of dialling modes, by contact centre size (outbound operations only)

1 ContactBabel research on behalf of Ofcom, 2015

42% 43%

73%

55%

22%28%

16%

21%7%

15%

6%

8%16%

10%

4%

10%13%

5% 1%6%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


Use of dialling modes, by contact centre size

Manual

Other

Preview

Progressive

Predictive

33

When considering dialling mode by activity type, warm sales and debt collection are somewhat more

likely to have been calls made predictively, with customer surveys and service being less so.

Figure 20: Use of dialling modes, by outbound activity (outbound operations only)

In interviews with outbound contact centres, respondents were asked why they used particular

modes of outbound dialling.

Preview dialling was stated to be chosen in cases where:

there was a danger of breaching Ofcom regulations through imperfect use of predictive

dialling

campaigns were small and/or where data was of high worth

activity involved handling callback requests, where the customer and their requirements

could be checked before the call was placed.

Progressive dialling was more often used where:

there is a blended environment which may need rapid changes between inbound and

outbound work, and which thus risk high spikes of abandonment as agents move between

inbound and outbound more quickly than a predictive dialler can handle

campaigns are smaller than those which typically use predictive dialling, but management

still wish to gain efficiencies.

14%4% 8% 4%

50%

11%13%

6%

8%

21%17% 35%

28%

64% 62%55%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Service Sales Debt collection Customer surveys

Use of dialling modes, by outbound activity

Predictive

Progressive

Preview

Manual

34

Predictive dialling is said to be chosen where:

there are very high volumes of data in the campaign

the campaign or data is in a late stage and is the most efficient way to contact hard-to-reach

customers

where data quality is low, so it screens out unusable numbers

where there is a pressing need to speak with customers quickly (for example, to stop them

falling down the debt chain), where non-predictive calling would not support this.

Other automated dialling:

‘ratio’ dialling2 is used by a small number of respondents, when calls are very short and

predictive dialling will slow things up especially at the start of the day when contact rates are

the best. This method is said to allow a quicker response to increases in call drop rate.

While the productivity benefits possible through predictive dialling are considerable, businesses

need to be aware that unless managed correctly, predictive diallers can quickly lead to high levels of

call abandonment and silent calls as there are not enough agents available to handle the live

contacts. Ofcom regulations currently state that no more than 3% of callers can be abandoned in this

way, and there is currently at the time of writing (March 2016) an extensive ongoing review into how

silent and abandoned calls can be minimised further.

Additionally, overuse of aggressive predictive dialling algorithms can put extreme pressure on

agents, leading to burnout and high levels of agent attrition and consequent recruitment costs, as

well as generally lower levels of service quality.

2 Ratio dialling: a ratio of lines-to-agent is set, i.e. for each agent, the dialler will have been told to place a number of calls, so a 3:2 ratio will have 3 calls placed for 2 agents. This is a simple method of automated dialling as it does not need a pacing algorithm, but needs close monitoring by the dialler manager as the ratio will not alter unless it is manually changed and risks making abandoned calls if it is not regularly updated.

35

OUTBOUND OUTCOMES

A series of questions was asked to respondents from outbound contact centres about the typical

results that they had from their ongoing outbound activity and/or campaign. Slightly over half of

calls made were answered - either by an answer phone or by a person - with those carrying out debt

collection activities having the lowest answer rate and those carrying out customer service activities

the highest.

Figure 21: Proportion of calls answered, by outbound activity type

Outbound activity type

% of calls answered

Customer service 68%

Customer surveys 65%

Warm sales 60%

Cold sales 59%

Debt collection 44%

Other 62%

Average

53%

Large operations were less likely to have their calls answered – they are more likely to call for longer

hours rather than just the peak hours.

Figure 22: Proportion of calls answered, by size

Contact centre size

% of calls answered

Small 60%

Medium 51%

Large 47%

Undisclosed 51%

Average

53%

36

Of calls answered, responses showed that 49% were answered by a person and 51% by an answer

machine / voicemail.

Figure 23: Of the calls that were answered, how many were by a consumer? (by outbound activity type)


% of calls answered, that were answered by a consumer

Customer surveys 85%

Customer service 64%

Cold sales 57%

Debt collection 41%

Warm sales 38%

Other 65%

Average

49%

Figure 24: Of the calls that were answered, how many were by a consumer? (by contact centre size)

Contact centre size

% of calls answered, that were answered by a consumer

Small 51%

Medium 53%

Large 45%

Average

49%

37

1 in 8 of the calls that were answered by a consumer were then hung up by that consumer, rejecting

the call. This is far higher in those carrying out debt collection and cold sales activities.

Figure 25: Of the calls that were answered by a consumer, how many were hung up by the consumer when an agent was available? (by

outbound activity type)


% of calls answered by a consumer, that were hung-up by a consumer when

an agent was available

Debt collection 22%

Cold sales 10%

Warm sales 2%

Customer surveys 1%

Customer service 0%

Other 3%

Average

12%

In 1.1% of cases where the call was answered by the consumer, a recorded message was played as

no agent was available, with this figure being the highest in the heavily-predictive worlds of debt

collection and cold sales.

Figure 26: Of the calls that were answered by a consumer, how many had a recorded message is played as no agent was available (by

outbound activity type)


% of calls that were answered by a consumer, and an

agent is not available, where recorded message is played

Debt collection 1.7%

Cold sales 0.9%

Warm sales 0.8%

Customer surveys 0.3%

Customer service 0.0%

Other 0.3%

Average

1.1%

38

15% of calls answered by an answer machine ended in a recorded message being left on the answer

machine. Those carrying out debt collection and warm calling activities appear to be the only activity

types doing this of the survey respondents.

Figure 27: Of the calls that were answered by an answerphone, where a recorded message is played, by outbound activity type


% of calls that were answered by an answerphone, where

a recorded message is played

Debt collection 25%

Warm sales 17%

Cold sales 0%

Customer service 0%

Customer surveys 0%

Other 0%

Average

15%

It is interesting to note that 85% of respondents answering this question did not play a recorded

message to an answerphone. The majority stated that they did not use AMD and therefore the call

will be passed through to an agent who would either leave a message or hang-up depending on the

business requirements.

39

AGENT UTILISATION RATES

The majority of respondents calculate agent utilisation rate as a proportion of the time spent talking

to end-users, divided by the amount of time available to talk. For example, if an agent spends 30

minutes in the hour talking, and they are logged in to the system for 50 minutes (with a 10 minute

break), then the majority of contact centres calculate this to be a 60% utilisation rate (30/50).

Most respondents do not include spending time before the call looking at contact data, or adding

wrap-up notes after the call to be a part of agent utilisation, stating that utilisation rates are only

calculated based on the % of time spent in a 'talk' state on the dialler as a % of the total time the

agent was working, and does not include any time updating customer records or waiting for calls.

However, most of the higher (70%+) results in the chart below also include wrap-up time (e.g. Talk +

Wrap, as a % of Talk + Wrap + Idle). For most respondents that split out wrap-up time from call time,

wrap is usually between 15-20% of the call time.

Figure 28: Average outbound agent utilisation rates

Agent utilisation rates

1st quartile 70%

Median 56%

3rd quartile 42%

Mean 56%

30% or lower5%

31-40%14%

41-50%25%

51-60%20%

61-70%13%

71-80%16%

Over 80%7%

Average agent utilisation rate

40

AGENT UTILISATION RATES AND DIALLING MODES

Analysis of agent utilisation rates were carried out against the main dialler mode employed by

respondents, in order to investigate whether any dialling mode has a correlation with agent

utilisation. For example, as predictive dialling is a highly automated process, it might be expected

that this mode would clearly yield the highest utilisation rates.

However, there are more variables than just dialler mode that will affect utilisation rates, and which

themselves may encourage an outbound operation to use one mode over another. For example,

respondents state that predictive diallers are more likely to be used than other modes in cases

where data quality is low, and there have already been multiple attempts made to contact a

customer. Different businesses will have their own views on the balance between efficiency and

quality, and the amount of wrap-up time that may be required by various business activities will be

different, and will affect utilisation as well (if included in the utilisation calculation).

The overall agent utilisation rate (i.e. all responses, regardless of dialling mode and method of

calculation) is 57%, or 34.2 minutes per hour.

When considering only those respondents who consider talk-time, but not wrap-up in their

calculations, this figure is 51% (30.6 minutes per hour)

For respondents who include both talk time and wrap-up in their calculations, the utilisation

rate is 68% (40.8 minutes per hour).

In order to see whether and by how much dialling mode can be said to affect agent utilisation, the

utilisation rates were calculated for respondents using particular dialling modes. It was found that

amongst contact centres which calculated utilisation through only talk-time and which used mainly

predictive dialling had an average utilisation rate of 62% (37.2 minutes per hour), compared to the

respondent base as a whole, who had a 51% utilisation rate. This implies a clear increase in agent

utilisation time through predictive dialling.

It is interesting to note that industry statistics on dialling mode efficiency suggest the following to be

reasonable estimates3, ceteris paribus:

manual dialling: 12 minutes of talk time per hour (20%)

preview dialling: 18 minutes of talk time per hour (30%)

progressive dialling: 25 to 35 minutes of talk time per hour (42% - 58%)

predictive dialling: 35 to 45 minutes of talk time per hour (58% - 75%)

It should also be noted that many respondents stated that predictive dialling is very likely to be used

for more difficult ‘end of project’ calls where customers have been called many times already, with

the initial attempts made using IVM, and high quality data being originally called in preview or

progressive modes. As the quality and age of the data is different depending on the mode used, the

fact that there are numerous variables changing should strike an even greater note of caution.

3 ContactBabel estimates, based on a mix of secondary research with dialler manufacturers and primary ContactBabel research

41

DIALLING ACTIVITY: TIME OF DAY

Contact centre respondents provided information about the hours in which they carry out outbound

calling, and indicated the peak times where they were making most calls.

In the working week, calling tends to start at 0800 or 0900 and carry on for 12 hours until 2000 or

2100. Calling before 0930 was almost always carried out for debt collection.

By 10am, 85% of respondents are making outbound calls, with 72% finishing by 8pm. By 9pm, all

respondents have finished calling.

Figure 29: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Mon-Fri

29%31%

71%74%

85%88%

91% 92%

99% 99% 100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%

0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1%4%

7%10%

12%

25%

29%

72%

76%

100%100%100%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

0800 0830 0900 0930 1000 1030 1100 1130 1200 1230 1300 1330 1400 1430 1500 1530 1600 1630 1700 1730 1800 1830 1900 1930 2000 2030 2100 2130 2200

Cumulative opening and closing hours Mon-Fri

M-F start M-F end

42

Figure 30: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sat

Only around 30-40% of outbound respondents stated that they called on Saturdays.

Saturday calling was usually carried out in the morning, tailing off after 1pm. By 9am, most

respondents were calling, with around one-third stopping by 1pm, with a gradual tailing-off of

activity throughout the afternoon, with debt collectors the most active. By 6pm, almost all outbound

calling had stopped.

20%

27%

80% 80%

100%100%100%100%100%100% 100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%

0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

7%10%

37% 37%

47% 47% 47% 47%

60% 60%

67%

73%

93% 93%97% 97% 97% 97%

100%100%100%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

0800 0830 0900 0930 1000 1030 1100 1130 1200 1230 1300 1330 1400 1430 1500 1530 1600 1630 1700 1730 1800 1830 1900 1930 2000 2030 2100 2130 2200

Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sat

Sat - start Sat - end

43

The great majority of respondents do not call on Sundays. Of those that do, calling begins at 10am

and tends to finish between 2pm and 6pm.

Figure 31: Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sun

When looking at peak calling hours, this differs somewhat depending on the type of calling being

carried out:

Debt collection respondents state that they have an outbound calling peak in the early evening,

between 5.30pm and 8pm, with many operations also stating that there are peaks in the morning as

well, particularly between 10am and 12 noon.

Amongst respondents that carry out sales to existing customers (for example contract renewals,

cross selling and upselling), an evening peak is even more noticeable. Many respondents report the

period between 4.30pm and 7.30pm has more volume, with very few reporting significant sales call

volumes before 12 noon.

For respondents carrying out cold calls, there were less obvious peaks, with calls spread out across

the day, perhaps as for these types of sales campaign / outbound activity, there are likely to be more

targets to aim for.

0% 0% 0% 0%

100%100%100%100%100%100% 100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%100%

0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

33% 33%

50% 50%

67% 67% 67% 67%

83% 83% 83% 83% 83% 83%

100%100%100%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

0800 0830 0900 0930 1000 1030 1100 1130 1200 1230 1300 1330 1400 1430 1500 1530 1600 1630 1700 1730 1800 1830 1900 1930 2000 2030 2100 2130 2200

Cumulative opening and closing hours, Sun

Sun - start Sun - end

44

Different segments of the contact list are likely to be available at different times: at the simplest

level, retired people are likely to available all day, and people of working age during lunchtime and

the evening. Of course, for anything remotely associated with B2B, evenings and weekends should

not be considered. Published research4 suggests that the best time for B2B cold calls is the early

morning (before 9 am) and towards the end of the working day (4-5pm), outside of core meeting

hours.

It is important to take into account external events, such as sporting events within a city (for

example, calling specific demographics during an important football match is unlikely to yield

anything positive), and if at all possible, getting the customer to state their preference early in the

business relationship in terms of availability and preferred channel will be positive for all concerned.

‘Warming them up’ through an earlier SMS message is also a tactic to be considered.

To make the customer segmentation strategy really work requires considerable amounts of data on

customer demographics, purchasing history and preferred channels and contact times, and

businesses should look to extract such information from their sales intelligence application and

match it with outbound calling outcomes and if possible, the elements of dynamic scripting that tend

to work best with such customers.

4 Sung Hyun Kwan Business School in association with Kellogg School of Management

45

DIALLING ACTIVITY: MAXIMUM NUMBER OF ATTEMPTS

As might be expected, the maximum number of attempts made to contact a customer or prospect

differs significantly depending upon the activity being carried out. Sufficient data on three outbound

activities - debt collection, warm calling (sales to existing customers) and cold calling (sales to new

prospects) were available to allow detailed analysis of call attempts and the time left between calls.

Those involved in debt collection, as we might expect, are determined to speak to specific

individuals, and almost half of them make multiple calls on the same day (with a few making as

many as six calls per day to the same individual). In the main, they will wait a minimum of four hours

between calls, although several mention that if an engaged signal is received, they will ring back

within 15-30 minutes as the chances of successful connection is higher. There are instances of

respondents making up to 100 calls per month to a specific number, although on average, making

two or three calls per week is much more common. Several respondents pointed out that if a

message is left or a call dropped, they would not call back within 72 hours.

Figure 32: Call attempts by activity type (debt collection)

Maximum calls per

consumer per day

Length of

campaign / live data

(days)

Maximum calls

in total campaign time

Time left

between calls (if engaged tone) -

hours

Time left

between calls (if no engaged tone)

- hours

1st quartile 3 28 20 2.25 72

Median 2 21 10 0.5 4

3rd quartile 1 7 6 0.38 4

Mean 2.2 21 18 1.3 24

High 6 90 90 4 72

Low 1 2 3 0.25 2

46

Those respondents involved in calling existing customers, for example in order to cross-sell, upsell or

renew contracts, are less likely than debt collectors to call as many times, although they have a

higher average attempt per customer per day figure (although the research base for this was only 6

respondents, so should be treated with caution).

Typically, calls will be placed every two or three days for a three- or four-week period, with around 8

calls over this period being average. Having said that, some respondents do indicate that they call

more frequently, although none make more than 12 calls in total.

Figure 33: Call attempts by activity type (warm calling – sales calls to existing customers)

Maximum calls per

consumer per day

Length of


(days)

Maximum calls


Time left

between calls (if engaged tone) -

hours

Time left

between calls (if no engaged tone)

- hours

1st quartile 3 28 10 n/a 14

Median 3 28 8 0.5 4

3rd quartile 3 18 8 n/a 4

Mean 3.5 22 8 0.5 9

High 8 35 12 0.5 24

Low 1 3 3 0.5 3

Respondents carrying out sales calls to new prospects will call multiple times in a week - around

three or four being average - with a couple of respondents carrying out very significant focused

calling, with around 10-15 calls being placed to the same potential customer.

Figure 34: Call attempts by activity type (cold calling – sales calls to new prospects)

Maximum calls per

consumer per day

Length of


(days)

Maximum calls


Time left

between calls (if engaged tone-

hours)

Time left

between calls (if no engaged tone

- hours)

1st quartile 3 32 18 n/a n/a

Median 3 28 10 0.38 4

3rd quartile 2 11 3 n/a n/a

Mean 3 25 18 0.38 3.4

High 3 56 100 0.5 4

Low 2 5 3 0.25 2

47

RING TIME AND CONNECTION TIME

MINIMUM RING TIME

The survey showed that the mean average ring time industry-wide is 22 seconds, with cold selling

tending to ring the longest and ‘other’ the shortest. It can be seen that the small sample size of some

outbound activity types of skewing the mean results somewhat (particularly in the case of customer

surveys), so median averages have been included as well for greater clarity. It seems fair to note that

those involved in sales to new customers (i.e. cold calling) are more likely than other sectors to let

calls ring longer.

Figure 35: Minimum mean and median ring time before call termination, by outbound activity type


Mean minimum ring time before

call termination (seconds)

Median minimum ring time

before call termination (seconds)

Cold sales 26 25

Customer surveys 23 15

Debt collection 22 24

Customer service 21 20

Warm sales 20 21

Other 17 18

Average

21.9 20.0

The majority of respondents who stated why they set a particular minimum amount of time before

call termination explained that there was a sweet spot around 18 - 20 seconds: they referred to

Ofcom’s policy on calls ringing for a minimum of 15 seconds, and many answer machines kick in

after 21 seconds. It was also noted that studying historical maximum wait times indicated that

ringing for longer than 20 seconds rarely results in much improvement, and increasing answer

machine rates would also ‘lock out’ the record with regard to redial rules.

48

DIALLING ACTIVITY: THE ROLE OF MOBILE

The majority of mobile users have access to a smartphone, meaning a large proportion of customers

will want to contact businesses through these devices, whether via the telephony element of the

device, or via the company’s website or mobile app. Taking into account the use of tablet computers

to access the Internet, the ‘mobile channel’ may actually be the first port-of-call for many customers,

especially those in the younger demographics.

The dual, mutually-supporting drivers of high-speed mobile networks and the proliferation of

smartphones means that provision of services via a mobile channel offers businesses and consumers

the opportunity to make a step-change in the way that they communicate with each other. This new

world of communication allows businesses to consider whether functionality such as multimedia

streaming and videoconferencing could give them a competitive advantage in the customer service

world.

Gathering, understanding and using the contextual data that can surround the mobile consumer will

be key to pushing the uptake and functionality of this channel forward. The plethora of channels

immediately available to the mobile consumer - including voice, web browsing, SMS, social media,

and web chat - encourages the customer to act immediately for all their service or information

requirements, rather than waiting until they are in front of a desktop computer.

This year’s UK survey respondents report that it costs almost twice as much to call a mobile phone

than a landline, a gap that is shrinking each year:

Mean cost of outbound call to landline (ppm): 2.2p

Median cost of outbound call to landline (ppm): 1.0p (1st quartile 0.2p, 3rd quartile 2.7p)

Mean cost of outbound call to mobile (ppm): 4.1p

Median cost of outbound call to mobile (ppm): 3.0p (1st quartile 1.0p, 3rd quartile 6.5p)

Although it is more expensive to call a mobile than a landline, the former’s ubiquity and

responsiveness has a great advantage over landline phones and even emails, as the business is far

more likely to be able to reach the customer by calling their mobile number, although there is no

guarantee of an answer, which is why SMS is often used as part of the outbound mix.

The ubiquity and massive increase in the use of smartphones also means that the mobile channel

has become a crucial part of the customer contact mix, and businesses should look to engage with

mobile customers, not worrying too much about cost differentials. Besides, increasing the use of

SMS as a channel to the customer would reduce many of the costs associated with mobile

communication (including agent time, as well as transmission costs), while keeping the advantages

of contacting a customer’s mobile number.

49

Just over half of calls made by survey respondents are placed to mobile phones, which while they

are more expensive, are more likely to be answered by the correct person regardless of time of day.

Figure 36: % of outbound dialling carried out to mobile phones

% of calls made to mobile phones

1st quartile 73%

Median 60%

3rd quartile 42%

Mean 58%

There is little difference between activity types, with 55% of debt collection calls being made to

mobiles, and 61% of sales calls.

Further information about servicing the Mobile Customer can be found in “The Inner Circle Guide to

Multichannel Customer Contact”, and “The Inner Circle Guide to Self-Service”.

Both reports are available free of charge from www.contactbabel.com.


WE’RE INTERESTED IN INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY, BUT CONCERNED ABOUT AGENT BURNOUT AND INCREASED ATTRITION. DO YOU HAVE ANY POINTERS ON BEST PRACTICE?

If you just turn up the productivity dial agent burnout can be a problem. To

avoid it, make sure that you keep a close eye on effectiveness as well as

productivity – for example, if you are making lots of calls but not reaching your

target audience then your agents will be unhappy.

Use the data management tools incorporated in modern outbound and blending systems: these help

you address the right audience at the right time and be able to mix your communication channels to

give you agent productivity, the right business outcomes and a work blend that avoids agent

burnout.

http://www.contactbabel.com/

50

ANSWER MACHINE DETECTION

Answer Machine Detection (AMD) is a type of technology that allows diallers in predictive mode to

recognise calls that are picked up by an answer machine, and stop the outbound agent taking that

call, keeping them free to speak with actual customers. The purpose of this was simply to present

agents with the greatest number of live contacts. The negative experience of the customers

answering the phone that were incorrectly identified as being answer machines and then hung up on

(‘false positives’) was rarely considered.

Most AMD solutions usually work by:

Detecting a long string of words in one burst such as “Hello, we’re not available, please leave

a message after the tone …”, deducing from the patterns of noise and silence on the line

whether an automated message is being played when a call is connected. This is known as

the ‘cadence’ method, but there are other ways in which AMD can work

Identifying a live caller who may answer by saying “Hello?” and then waiting for a reply.

However, AMD may cause problems and is not 100% accurate:

There will be a pause or delay while the system tries to connect an agent, which may lead to

the called party hanging up

the AMD solution may incorrectly flag a live person as being an answering machine, hanging

up the call. The effect of this ‘false positive’ is that the customer will effectively get a silent

call which can be frustrating and worrying for the majority of the public who are unaware of

how outbound technology works.

In recent years, Ofcom has had to respond to increased numbers of complaints about silent and

abandoned nuisance calls made as a result of AMD: as a result, a set of rules was designed in order

to reduce the number of abandoned or silent calls.5 However, at the time of writing (March 2016),

Ofcom is coming towards the end of a new regulatory review which is expected to be considerably

tighter and potentially more punitive than the existing regulations, and which may also insist that all

outbound calls include a CLI to identify the calling organisation.

Cadence AMD – analysing from the patterns of noise and silence on the call whether an answer

phone message is being played – relies upon an accurate assessment of whether a call has been

answered by a human or answer machine within the two-second window currently allowed by

Ofcom, which does not give enough time to both detect 100% of answer machines and exclude all

live contacts, leading to silent and abandoned calls. In order to remain compliant with Ofcom (and

prove it), there is also a great deal of management and reporting to be carried out, reducing the

productivity benefits.

5 http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/silent-calls/statement/

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/silent-calls/statement/

51

In terms of estimating the accuracy of the AMD, the majority of UK outbound survey respondents

tested the accuracy by comparing agent or supervisor experience with what the dialler is telling

them. For example, a dialler manager may listen to a substantial number of calls each month or

quarter, and analyse how many are AMD false positives compared to what the system is stating. In

this way, a more accurate view of the accuracy answer machine detection is given. Other

respondents switch AMD on, but still pass all calls through to agents for a specific period. The agent

marks each call as answer machine or not, and this is then compared to the AMD statistics to see if

they match up.

When respondents were asked to estimate AMD accuracy, results given were:

Figure 37: Estimation of AMD accuracy

The majority of respondents include AMD false positives in their overall abandoned call rate, with

these estimated AMD false positives being factored into the dialler settings to reduce the maximum

percentage of abandoned calls before they occur. The resulting number of abandoned calls can be

added to the result set to achieve a true abandonment figure.

Some contact centres do not include false positives in their abandoned call rate, as playing an IVM

message triggered by AMD is the same as choosing to play an IVM to the customer (e.g. through a

broadcast message), which a debt collection agency considers they are allowed to do. If the

customer chooses not to press 1, then that is their decision.

The rate of silent calls - where AMD falsely detects that an answer machine is present - can by their

nature only be estimated, otherwise they would not have been abandoned. This requires companies

to test their systems and analyse recordings to estimate the rate of silent calls, which gets taken

<50%4%

50-75%4%

76-90%12%

91-95%8%

Over 95%8%

Did not answer64%

AMD estimated accuracy

52

from their overall abandonment rate, which is a maximum of 3% of calls, meaning the dialler can

only be run at a maximum rate of 3% minus the estimated false positive rate, further reducing

productivity gains. An alternative solution to trying to detect every answering machine is only to

remove calls if the systems is 100% certain of that an answer machine is present.

Respondents to a ContactBabel survey of UK outbound contact centre operations estimated that

0.4% of calls answered by consumers were believed by outbound operations to be AMD false

positives (where the dialler incorrectly guesses a real person is an answer machine and hangs up the

call, producing a ‘silent call’), although this was from a relatively small sample size and should be

treated with caution.

Of those outbound respondents that use AMD, 44% employ it all of the time, particular the case in

medium and large operations. A minority pick and choose the times they use it (some contact

centres only employ it in peak calling times, where customers or prospects are most likely to be

available, so as to maximise live contacts). Only 15% of outbound users state that they do not have

AMD functionality in their solution, with a higher figure from those in small operations.

Figure 38: Use of answer machine detection (AMD), by contact centre size (UK) – only those using automated outbound solutions

57%

47%

44%

33%

7%

11%

13%

14%

5%

8%

33%

21%

15%

33%

14%

11%

15%

7%

5%

5%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Small

Medium

Large

Average

Use of answer machine detection (AMD), by contact centre size

Yes, and we always use it Yes, and we sometimes use it Yes, but we rarely use it

Yes, but we never use it No AMD functionality Don't know

53

The use of AMD may be written into the client’s request in the case of an outsourcer, or it may be an

internal decision driven by dialler managers and compliance directors. AMD and IVM (interactive

voice messaging) can be used in tandem to minimise false AMD abandonment. A respondent to

ContactBabel’s survey of outbound contact centre explains:

“If we place an outbound call and within two seconds of line activation we believe it to be a

machine we will play an IVM message to ask the recipient to confirm they are the person we

are required to speak to, before giving the option to press one and enter the call centre. If

the recipient does not press 1, then they are played the same information as an abandoned

call so that the company name and identity has been provided.”

In this way, there is a two-step process to determining whether there is a consumer or answer

machine at the end of the line, and by giving the consumer the option to speak to an agent, AMD

false positives should be reduced.

As part of this survey, respondents were asked what their experience had been when they had

restricted or switched AMD off and on to see what the impact upon productivity and compliance had

been. It was generally felt that there was a significant improvement in live contact rates when AMD

was in place, and that agent morale and performance dropped considerably when AMD had been

turned off, due to a large increase in the instance of answer phones presented to agents. Some

respondents noted that they used AMD only at specific times during the day, and when the data that

they were calling on was of questionable quality. However, there was a general acknowledgement

that the nature of most AMD solutions being used today will produce some false positives, and that

legislation requiring recorded messages and/or an IVR option to speak to an agent would assist the

customer experience without damaging productivity.

USE OF CLI / CLID

The presentation of CLI / CLID (calling line identification) is required for US telemarketers, and it is

illegal to ‘spoof’ CLID (make it appear that the call is originating from a different number). In the UK,

DCMS (the Department of Culture, Media and Sport) want to make outbound callers provide an

accurate CLI and the ICO (information Commissioner’s Office) supports this, so it is likely to become

law at some point in 2016.

CLI is in any case presented by 93% of UK respondents to ContactBabel’s outbound survey, so any

change to regulations is likely to affect rogue calling organisations. Some respondents, often from

the debt collection sector, mentioned that localised CLI (i.e. those that appear to have originated

from the same town or city as the called party) tend to have improved answer rates, and that calls

clearly originating from UK operations are also likely to have improved results.

Around a third of UK outbound contact centres use multiple CLIs, which allow them to route a

customer calling back to a specific department, client, product, brand or campaign, and also to

provide local support. Some of the debt collecting respondents state that debtors learn to recognise

specific CLIs, and that alternatives are used to improve answer rates.

54

THE USE OF IVM (INTERACTIVE VOICE MESSAGING)

Interactive Voice Messaging (IVM) is often used alongside live outbound calling, with an automated

message inviting the recipient to enter into conversation, either now or at a later time.

Around a third of outbound contact centres in the UK use IVM, with those in the debt collection

industry most likely to do so. Respondents within the industry state that they use this in order to

give as many people as possible the chance to be connected to an agent before the downstream

collections process takes over: unlike calls to new customers (cold sales) for example, there is a

limited time period for a debt to be settled at a specific stage before it is escalated. It is also seen as

a way to clean lists and collect the easiest debts before the respondent switches dialling mode to

predictive dialling.

By far the most prevalent use of IVM is where a recorded message is played that asks specifically by

name for a particular customer, asking them to press 1 if it is them in order to be transferred to an

agent. If no key presses are detected, a message will be left with the caller’s name and telephone

number, asking them to call back. This may be looped to avoid partial recordings being made.

Businesses will ask the customer to identify themselves through their date of birth or account

number before any information is shared with them.

Some contact centres state that they will make sure an agent is available to take the call if 1 is

pressed, others that any IVM returns that are abandoned will not be called for another 72 hours at

which point a live agent will be made available.

IVM is seen as less intrusive than live outbound dialling. It can be personalised, and the customer

can choose to interact with the company at that time, advise a better time to contact or simply hang

up. For the debt collection industry, a significant proportion of customers that enter collections are

able to make a payment to bring their account up to date, exiting the collections process within the

same month. IVM enables companies to automate outbound interactions with this segment of

customers and thus enable live call centre resources to focus on speaking to customers with more

serious financial difficulties or more complex arrears queries, which is beneficial to both customer

and company.

IVM is less expensive than employing agents and can be particularly useful in small teams where

predictive dialling is not possible due to the risk of high call abandonment rates. IVM is also effective

at cleaning data, for example, when attempting a phone number for the first time, IVM helps cleanse

the database of bad or dead numbers and provides an instant ‘opt-out’ process for removal of Do

Not Contact numbers.

It also allows customers to know who the organisation is that are trying to contact them, and to

press 1 to speak to them which is especially useful in the case of false AMD detection. IVM can also

be used to assist with fraud prevention and credit card checking, as it is a timely and rapid method of

informing the customer that there is a potential problem.

55

If a customer receiving an IVM call indicates they wish to speak to an agent, survey responses show

that target connection times are substantially shorter than the usual 20-30 second targets employed

in most ‘standard’ inbound environments, with a mean of 15 seconds and a median of only 8

seconds. The actual average time per call that inbound IVM-prompted customers are on hold is a

mean of 9 seconds, and a median of 8 seconds, so companies tend to exceed their target.

It is reported that 27% of IVM calls were answered by a customer, and 73% by an answerphone.

Conjecturally, this may be because IVM is more likely to be used in situations where an answering

machine is more likely to pick up, or the consumer is less likely to answer the call (e.g. debt

collection).

USE OF BROADCAST MESSAGING

Automated messaging or ‘broadcast’ messages are calls made with the sole purpose of making a

recorded announcement, rather than to connect a consumer to a live agent immediately. Examples

include a recorded sales or marketing message, or a recorded information message which is not an

‘Agent Unavailable’ message.”

Broadcast messaging is carried out by far more of the large operations than small, with one third of

large UK outbound operations using broadcast, compared to only 3% of the sub-50 seat category.

Debt collection operations respondents in particular stated that they use broadcast messaging to

drive inbound call volumes, as it is seen as another approach to take with customers who are

difficult to contact directly.

56

COMPLIANCE WITH REGULATIONS

UK regulations

The Telephone Preference Service (and the EC Regulations on Electronic Communication which deals

with email and SMS) are part of the general social and political drift towards allowing consumers and

businesses the right not to be contacted by companies.

In the UK, Ofcom is getting progressively stricter in its outbound regulations, a summary of which

appears here. Please note that regulations are subject to change and readers should refer to the

Ofcom website for the most up-to-date information.

Summary of Ofcom's Dialling Regulations

Call abandonment rate shall be no more than 3% of ‘live calls’ on each individual campaign over

any 24 hour period;

In the event of an ‘abandoned call’, a very brief recorded information message is played within

one second of the call being answered, which;

1. identifies the company on whose behalf the call was made;

2. identifies the intended purpose of the call (i.e. “unsolicited sales call”, “call as part of debt

recovery”, etc.)

3. offers the called person the possibility of declining to receive further calls from that company by

contacting a no charge or basic rate number;

4. includes no marketing content and is not used as an opportunity to market to the called person;

calls which are not answered should ring for a minimum of 15 seconds before being terminated;

when an ‘abandoned call’ is made to a particular number, that number is not called again in the

following 72 hours, unless a dedicated operator is available;

for each outbound call a CLI number is presented, to which a return call may be made which is

not charged at a higher rate than the national call rate;

either a recorded message or a live operator is available at the CLI number presented to inform

called persons of the identity of the organisation that called them, the intended purpose of the

‘abandoned call’ and that the called person’s number will be deleted from the organisation’s

database and added to its in-house suppression list at the called person’s request if they leave

their name and telephone number;

any call made by the called person to the contact number provided shall not be used as an

opportunity to market to that person;

records are kept that demonstrate compliance with the above procedures.

57

Ofcom has prioritised the reduction or elimination of silent and abandoned calls, and the most

recent (December 2015) document is downloadable from:

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/review-of-how-we-use-persistent-misuse-powers/

Proposed regulations are available here:

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/review-of-how-we-use-persistent-misuse-

powers/annexes/Annex_5.pdf

As part of the overall review into outbound calling, the Department of Media, Culture and Sport

(DCMS) wants to make outbound callers provide an accurate and returnable CLI, and the ICO and

Ofcom support this.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/review-of-how-we-use-persistent-misuse-powers/

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/review-of-how-we-use-persistent-misuse-powers/annexes/Annex_5.pdf

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/review-of-how-we-use-persistent-misuse-powers/annexes/Annex_5.pdf

58

DIALLING ACTIVITY: TPS

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a free service and is the UK opt-out register on individuals

and those working in organisations (under the CTPS) can record their preference not to receive

unsolicited sales or marketing calls. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including

charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered

on the TPS unless they have consent to do so.

In a survey of outbound UK contact centres, around half of calls were stated not to require TPS

checking (as they were to existing customers or others who had given permission, or who were

allowed to be called through other legislation).

For those who were conducting TPS tests, checking numbers before they were loaded into the

dialler was the most commonly used method by far. (NB – ‘other’ outbound activity, not shown

specifically, was included in the ‘average’ column).

Figure 39: Methods of checking TPS (n=91)

6%11% 11% 8% 10%

12%

44% 47%

78%

29%

32%

11%

3%

3%

4%

79%

44%

32%

14%

71%

51%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Debt collection Customerservice

Warm sales Cold sales Surveys Average

Methods of checking TPS

TPS check notrequired

TPS check not carriedout

Manually checkedbefore dialling

Checked beforenumbers were loadedinto the dialler

Automaticallychecked as dialled

59


WHAT IMPACT DOES CURRENT AND FUTURE LEGISLATION HAVE ON OUTBOUND, AND HOW DO YOUR SOLUTIONS ADDRESS THIS?

At the time of writing the consultation phase of Ofcom’s “Review of how we use

our persistent misuse powers: Focus on silent and abandoned calls” has just

ended. Assuming that the final guidance will reflect information contained in the

consultation, Rostrvm Solutions supports the review and the clarification that it will provide.

We particularly welcome the added guidance on Interactive Voice Messaging (IVM) which, if used

sensibly, extends managed-contact opportunities with customers.

The detail in the consultation document suggests several changes to be taken into account. In

reality, any contact centre that is following the current (2010) guidelines – and the spirit of them too

- shouldn’t be overly concerned. That said, contact centres operating outside, or even on the outer

limits of, the current guidelines need to take a long, hard look at their operational practices. The

rostrvm dialler has all the controls you need to achieve Ofcom-compliant dialling.

There are other regulators to consider such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Any

outbound system needs to manage data-related issues. Again rostrvm includes the facilities you

need to comply – checking your lists against Telephone Preference Service, de-duplicating data and

managing Do Not Call lists.

Also, dialler managers need to consider carefully their campaign strategies and, if they haven’t done

it already, move from the old 1990s-style ‘load-up-the-dialler and step-on-the-accelerator’

techniques and adopt a more precise and targeted approach – we call it Precision Contact.

Precision Contact uses the available tools to target your audience



email;

and the right people – making sure your calls are handled by appropriately-skilled agents.

60

COMPLYING WITH REGULATIONS

Outbound contact centres were asked to give their opinions of the reasons for non-compliance with

regulations, and what they considered to be the main drivers of silent and abandoned calls.

A top-level categorisation of drivers is shown below (placed in order of frequency):

poor dialler management

rogue operators

agent behaviour

targets and KPIs

poor data.

Poor dialler management

Outbound contact centres note that abandoning calls can happen as a result of dialler pacing being

too aggressive, or agents spending too long in unavailable time, in conjunction with too little

monitoring and slow dialler readjustment. It is recommended that the dialler is warmed up in

preview mode before moving to full predictive mode, to avoid causing dropped calls at the start of

the shift due to the mass logging-in of the resource pool. This should ensure that dropped calls are

low from the outset, and abandonment rate will be under the threshold throughout the shift rather

than having to try to recover this in a suboptimal way towards the end of a shift.

Overdial settings should only be used where dialler managers are confident that the creation of high

connect rates can be sustained by agents. Where an outbound-only campaign is taking place, agent

levels can be fairly well predicted, but in a blended inbound/outbound environment, the necessity to

balance the outbound abandonment rate while reacting to inbound call spikes requires very careful

management, and the introduction of minimum agent volumes for the outbound campaigns can

assist with this process.

It is also important to have a sound understanding of the data that is being called, and wherever

possible analyse the correct calling periods for this. Understanding the customer prospect list to

optimise the contact preferences and availability times if possible can greatly assist with contact

rates. Moving between pools of variable data quality can very quickly increase call abandonment

rates, so extra management time at these threshold points is crucial.

Rogue operators

It is an unfortunate fact that some companies blatantly ignore regulations, withholding CLI in order

to obviate complaints from consumers. Proposed regulations around the accuracy and ubiquity of

CLI aim to reduce these issues, although rogue operators calling from offshore are unlikely to be

deterred by this. The planting of monitored /seeded telephone numbers and the aggressive tracing

and investigation of any contact centre calls that have failed to present a valid CLI will assist in

identifying the rogue operators who are responsible for considerable proportion of nuisance calls.

61

Agent behaviour

An increase in abandoned calls can be in part attributable to agent activity, for example not adhering

to correct procedures when logging out for breaks (closing the application rather than requesting

the dialler to log the agent off means that the dialler algorithm is working off incorrect assumptions).

This can be exacerbated by the lack of constant monitoring, and unfocused dialler and line

management.

Targets and KPIs

Judging the success or otherwise of cold calling or marketing campaigns through assessing volumes

or call attempts per day can lead to overly-aggressive dialler management, which is likely to push up

the abandonment rate considerably. There can be pressure put on operational and dialler

management if an outsourcer is rewarded solely through results rather than agent hours billed, for

example: the risk is that the focus changes to call throughput rather than call outcome. This is a

particular risk in organisations which are calling large volumes of untargeted data, for example

generalised PPI or personal injury campaigns. Low contact rates can also occur if there has been a

long period of time since customer consent was given, or if consent was assumed rather than stated

explicitly.

Many outbound solution providers offer their customers a set of tools to offset risk and ensure

compliancy. Detection tools can apply different outbound strategies automatically depending on

whether a landline or mobile number is being called, the time of day, day of week and any public

holidays.

Some countries specify the maximum number of attempts that can be made to reach a customer in

a specific timescale, and any dialler solution should have this functionality. A multichannel solution

can identify and deliver campaigns based on the customer’s original opt-in information and

observing behaviours such as a consumer replying to SMS messages but not to mobile calls.

It is also necessary to be able to screen against national Do Not Call databases, data expiration dates

and to comply with state and regional dialling rules. The increased use of mobile and smart phones

means that it is possible to reduce or eliminate the number of calls made to a device that is any

different time zone, for example when the customer is on holiday.

62

CALL BLENDING

Call blending is an element of outbound calling which has had to fight against the conventional

wisdom of the traditional contact centre industry, which implies that the more one can segregate

the contact centre into a series of production lines, the better-run the operation will be.

A contact centre handling different processes involving customer service, sales orders, and

outbound telemarketing will have different groups of agents with specific skills for these areas.

Some agents are more capable and adaptable than others, and can be used as blended agents. For

example, these agents may have a primary responsibility to handle inbound calls, but when the

inbound call volume drops, the dialler will send a message to these agents indicating that they have

been switched to outbound mode and start offering outbound calls to them. Where relevant,

systems will prompt a script for the outbound calls to run on the agent desktop and depending on

the call volume in the inbound queue, the agents will be switched automatically, improving

productivity. Results can include increased agent productivity, streamlined staffing, and improved

customer service. However, this process needs to be understood and managed carefully, as not all

agents are adept at dealing with both inbound and outbound calls, and if there is a constant

switching from inbound to outbound and back again, the agent may lose concentration and the

productivity may go down.

A structured blended environment, where agents are moved seamlessly and dynamically between

inbound and outbound, is used in only 12% of the UK contact centres which carry out both inbound

and outbound work. As usual, medium and large contact centres are more likely than smaller

operations to use this type of approach. Small operations are more likely to operate blending on a

manual, ad-hoc basis. A substantial proportion of respondents from medium operations use

dedicated teams to handle only either outbound or inbound.

Figure 40: Use of call blending by contact centre size

7%

18%11% 12%

62% 38%

67%

55%

31%

44%

22%

33%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


Use of call blending by contact centre size

No, we have dedicated and separateinbound and outbound agents

Yes, but in an informal, manually-assigned way

Yes, in a formal and structured way(automatically switching based oncall volumes)

63

Looking at the effect on productivity, it is interesting to put the use and type of call blending against

key contact centre performance and operational metrics, such as average speed to answer, which is

- as usual - somewhat lower in formal, blended environments than in dedicated and more ad-hoc

environments, as agents are moved between tasks quickly and seamlessly.

Figure 41: Average speed to answer, by call blending environment type

Call blending environment

Average speed to answer (seconds)

Blending used in a formal and structured way 24

Blending used in an informal, ad-hoc way 38

Dedicated and separate inbound and outbound agents 33

64

MULTIMEDIA BLENDING

When considering call blending, it is also worth looking at how non-voice interactions can fit into a

blended environment too.

There is no general agreement within the industry on how best to deal with email, although there

are genuine reasons to encourage email/voice blending. On one side, there is a case made that

letting agents answer email makes the job more interesting for them, lowering attrition and

improving skills. The other side to this says that the skills required by email agents are different from

voice agents, and that it is difficult to find the agents to do both jobs. Both sides make sense

logically, and historically, of those contact centres which use voice/email blending, only around 1 in

5 have experienced problems finding the right staff for these types of role, a figure that decreased

each year that it was surveyed.

The great majority of respondents in most sectors allow at least some of their agents to carry out

both email and telephony. However, email requires certain skills, including grammar and

punctuation, which not every agent has, even with assistance from an email management system's

response template.

On average, 66% of agents in a blended multimedia environment are allowed to do both email and

voice work, a figure which had been growing year-on-year, but which has steadied recently.

Those in small and medium operations are much more likely to use the same agents to handle email

and telephony, probably because there is not the option to have the specialised teams found in large

contact centres, which are much more likely to have a dedicated group handling email.

Simply because a contact centre uses the same agents for email and voice does not mean that all

operations use the same level of multimedia blending. For some operations, multimedia blending is

a strategic decision which has been invested in with the right levels of technology and training being

provided. For others, it is a necessity, with agents encouraged to answer emails in slack call times.

Small and medium operations - which in the past may not have had sufficient email volumes or the

investment available to formalise the blending by forming a universal queue to deal with all types of

interaction - are now as likely to use a universal queue as the ad hoc method. Many larger contact

centres prefer to use dedicated email groups.

However, this preference of many larger contact centres to form specialised multimedia groups may

not provide the same levels of service. 2014 data indicated a formalised blending environment, such

as a universal queue, has a beneficial effect on email response times. Respondents using a formal

blended environment reported that 32% of emails are handled within 1 hour, with a further 41%

being dealt with inside a day.

The ad-hoc approach is less successful at very rapid response, with only 16% of emails having had an

average handle time within 1 hour, although a further 58% were handled in a day.

Dedicated email-only agents of the kind used in many larger contact centres answered an average of

17% of emails within the hour, with a further 48% handled within a day.

65


WHAT BENEFITS ARE THERE FROM CALL BLENDING? WHAT EFFECTS CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE ON PRODUCTIVITY AND AGENT ENGAGEMENT?

Blending helps to ensure that every opportunity to please customers, boost

productivity and optimize resources is taken by prioritizing contact to suit

demand and resources. Being able to choose what you blend enables greater

output to be gained from the same number of staff, as they can be switched to different tasks.

Call blending generally takes a couple of forms:

Blending customer contact by direction - most typically increasing outbound calling when

inbound traffic is low, to ensure that agents are always active.

Blending different communication channels – for example combining telephone activity with

handling emails, text messages and social media.

Both forms of blending lead to increased agent activity and ‘raw’ productivity gains. But experience

shows that translating those gains into clear business benefits requires consideration of your

audience.

Simply increasing outbound calling when inbound traffic is low will enhance agent productivity but

won’t result in successful contact if you’re calling at the wrong time. Usually, the best time to make

outbound contact with your target is the same time as your inbound call peaks.

The most effective blending is achieved with a mix of contact channels. For example, during an

inbound call volume trough, send text messages or emails to attract more inbound calls. At the same

time ensure that your dialler campaigns are targeting the right audience, such as segmenting your

audience towards retired people during the day.

Blending ensures real progress is made, customers feel appreciated and ‘idle time’ is a thing of the

past.

66

MULTICHANNEL OUTBOUND STRATEGIES AND TECHNIQUES

While the vast majority of targeted outbound contact is carried out by agents, the opportunity exists

for automated outbound service to expand - such as sending reminders and notifications to

customers through an automated process - thus significantly reducing the cost to the business while

improving the overall customer experience. Many customers will choose to seek clarification or a

status update at some point in the buying process through making an inbound interaction. By

sending a pre-emptive outbound message, the business is proactively assisting the customer to

manage their interaction.

63% of UK contact centres do not use automated recorded voice messages for any purpose, whereas

SMS messages are used by over half of respondents, mainly for notifications and reminders. Only

31% of respondents do not send automated emails at all.

Email is used most for outbound customer satisfaction surveys, and 15% of respondents use

recorded messages (which will usually include an IVR session to capture customer input) for this

purpose as well.

Figure 42: Use of automated outbound communication

Businesses should consider how customers prefer to receive information: for example, SMS

messages for delivery notifications or appointment reminders may be preferred, whereas email may

be more suitable for order updates. Live outbound calls might be reserved for circumstances

requiring immediate action or for more complex situations.

10% 11%

15%

63%

26%

16%13%

45%

23%21%

26%

31%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Reminders (e.g. appointments,contract renewals)

Notifications (e.g. deliveries) Customer satisfaction surveys No automated interactionsthrough this channel

Use of automated outbound communication

Recorded messages SMS Email

--- Thought Leadership ---

The contact centre’s purpose has changed from transactional activity to one where your customers

can contact you for a wide range of reasons and through a variety of communication channels – you

can talk to your clients on the phone, by email, text message, chat, social media … the list goes on.

Your customers are demanding choice but your contact centre needs to balance meeting their

wishes, satisfying service needs and optimising costs.

Let’s take an example: your customer sends you an enquiry by email; how do you respond? If you

focus on the channel then it would seem obvious to reply by email. Whilst this may be an effective

response channel for a simple enquiry, when you are dealing with customer- and case-specific

enquiries an email response may open the door to a time-expensive series of emails. Text based

‘conversations’ with your customers pose other problems: If your client tweets about your business

how do you respond professionally and effectively in 140 characters in a public environment? How

do you verify the identity of a web chat caller? How do you link text messages to clients in your

Customer Relationship Management System?

The answer is often to shift the channel back to the telephone. If your client writes to you with a

complex question then the most effective customer service response is to pick up the phone and

talk.

All multichannel contact centres need a dialler and blending

Diallers in contact centres used to be about mass contact – for example using a predictive dialler to

support debt collection.

Today’s precision dialling technology means that requests for contact such as emails, tweets and

chats can be fed into the dialler to deliver a fast, personal response to customers whilst managing

and monitoring your most important resource – your agents.

rostrvm OutBound lets you blend SMS (text message, web, social, chat and email contact with your

OutBound dialling campaigns.

http://www.rostrvm.com

68


ARE OUTBOUND AND CALL BLENDING SOLUTIONS SEPARATE FROM OTHER MULTICHANNEL INTERACTION, OR HAS THERE BEEN ANY MOVE TO INTEGRATE THESE CHANNELS TOGETHER?

Modern outbound and call blending solutions incorporate multichannel

interactions. Increasingly dialler campaigns combine telephone calls with text

messages and emails to cover the complete customer journey and experience.

For example, if your customer calls after receiving your email your contact centre agent needs to be

able to see the email concerned at the time of the call. Breaking down channel silos is a key

component of customer satisfaction.

69

THE ROLE OF SCRIPTING

The variable capability of agents is a contributory inhibitor to quality improvements, and the

increasingly complex and variable nature of agents’ work means that rigid, linear scripting is no

longer appropriate for many contact centres. One possible solution is to look at dynamic scripting

applications within an overall unified desktop environment, as well as understanding agent training

needs through call recording and analysis, and delivering the right training and in-call information.

DYNAMIC SCRIPTING

Scripting has a mixed reputation, rightly or wrongly, with inflexible outbound sales scripts being

particularly disliked. However, a dynamic scripting environment, sometimes referred to as a

workflow - where the help provided on the agent's screen changes depending on who the customer

is and what they actually want, applicable to both inbound and outbound work - can be beneficial to

agent and customer alike, supporting complex interactions where multiple systems and media are

required. Applications that define each step of the call interaction flow and present the relevant

data to the agent allows agents to take advantage of pull-down menus, on-screen buttons, pop-up

windows, inheritance mechanisms, and fill-in-the-blank parameters. Workflows guide agents

dynamically through dialogues with customers which change as required, while managing contacts,

controlling interactions, and updating databases. In a large operation, there may be distinct groups

of agents (e.g. a large dedicated sales outbound team) that use scripting whereas inbound agents

may not. Large contact centres, by their nature and also because of generally higher attrition rates,

may have more requirements to help new agents learn the ropes.

Insurance, transport and travel, public sector and outsourcing respondents are amongst the greatest

users of scripting, with around well over half of respondents from each of these sectors stating that

agents used the application (although not necessarily for 100% of calls, or agents - scripting may be

used widely in financial industries for legal disclaimers, terms and conditions, etc.).

Those in TMT, retail and outsourcing are most likely to use scripting to assist with outbound sales

campaigns, and those in transport and travel and outsourcing are amongst those most likely to use it

dependent on the call type or specific campaign.

None of the manufacturers responding to our survey use scripting in any way. While this appearance

of the absolute rejection of scripting in this sector should be placed in statistical context, and

manufacturing vertical market consistent large part of B2B sales and consumer helplines (which may

have a great variety of queries to answer), neither of which are typically suited to a heavily-scripted

environment.

70

Figure 43: Use and type of scripting, by vertical market

45%

42%

38%

33%

30%

29%

17%

14%

13%

13%

27%

19%

25%

17%

10%

14%

17%

14%

25%

14%

9%

13%

10%

21%

17%

10%

13%

8%

9%

15%

19%

33%

7%

17%

5%

13%

38%

12%

36%

35%

31%

33%

60%

43%

67%

67%

63%

50%

100%

51%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Insurance

Public Sector

Outsourcing

Transport & Travel

Housing

TMT

Utilities

Services

Retail & Distribution

Finance

Manufacturing

Average

Use and type of scripting, by vertical market

For all agents For new agents

For outbound agents Sometimes, dependent on call or campaign

No scripting

71

Small contact centres are less likely to implement scripting for all agents, but are almost twice as

likely to use it as assistance for their new agent intake. Larger contact centres are far more likely to

use scripting for outbound and also depending upon campaign or call type. As agent in smaller

operations will tend to have to handle a wider range of queries - as agent groups tend to be less

specialised than in larger contact centres - it could be viewed that the relatively low use of scripting

is disadvantaging them.

Figure 44: Use and type of scripting, by contact centre size

21%

30%

31%

27%

19%

10%

11%

14%

4%

8%

14%

8%

6%

14%

20%

12%

56%

50%

46%

51%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Small

Medium

Large

Average

Use and type of scripting, by contact centre size

For all agents For new agents

For outbound agents Sometimes, dependent on call or campaign

No scripting

72

Those respondents who used scripting were generally enthusiastic about the benefits they had

received. In particular, the assistance with compliance was particularly well-thought-of, as was the

consistency of data capture (as the same information is collected each time, with no short-cuts or

missed questions). 75% of respondents found that scripting was effective or very effective at

standardising interactions with customers - of course, this only helps quality of the 'average'

interaction is high to begin with.

Figure 45: The effectiveness of scripting

Secondary benefits around reducing call handling times (through a structured call flow) and

particularly as an agent training tool were also reported, with 58% of respondents also saying that

scripting was an effective tool for assisting with cross-selling and up-selling. Using scripting to

facilitate call wrap-up was still a net positive, but is seen as being less useful than other factors.

It seems fair to say from looking at these results that, while overly-scripted conversations are

frustrating for both caller and agent, a dynamic script or prompt which guides an agent through a

conversation and provides relevant information and suggestions is certainly worth considering and

tends to yield positive results, particularly if the level of ‘hand-holding’ that the script provides can

be tailored to the experience of the agent.

12%

15%

18%

20%

25%

33%

40%

45%

33%

40%

35%

50%

50%

45%

30%

25%

30%

30%

20%

8%

5%

8%

23%

7%

10%

5%

5%

10%

5%

4%

5%

5%

4%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Reducing agent training needs

Reducing call wrap-up time

Supporting cross selling and upselling

Reducing call handling times

Standardising interactions with customers

Capturing data consistently

Assisting with compliance and auditability

The effectiveness of scripting

Very effective Effective Neutral Ineffective Very ineffective

73

Despite these positive responses from users, scripting has had a bad name, engendered by the

uncomfortable-sounding scripts often used by outbound sales agents, particularly those from

offshore. Part of this problem is that the agent can sound robotic after delivering the same spiel

dozens of times, but perhaps as important, there is also the fact that outbound sales calls are

generally not well-received by customers, so anything that is associated with them (be it scripting,

offshore agents, silent calls, etc.) will have a negative connotation to overcome in any case.

Figure 46: Inhibitors to scripting

One of the biggest objections to scripting is that every conversation is different. While this is

certainly true, readers should be aware that contemporary solutions offer a whole spectrum of

scripting, from tight to loose, with the latter simply offering checkpoints within the conversation:

much of the negativity around scripting comes from familiarity only with the tight, constrained

version, and as this chart shows, contact centre management strongly believe that neither

customers nor agents like scripting (and seemingly, neither do the people at the top of the

organisation, who appear to hand down non-scripting edicts).

5%

5%

30%

32%

40%

45%

5%

23%

35%

48%

45%

35%

30%

40%

20%

18%

10%

7%

35%

27%

15%

2%

5%

3%

25%

5%

10%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Too expensive

Takes too long to produce the script

Strategic decision by senior management

Agents don't like it

Customers don't like it

Every interaction is different

Inhibitors to scripting

Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree

74

Scripting is much more than a series of dialogue prompts, as it is now more about designing the

customer experience and journey for a particular type of interaction - for example, making an

insurance claim - using design sessions fitting together workflow, data sources and dialogue. People

with less experience of modern-day scripting often think the robotic ‘scripted conversation’

experience is what scripting creates, and indeed, many of the respondents to this questionnaire

believe that there are too many variables to anticipate within a conversation and that letting agents

make the best decision about the conversation is really the only way to handle things. However,

real-time decision engines are an example where online resources can be leveraged to work within

the contact centre as well: real time responsiveness in an online environment is achieved through

automated decision-making built on a set of business rules which identify pre-defined customer

profiles and the solutions, products and data that are suitable for presentation to the customer.

The design environment that new scripting solutions provides can use existing back end resources

without further development, so scripts no longer have to anticipate every possible alternative. Data

gathered during conversations, combined with customer profiling, trigger appropriate responses

which can be immediately presented to the customer, which is beneficial for customer and agent

alike. As such, dynamic scripting can be considered as one part of a group of solutions aimed at

reducing the complexity of the agent's desktop while improving the quality of the interaction. The

next section looks at optimising the quality of customer interactions through a unified agent

desktop, a key supporting feature of which is the ability to define call scripts, either as a flow of data

capture screens, or as a set of actual words or prompts. Simple, non-technical tools enable

supervisors and managers to define these call flows, the data required and the scripts/prompts to be

used.


HAVE YOU NOTICED ANY CHANGES IN HOW SCRIPTING IS BEING USED? HOW DO BUSINESSES TEND TO USE THIS?

Thankfully scripting has moved on a long way from stilted word-for-word

speeches. Today’s ‘scripting’ systems support contact centre agents by providing

guidance on what they are expected to achieve and presenting relevant data at

the right time. Of course there are times in the process when exact scripts need to be used – such as

compliance statements in a financial transaction; graphical script presentation allows mandatory

statements to be highlighted.

Modern scripts also capture extended Management Information without adding overhead to the

agent’s core task. This means you can use champion-challenger techniques to identify the best

routes through a call to achieve your business aims.

75

CALL-BACK & CALL-ME REQUESTS

ContactBabel carried out a large-scale survey of the public that explored why customers notoriously

hate queuing to speak to a contact centre agent, yet seemed far more acceptant to wait in an actual

physical queue, often for a longer time.

Figure 47: Reasons given for dislike of contact centre queuing

Reason for disliking queue

Average score from 10 where 10 is “extremely frustrating”

% of public scoring this at a maximum 10

Not knowing how much longer you'll have to wait

8.7 61%

Repetitive announcements 8.0 45%

Having to restate account information already given earlier in the call

8.0 45%

Can't do anything else in the meantime

7.9 46%

The music you have to listen to 7.3 39%

Apart from the fact that customers have a lot of strongly felt reasons for disliking phone queues, the

key finding from this table is that 61% of the public hate not knowing how much longer they will be

waiting. This is less of a problem when waiting in a shop to speak to an assistant, as although they

cannot give you an exact statement of when someone can help, the queuing system allows a

customer to see how many people are ahead of them, to estimate their own wait time, and exercise

some level of control over the situation. This makes queuing psychologically easier for the customer,

even if the actual waiting time is significantly longer than it would be in a contact centre queue.

The phenomenon of 'Dentist-Chair Time' - time which seems to stretch out to infinity - is very much

active in the contact centre world. ACD statistics from thousands of contact centres over many years

indicate that an average wait time is around 20-30 seconds. However, when the public was asked to

estimate the time they usually (not exceptionally) spent waiting to speak to a contact centre, the

average answer was 11½ minutes - 27 times longer than the reality.

76

Clearly, trimming 10% off a queue time isn't going to make a lot of difference to the perception of

the caller, even though it may be a very difficult task for the contact centre to carry out. If customers

aren't informed of wait time, they may become discouraged and frustrated as hold time drags on.

This can lead to increased abandonment and even if the caller does decide to hold on, this

experience starts the call off badly leaving the agent with a lot to make up. Customers waste time

complaining about their experiences and may even ask additional questions on the call so that they

‘get their money's worth’.

If customers are given the estimated wait time, they may decide to abandon immediately or may

judge that the wait is acceptable and remain on the line to speak with an agent. This alleviates some

customer frustration but means that some of the callers which abandon may not call back - ever -

and it doesn't solve the fact that customers are still having to wait. One solution is to implement a

virtual queuing system, which not only provides customers with information about current queue

conditions but also presents them with various active options, such as remaining on hold or choosing

to be called back when it is their turn.

There are several different varieties of virtual queuing systems: the "First-In, First-Out" (FIFO) system

keeps the customer's place in line by monitoring queue conditions until the estimated wait time hits

a set target, at which point it intercepts incoming calls before they enter the queue, informing

customers of the likely wait time and offering the option of receiving an outbound call in the same

amount of time as if they had personally waited on hold.

At this point, customers choosing to remain on hold go directly into a queue. Customers who opt for

a call-back are prompted to enter their telephone number and possibly some extra details that can

be used for agent selection and skills-based routing, and are then asked to hang up. Virtual

placeholders keep the customers' places in line and the virtual queuing system launches an

outbound call to the customer at the agreed time. When the call-back is answered by the customer,

the system checks the right person is on the line and ready to talk. If this is the case, the call is

routed to the next available suitable agent, who handles it as a normal inbound call.

By replacing real hold time with this virtual version, customers are free to do other things, thus

removing four of the five problems that they have with queues - unknown queue times, hold music,

the inability to do anything else and repetitive announcements.

Scheduled call-back options differ from a FIFO experience, in that customers do not keep their place

in queue, but are called back at some time in the future that is more convenient for them (for

example, when they know they will be back at their desk and available to take a call).

77

There are several types of scheduled virtual queuing:

Datebook-type scheduling systems allow customers to schedule appointments for days in

the future, with times blocked-out that are unavailable for scheduling, and limiting the

number of call-backs available. This system also allows customers that reach a contact

centre out-of-hours to schedule a call-back during normal working hours

Timer scheduling systems promise a call-back after a specific amount of time, regardless of

queue conditions. While this ensures an on-time call-back for the customer, a surge in call

volume or staff reduction due to a shift change can create problems for the contact centre's

queue, lengthening wait times for other callers

Forecast-based scheduling systems offer appointments during times that are expected to

have low call volumes. These times may not be convenient for the customer, and the contact

centre runs the risk that their scheduling may be inaccurate.

Respondents offering a telephony call-back option were asked to state which types of call-back were

presented to callers. The majority of respondents that offered call-back functionality allowed callers

to request a FIFO call-back (i.e. acting as a placeholder in the queue), with a minority allowing

customers to specify a scheduled time.

Figure 48: Types of telephony call-back offered to customers (only from respondents offering telephony call-back)

Type of call-back

Proportion of respondents offering call-back that use this

FIFO (first-in, first-out) - holds the caller's place in the queue, then calls once they are at the front

75%

Forecast-based (called back at a time to suit the contact centre) 30%

Timed (called back at or before a specific time, regardless of queue conditions)

30%

Datebook (caller can specify a day to be called back on) 18%

More than half of respondents who offered call-back reported that FIFO placeholder call-backs were

far more requested than one of the delayed call-back types. On analysing the contact centre activity

type (i.e. sales or service), those callers making sales enquiries were more likely to want a

placeholder-type of call-back. This could possibly be explained by the differing states of mind of

customers calling to purchase something, or to make a query or payment. The former are more

likely to have chosen to call the contact centre to make a purchase that they are enthusiastic about,

and/or which is time-sensitive, and as such, want to speak to the business as soon as possible.

78

The use of a website 'call-me' button (which initiates an outbound call at a time specified by the

recipient) is weighted towards operations that carry out significant sales, but is present only in the

case of 13% of this year’s respondents. We would expect to see this continue to increase

significantly, and play an important part in providing customer support especially via mobile /

smartphone channels, especially if the call request is delivered to the agent with context for example

the details of the online interaction that resulted in a callback request and/or the customer’s history

and profile.

19% of respondents offer a telephony queue call-back option, and only around 10% of respondents

announce the position of the call in the queue. 23% of respondents use screen-popping

functionality, putting information about the caller and possibly their requirements on the agent

desktop as the call is delivered, which is more likely to be used in larger operations.

Figure 49: Use of website and queue call-back options and queue position announcements, by contact centre size

20%

22%

12%

10%

21%

9% 9%

12%

32%

25%

18%

7%

23%

19%

13%

10%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

Screen-pop of customer detailsbased on CLI/IVR information

Callback option in the telephonyqueue

Callback button on the website Announcement of caller position intelephony queue

Use of website and queue call-back options and queue position announcements, by contact centre size


79

Respondents indicate that telephony call-back tends not to be universally available to callers, with

businesses only offering it after a certain period of wait time or once the queue becomes so long

that it triggers the functionality to be offered. 48% of respondents trigger call-back functionality

based on the actual time that the customer has spent waiting, with almost a quarter looking at the

estimated wait time based on ACD statistics. 28% of respondents use a mixture of actual and

expected queue time.

Figure 50: Triggers for offering call-back functionality

Actual time spent waiting in the queue

48%

Estimated wait time based on ACD statistics

24%

Both of these28%

Triggers for offering call-back functionality

80

42% of respondents using call-back state that it is offered after the caller has spent between one and

two minutes in the queue, although 21% say that it takes longer than five minutes before call-back is

offered, and which point many customers have already given up.

Figure 51: Typical queue time before call-back is offered

Less than 1 minute

12%

1-2 minutes42%

2-3 minutes17%

3-5 minutes4%

5-10 minutes13%

Over 10 minutes

8%

Don't know / NA4%

Typical (actual or estimated) queue time before a call-back is offered to a customer

81

Of those who are offered a call-back, most respondents report that fewer than a quarter of callers

chose this option. This may be because customers lack confidence that the business will call back

when they say they will, are relatively unfamiliar with the technology and/or do not have the call-

back option offered to them early enough and so have already abandoned the call.

Figure 52: Proportion of customers in telephony queue accepting offer of call-back

The previous finding is concerning, as call-back has great potential for both customers and

businesses: virtual queuing and call-back, when implemented - and explained properly to customers

- can be a win-win for both business and customer by:

Increasing customer satisfaction

Reducing average speed to answer

Reducing call abandonment rates

Reducing call lengths as customers should spend less time complaining and adding-on

unnecessary queries "while they're on..."

Reducing toll-free costs, as virtual queuing time does not incur telephone charges.

Less than 25%56%

26-50%26%

51-75%9%

Don't know9%

Proportion of customers in telephony queue accepting offer of call-back

82

Respondents offering telephony call-back functionality stated clearly that is was most useful for

managing call volumes and spikes in busy periods, and thus improving customer satisfaction and

experience. Being able to spread calls out over the day and allow callers to keep their place in the

queue - without actually having to queue – is seen by users as being of great use to both company

and customer.

Telephony call-back is not seen by businesses as having much of a positive effect upon reducing

agent stress and pressure to achieve key metrics, nor is it viewed in the context of maximising sales

opportunities from customers who would otherwise go elsewhere. No respondents considered it

particularly useful in reducing their freephone costs from customers who were queueing at the

businesses’ expense from considerable amount of time. It is not to say that telephony call-back does

not provide these benefits, just that respondents do not use call-back with these in mind.

Figure 53: Effectiveness of telephony call-back functionality

43%38%

9%5%

43%50%

48%

5% 14%

13% 13%

26%

27%27%

17%

64%59%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Managing callvolumes (e.g.

managing & avoidingspikes)

Improving customersatisfaction &

experience

Reducing agent stressand pressure to

achieve KPIs

Maximising salesopportunities

Reduce freephonecosts

Effectiveness of telephony call-back functionality

Don't know

Not useful

Somewhat useful

Very useful

83

Looking at the perceived effectiveness of website call-back functionality, it is worth noting that

respondents believed web call-back was particularly beneficial for improving the customer

experience, and thus satisfaction.

A significant proportion of respondents did not believe that it particularly affected call volumes, and

although a greater proportion noted its use in maximising sales opportunities, more respondents

surprisingly did not appreciate this benefit, which is arguably one of the main features of website

call-back.

Figure 54: Effectiveness of website call-back functionality

62%

31%23%

18%9%

31%

31%

23% 36%

18%

8%

31%

31%

27%

36%

8%

23%18%

36%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Improving customersatisfaction &

experience

Managing callvolumes (e.g.

managing & avoidingspikes)

Maximising salesopportunities

Reducing agent stressand pressure to

achieve KPIs

Reduce freephonecosts

Effectiveness of website call-back functionality

Don't know

Not useful

Somewhat useful

Very useful

84

Queue management and call abandonment rates

Offering an in-queue call-back option seems to have a positive effect on call abandonment rates,

with those doing so having an abandoned call rate around 20% lower than those who do not offer

this option, similar findings to previous year’s figures.

However, announcing the position of the caller in the queue seems to have much less of a positive

outcome, with very similar call abandonment rates.

A tentative conclusion can be drawn that call abandonment rates can be reduced best through

actual actions that benefit customers, such as calling then back. Simply providing them with more

information about the queue situation (which may be negative) could encourage customers to

abandon the call and ring back later. However, having this knowledge and actively being able to

choose what to do may well make the customer think more positively about the company (in that

they haven’t had to waste any great amount of time) but without a call-back option the customer

will not have managed to do what they set out to.

85

OUTBOUND IN THE CLOUD

While the pay-as-you-go, or monthly rental model which was one of the main attractions of cloud /

managed services is still an attractive proposition, it is far less important today than it was three or

four years earlier. Solution providers point out that CPE deployments can now often be paid for in an

Opex model, and that the movement to cloud is more about the functionality, agility and scalability

that this model offers.

It is also the case that operations have generally become more complex, certainly in the number of

channels offered and the proportion of interactions going through them. It is no longer possible for

many companies simply to focus upon voice, and the attendant need to provide a single view of

customer regardless of channel acts as an inhibitor to the siloed approach.

Looking at inhibitors to cloud-based solutions, concern over data security is still one of the most

important factors holding back the movement to cloud, although solution providers point out now

that the concerns that potential customers hold seem to be much more specific to their business,

rather than being a wide-ranging, generic fear of losing control.

One of the main differences to have occurred in the past three or four years is that cloud is now

seen as a genuine alternative to CPE for even the largest of enterprises, not just smaller operations.

Some solution providers have stated that they originally focused their product and marketing efforts

on the small and medium contact centre sectors, but have been surprised by the interest shown by

those with many hundreds (if not thousands) of agents, and have changed their strategy and

marketing approaches appropriately. There is an increased familiarity and trust in cloud-based

solutions, both in decision-makers’ personal (i.e. non-business) lives, and in the prevalence of cloud-

based enterprise applications, which is meant that cloud is no longer a particularly tough sell.

Solution providers note that there has been great growth in cloud solutions that support outbound

sales activity, where the pay-as-you-go model allows outsourcers to have some control over their

profit margins depending on the amount of work that they have, as well as benefiting from the

immediate use of added functionality that cloud-based solutions provide. It is common for cloud

providers to tightly integrate with CRM and contact management packages (e.g. Salesforce.com),

and adding dialling functionality supports the consultative style of selling, giving agents the

opportunity to read up about customers before they dial. This is not just the case for traditional

contact centres, but also for organisations which may not see themselves as having a contact centre,

but which carry out large amounts of sales communication with customers and prospects, albeit in

perhaps a more informal environment. Cloud-based solutions offer such enterprises the benefit and

efficiency of the contact centre world, without the high levels of sunk cost and operational and

technical expertise that a CPE solution would demand.

86

Of UK contact centres that use dialling technology, separate ContactBabel surveys indicate that

around 15-20% of dialler functionality is currently deployed through a cloud-based solution, with the

majority being on-premise solutions that are owned and managed by the users. Having said that,

58% of current on-premise dialler users expect to migrate to a cloud-based solution within two

years: while this is a rather dramatic increase which may not come to pass in reality, it certainly

shows that cloud is being taken seriously by users of outbound automation.

Figure 55: Dialler deployment model, by contact centre size

15% 13%7%

16%

15%

13%

13%

14%

84%

70%

88%

73%79%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Small Medium Large Unspecified Average

Dialler deployment model, by contact centre size

On-premisesolution - ownedand run by us

Managed servicesolution/privatecloud - ownedand run by athird-party for ourexclusive useDelivered viapublic cloud i.e.multi-tenancy

87


HAS THERE BEEN MUCH UPTAKE OF CLOUD-BASED SOLUTIONS? IS THIS MAINLY DOWN TO COST, OR ARE THERE OTHER BENEFITS AS WELL?

Cloud-based solutions are proving to be very popular. In Rostrvm Solutions’ case

the majority of new customers have employed cloud-based systems over the

past year. However, the reasons for selecting cloud aren’t usually cost – indeed

cloud is often more expensive over the long term.

Key benefits of cloud are:

It’s quick and easy to turn on – so users can prove the business benefit of innovative contact

strategies without expending too much time or money.

It’s flexible – for example location-independent, work-from-home strategies are easy to set

up.

It’s up to date – cloud systems always make the latest software and services available to

users, giving a competitive advantage.

But cloud isn’t appropriate for everyone; for example, contact strategies that demand real-time

integration with on-site databases may not be suitable.

88

THE FUTURE OF OUTBOUND

While predicting the future with any sort of accuracy is by its nature impossible, there are various

ongoing themes and drivers that seem to point the outbound industry in a specific direction:

Driven by consumer complaints, there is likely to be a greater focus and regulation on

reducing or eliminating abandoned calls and enforcing accurate CLI/CLID. The forthcoming

EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is likely to make outbound more difficult

through restricting access to personal information

The boundary between inbound and outbound is likely to merge even further, with

outbound (including email, SMS and smartphone notifications, as well as telephony)

becoming an integral part of customer care

Outbound has already moved a long way away from the traditional cold calling model, and

increased knowledge of customer preferences and personalisation will be vital to

outbound’s rehabilitation with customers. While the majority of businesses currently use

some form of contact list segmentation (for example, looking at gender, age and customer

status), increasing amounts of customer data and the analysis of call outcomes means that

customer segmentation techniques will become more sophisticated and effective

There is likely to be a greater emphasis placed upon the automation of outbound contact:

understanding and analysing the perfect time to communicate with customers and their

preferences for channel may mean that the right agents are either unavailable or that this is

an unsuitable way to communicate with these customers

Although for many businesses it can be enough of a challenge simply to pair a live agent with

a live contact, we would expect to see leading-edge adopters consider personality matching

techniques in the future. Solutions exist where the personality profiles of customers and

agents can be identified, and the resulting customer and agent segmentation can allow the

business to have certain types of agent calling customers with the same personality type,

increasing empathy, customer satisfaction and revenue. We would also expect to see a

greater increase in personalised service by pairing agents and customers who have spoken

together before

As more people use a smartphone as their primary means of communication, businesses

must continue to re-evaluate the best means of communicating with customers based upon

the individual requirements and activities. An omnichannel approach, which can detect the

time and method by which the customer has contacted the business previously, can analyse

and predict the most successful ways of doing so in the future. It is likely that a multiple

channel approach will become popular, such as sending an email or SMS first, seeing

whether the customer interacts with it, and then placing an outbound call at an appropriate

time

89

The analysis of big data and the attendant timely recognition of potential opportunities and

triggers means that outbound communications can become welcomed as adding to the

customer experience: in effect, the business provides the customer with information or an

opportunity to communicate before they realise they even need it. This proactive approach

will be driven by a more sophisticated understanding of the customer’s thought processes

and closer analysis of customer preferences and the results that similar groups of customers

have experienced through this method before. Analysts talk about “the moment of

opportunity”, and although identifying and acting upon this with the right resource will be a

difficult journey for organisations to fulfil, it leads to potentially great benefits for both

customer and business

The inbound contact centre world has changed greatly over the past decade, with the

former focus on call duration having been moved very firmly into the background, with a

focus now being on customer satisfaction and first contact resolution. This change has been

as a result of many of the low value calls having been shifted to self-service (whether via

phone or web), leaving the more complex, high-value, high opportunity calls. We would

expect to see a similar pattern develop within the outbound industry: not only are there far

more personalised customer service calls being made, but also the opportunity now exists to

make personalised outbound sales calls as well. The wealth of information potentially

available about the customer, their likely intentions and even their type of personality gives

salespeople greater opportunity to engage successfully and make a sale. In tandem with

sophisticated customer profiling and solutions that screen out unanswered calls or

voicemails, the opportunity exists for outbound calling to be less of a scattergun, high-

intensity approach, and more about delivering relevant services and offers to the customer

at the correct time. Conjecturally, this may already be happening, as it is noticeable that the

agent attrition rate in outbound contact centres (historically extremely high), has seen a

considerable decrease in both the UK and US over recent years, suggesting that the nature

of the work has changed

There are great opportunities to improve the dynamism of scripting depending upon the

direction of the conversation and the customer profile. Static scripts should perhaps now be

used only for the most inexperienced of agents, and the success or otherwise of specific

dynamic scripts should be assessed and fed back into the system, allowing a greater

understanding of what works, to whom, and when

There will be greater sophistication in the monetisation and quantification of proactive

customer contact. Not only does the proactive engagement of the customer or prospect

reduce inbound call volumes and costs, but it also has a positive effect on revenue and

customer loyalty. At the moment, this can be difficult to quantify but we expect large

organisations to be able to analyse and justify in terms of profitability what can be a

considerable expenditure.

90


ARE YOU SEEING A CHANGE IN THE NATURE OF OUTBOUND CALLING? HOW ARE YOUR SOLUTIONS DEVELOPING TO ADDRESS THIS AND WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE IN TERMS OF FUTURE FUNCTIONALITY FROM OUTBOUND SOLUTIONS?

Outbound calling used to be a ‘numbers game’ - make more calls and you’ll

make more sales, collect more debt etc. Outbound calling is changing to improve

customer contact and is incorporating Precision Dialling, which uses intelligence

gained about contacts to optimize dialling activities. Precision Dialling gives you the optimum chance

of making contact with your customers because you dial:



email;

and the right people – making sure your calls are handled by appropriately skilled agents.

To use intelligence you’ve gained about each customer to programme your dialler you need good

management reports and records. Look at individual customer records and use your information

about when inbound callers called you to decide when to call them. Think about it – if a person calls

you at, say, 4pm it’s a good bet that they will be receptive to you calling them around that time.

One thing about outbound that’s unlikely to change any time soon is that, no matter how a person

contacted you – Twitter, email etc. – if it’s a complaint it’s ALWAYS better to respond using the

phone – social media is too public and a call resolves the issue faster than email.

91

ABOUT ROSTRVM SOLUTIONS

Rostrvm Solutions is a British software company. We design, develop and support rostrvm, a

modular suite of applications for managing and blending all of your inbound and outbound

communications, with clear and accurate reporting, available on any device.

For multichannel, blended contact

rostrvm provides intelligent, data driven, skills-based routing for your contact centre. Whether it’s

precision dialling, effective call queuing or multi-site, multichannel contact handling, everyone is

looked after.

To track your progress, rostrvm’s performance management tools deliver contact centre and back

office performance metrics. You can see business outcomes and real-time and historical

management information across all contact media and supporting business processes. Added to that

is call recording for quality assessment, training and compliance.

Another key rostrvm feature is Desktop optimisation. Streamlined desktops with integrated

functions save time and money. Our applications for the contact centre and back office will ensure

your operation is totally efficient.

The rostrvm suite is a truly integrated platform that supports increased functionality. It will overlay

your existing systems both in the Cloud and on your site so you don’t have to throw away your

investment but can enhance it cost effectively and with minimal risk. We provide support and

improve any IT environment and telephone system.

Our commercial frameworks will really benefit your business; rostrvm works on site or hosted in the

cloud and can be acquired on a capex, opex, subscription or pay-per-use basis. It’s completely

scalable and facilitates requirements like remote working.

As a privately-held company Rostrvm Solutions maintains a strong culture of independence, which is

increasingly rare in our market sector. We see our independence as a major benefit to our

customers and partners - it guarantees the openness of our technology and the objectiveness of our

approach and advice

Our dedicated team of experts, based in Woking, Surrey, have over 30 years’ experience in the field

and are skilled in delivering tailored solutions and a unique combination of benefits that leave our

competition standing.

As a result, we have very loyal and long-standing customers, who rely on us for the provision and

support of their core contact handling and process management functions.

Find out more

Visit www.rostrvm.com to read our case studies and learn more about our products, services and

customers.

Or why don’t you drop us a line or give us a call to arrange a meeting? We’ll make it worth your

while!

Call us on 01483 494 690. Email: [email protected]

Rostrvm Solutions Limited, Dukes Court, Dukes Street, Woking, Surrey GU21 5RT United Kingdom

ABOUT CONTACTBABEL

ContactBabel is the contact centre industry expert. If you have a question about how the industry

works, or where it’s heading, the chances are we have the answer.

The coverage provided by our massive and ongoing primary research projects is matched by our

experience analysing the contact centre industry. We understand how technology, people and

process best fit together, and how they will work collectively in the future.

We help the biggest and most successful vendors develop their contact centre strategies and talk to

the right prospects. We have shown the UK government how the global contact centre industry will

develop and change. We help contact centres compare themselves to their closest competitors so

they can understand what they are doing well and what needs to improve.

If you have a question about your company’s place in the contact centre industry, perhaps we can

help you.

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.contactbabel.com

Telephone: +44 (0)191 271 5269

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.contactbabel.com/

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