In today’s competitive market, it is not realistic to advertise and expect that new buyers will show up. Even for maintaining existing customers, companies have to offer more incentives and better services. Additionally, the collection of receivables for credit producing markets like financial services and utilities is an unavoidable process that companies have to implement for securing their economic viability.
Outbound contact centers can play a pivotal role in the successful delivery of these efforts by reaching out to existing and potential customers. Proactive customer communications can produce remarkable results for developing brand awareness, penetrate target markets, increase customer lifetime value (CLV), retain existing customers, and recover delinquent debts.

Challenges of outbound campaigns

The delivery of successful outbound campaigns is an intricate process many contact centers struggle to carry out in a manner that maximizes resource utilization. Some of the challenges they encounter are:

• Consumers perceive outbound calling as disruptive, and there are strict regulations that govern it. Thus, it is imperative that the contact center adapt compliance systems and processes. Dynamic control of the campaign delivery is necessary so that outreach is less intrusive and remains within the compliance boundaries.
• Outbound campaigns require a good understanding of the business requirements and comprehensive knowledge of contact center technology. The combination of both is essential for the achievement of positive results.
• The operating cost of the outbound campaigns is high because the utilization of agents is low, and the business results obtained are not sufficient to justify expenses.
• Communicating payment reminders is a delicate and regulated process. Contact centers struggle to reach the correct contact at the right time leading to weak campaign results.

What is a campaign management application

Campaign management applications help contact centers enhance the performance of their outbound campaigns. It accomplishes that by enabling the planning and execution of sophisticated proactive communication strategies. Great campaign management software employs deep machine learning to deliver unprecedented contactability results.
Their goal is to provide a holistic approach that enables campaign managers to control everything from generating a contact list to assessing the performance of an outbound campaign’s execution. Specifically, a campaign management application should cover, campaign administration, list management, campaign execution, campaign monitoring and reporting.
This is a high bill to fit and there are a lot of aspects that differentiate great campaign management applications from the rest. Some of the most important characteristics are described below.

Compatibility with the contact center

A contact center should only consider a campaign management application if it has been developed specifically for modern list campaign management needs. Unlike generic campaign management software, it must integrate intrinsically with leading contact center platforms, utilizing their full capabilities. Hence, it will offer advanced features that generic campaign management software is unable to provide to contact centers.

Omnichannel campaigns

Customers are increasingly relying on their mobile devices for interacting with companies. Campaign management software has to enables the execution of proactive customer communication across multiple channels. Thereby, campaign managers can initiate blended outreach attempts, with escalations, to live agent assistance.

Predictions powered by machine learning

A key success factor of the outbound campaigns is to reach customers at the right moment. Achieving this is challenging, but with deep machine learning a campaign management application can predicting the ‘Best Time to Call’. The objective is to maximize the rates for Live Contact, Right Party Contact, or Business Success.

Automation of administration

The campaign management application should be able to perform autonomously administrative tasks that are triggered by real-time business results, time-related schedules or campaign events. Thus, the burden of manual tasks from administrators is reduced and the performance and productivity of the contact center are being improved.

The right application

Finding a great outbound campaign management software is not a simple task. You may wish to consider CList, our application for outbound campaigns that offers all the above features and many more. To find more about CList click here.