Overview
Maximizing Your Dialer/Messaging Solution
A hosted dialer and voice messaging system is a central aspect of an agency’s telephone strategy. Not only is it important to pick a solution that is best for the agency’s needs but it’s also important to make sure the technology is being used properly and at maximum efficiency.
While listening to technology experts, emphasis was put on tying information together and making sure it can be moved to whoever needs it. This must be done while still adhering to the CFPB’s rules for compliance.
“The key to successfully integrating a hosted dialer and voice messaging solution into a collection strategy, is ensuring that the integration is not just static and one directional,” said Dusty Whitesell, chief evangelist at LiveVox. “Integration must be made so that all data (voice, account, and agent activity) is unified from all applications and in both directions. Further, that integration must be scalable to support new applications or resources. Failure to do so will handicap efficiency and increase compliance risk. A key example that is often overlooked would be the ability to integrate your CRM, call recording, and PBX applications into your host and dialing system. Inability to do so will leave reporting and recording gaps when prepping for the CFPB. When new applications or new capacity is required, that gap is only compounded leaving operations even more vulnerable.”
Teamwork also comes into play. Dave Bethers, vice president of sales at TCN discussed the importance of working with the vendor to better understand how to decipher gathered information and make the product work harder for the agency.
“The vendor is the expert of the hosted dialer,” said Bethers. “It is critical to combine the vendor’s expertise with the knowledge of your collection company and then, in collaboration, develop an on-boarding plan for going live. This plan should also include daily meetings to review the collected data. A data driven analysis will help measure if you are reaching desired results and see if there needs to be successive approximations or corrections made to maximize the return of the investment.”
In communicating with a vendor, candidness is paramount. In order for effective advice to be given, honest feedback must be provided.
“Hiding information from the vendor can be very hurtful,” said Bethers. “Not revealing your ‘score card’ or how successful the solution is can carry serious consequences. Most commonly, the collection professional thinks that the vendor is trying to trick them, so as a result, they don’t reveal very important base line information up front. Also, just as hurtful is not spending the time communicating expectations and jointly developing ‘working definitions.’ Sometimes the vendor will bring to the table a whole different vocabulary of definitions and metrics. Take the time to come to a consensus including developing definitions that work for both parties so that all information is accurate and both sides see with clarity.”
Reviews
Personalize Automated Voice Messages
Genesys Voice Messaging
- Enables cross-channel contact strategies throughout a customer’s interaction by combining a voice conversation with an out-bound IVR, text message, mobile webpage, or email follow-up.
- Users can personalize each automated voice message with your customer’s name, address or other unique information.
- The predictive pacing algorithms help optimize the balance between wait times and call abandonment by predicting when agents will be-come available, enabling contact centers to maximize agent utilization.
- Users can choose from a variety of voice talent in a variety of languages, dialects and male and female voices.
- Features reporting and monitoring to provide insight into a campaign’s effectiveness. The speech analytics capabilities pro-vides a systematic way to evaluate agents, monitor compliance, identify trends and improve better customer experience.
What Users Say
“Genesys Cloud has helped the City of Edmonton increase portfolio penetration by over 100% and improve our collections revenue by over $600,000 from the year before,” said Shafiq Islam, collections and credit manager for the City of Edmonton.”
Genesys Voice Messaging | Genesys
genesys.com | 888-436-3797
Manage Answering Machine Response
IAT SmartDial
- Dialing tracks various factors to calculate the optimal outbound dialing rate and required resources. Call pacing automatically slows down or speeds up to accommodate changing circumstances in hit-rates, inbound call volume and individual agent work habits.
- The IVR messaging delivers a variety of interactive and non-interactive message options for outbound calling as well as inbound blending and routing. Users can choose from professionally pre-recorded or user-recorded messages with up to 10 variables.
- Users can manage how the dialer responds to detected answering machines for each campaign. The leave messages feature allows users to send answering machine calls back to the IVR to leave the message.
What Users Say
“After having customer service and quality issues with our previous vendor, we reached out to a number of our friends and they suggested IAT’s dialer solution,” said Brian Watkins, president at Southern Oregon Credit Service. “After interviewing several companies, we chose IAT and their cloud-based dialer solution in September 2012 and have been very happy with the results. Our staff was able to learn and use the features easily, working lists and campaigns is simple and effective, and the supervisory features have been very helpful.”
IAT SmartDial | IAT SmartDial Solutions
iatsmartdial.com | 800-574-8801
Cloud Switching for Load Balancing
LiveVox
- Features multiple voice talents, professionally recorded and avail-able in multiple languages.
- The cloud-based switching enables global load balancing through network-layer, real-time presence, routing and screen pops.
- Features skill-based routing and real-time workflow configuration.
- PCI compliant; third-party audited infrastructure.
- Features customizable screen pops and dialer input fields.
- Upon a connection with a consumer, agent-initiated calls are routed to a separate pool of “closer” agents with full data.
- Features agent-less transactions and agent warm transfer to CC or other payment IVR applications.
What Users Say
“LiveVox has been a key differentiator in our ability to rapidly adopt con-tact strategies to changing regulatory and business pressures,” said Michael Mathis, president at Sentry Credit. “In turn, Sentry has been able optimize the returns for our clients while achieving high levels of compliance. From on-demand application scale to the latest compliance tools, LiveVox’s cloud technology provides operational flexibility without the need to sacrifice our budgets, allowing us to focus on investing in high quality agents.”
LiveVox | Livevox
livevox.com | 866-723-9067
Automated Scheduled Callback Reporting
TCN Platform 3.0
- Features editing capabilities of sound files in the call queue con-figurations.
- Within the Agent Gateway interface, calls coming in can be routed one of two ways: to customized recorded messages, or to agents already logged in to outbound dialing campaigns. In this scenario the outbound campaign is automatically paused so priority is given to the live incoming call. Users can then resume outbound campaigns.
- Reporting for scheduled callbacks can be automated.
- Features the ability to add tips to agent dashboard, showcasing agent skills and customer data.
- Features Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) that announces the number of calls ahead and average wait time within the queue.
What Users Say
“TCN was the very best predictive dialer and blast dialer choice for ERI because of the feature to value ratio,” said Katherine Bryant at ERI. “They have exactly what we need at a reason-able price. The true differentiator—TCN’s staff is beyond responsive and helpful, even anticipating our needs as our business has changed and grown. Whether it is presenting enhanced TCN capabilities or supporting us on new regulatory requirements for messages – they take our business very personally.”
TCN Platform 3.0 | TCN, Inc.
tcnp3.com | 866-745-1900