BUSINESS PHONE NEWS

Are You Limited to Only Using Reps that can Work in Your Contact Center? No...

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

The "Great Recession" that began in 2008 resulted in over eight million people loosing their jobs. Many of these people were skilled white collar employees with great phone skills.

As of this year it's reported that only half of the jobs lost since 2008 have been replaced and most have not been replaced by the same high-quality jobs that were lost.

What does this mean for business owners looking to expand but find themselves limited by employable prospects in their immediate geography?

 

Get High Quality Contact Center Reps with a Cloud Contact Center

As you can see from the SafeSoft Solutions video below, a cloud-based contact center that can handle both inbound and outbound call center campaigns require your contact center employees have nothing more than a headset, a computer and an internet connection - anywhere in the world.

If you don't even have a call center now because you don't have qualified employees in your immediate geography, now you can create a call center to generate more sales without investing in a new phone system or expanding your own office to accomodate more "butts in seats".

 

Call Us to Determine Which Cloud Contact Center Vendor is Right for Your Business

SafeSoft is just one of hundreds of "cloud vendors" like Five9, Avaya, TelStar Hosted Services, YTel and others that will promise your business incredible returns for almost no money up front.  Unfortunately your time conducting trials is still worth quite a bit of money so it's important to start your cloud contact center trials with the vendor that's best suited to your unique business environment.

Call us to help sort through all the different vendors. We're independent and we're experienced with all the cloud vendors that want your business. We'll help analyze your specific requirements and then match you to one vendor or a combination of vendors that can deliver what they promise.

 

One Example of Many Cloud Contact Center Solutions

 

Gadget Review: Plantronics' CT14 Headset Phone Connects Your Home Based Call Center Employees For Less

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

One of the big cost-saving benefits for businesses when switching their phone system to a VoIP based solution is they can instantly allow their "desk based" call center employees to work from a home office.

This saves the company the overhead of maintaining an expensive office cubicle and opens up the potential labor pool to a whole lot of qualified U.S. based call center employees who are glad to "do a quality job for less" so long as they can work from a home office.  

This single benefit is one of the biggest reasons many businesses are bringing off-shore call center jobs back to the U.S. that had, in past years, been outsourced to India, the Philippines or some other far away land where they "kind of speak English" but not completely -- and not to the satisfaction of your upset customers calling into your call center.

 

Do Home-Based Call Center Employees Need an Expensive VoIP Phone? No!

The big purchase decision question for businesses trying to properly outfit home office employees so they can tap into the new VoIP enabled office phone system is "How expensive of a phone do home workers need?"

Well if the home-office employee is the CEO of the company, then the most expensive phone that Polycom sells. But what about your call center employees that don't have stock options?

Many VoIP and SIP phone vendors will tell you that you don't need to buy your home-office workers a phone at all, saying "the beauty of our VoIP phone solution is all your home office people need is our 'soft phone' that appears right on the screen of their computer".

Well, in theory, soft phones work just fine -- until the soft phone user has opened up 27 browser windows on their computer or you get confused about using the keyboard and mouse for both their phone call and order fulfillment on their computer at the same time. 

Combining your computer and phone keyboards or trying to get your computer to be a phone is really a recipe for inefficiancy and "angry at the IT guy" home office employees.

 

Split the Different for WAY UNDER $200!

The most important phone feature for your at-home worker is the ability to work hands free. Whether your home-based employee is a call center worker keying an order into their computer or your highest paid sales person just needing to wave his or her hands while giving an empassioned sales pitch, you'll likely not find a "work at home phone" that better splits the cost difference than the Plantronics CT14.

Competitive Intelligence: How Do SafeSoft's Hosted Call Center Solutions Compare to What You're Using Now?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

SafeSoft Solutions, a California based company specializing in hosted call center solutions recently joined Telecom Association in an effort to share with TA's 3,800 members and their business customers why SafeSoft's set of hosted call center solutions, showcased by their "Market Dialer" are different or better than the call center and predictive dialer solutions that many business customers are using now.

Since all of our readers are interested in getting new competitive intelligence to learn about a new service or solution that might be better than what they're using now, step one in introducing any new vendor is having them sit for a "Competitive Self-Analysis Interview."

 

Is SafeSoft's Call Center Solution Better for Your Company than What You're Using Now?

This is what we want to learn so we invited Aaron Kohut, SafeSoft's VP of Sales to answer our standard set of competitive intelligence questions.  

You can listen to the audio interview now with your computer speaker by clicking the audio player below. You can also click here to download the MP3 file.

 

 

The transcript of the interview is published below. Click here to print a transcript.

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Which Hosted Contact Center Predictive Dialing Solution is Right For Your Businesses Call Center Requirements?

A Competitive Self-Assessment of SafeSoft Solutions’ “Market Dialer”

A Business Phone News conversation with Aaron Kohut, the Vice President of SafeSoft Solutions, a hosted contact center solution provider. We've invited Aaron to share with us a competitive self-assessment of their services and solutions including their “Market Dialer” service so our clients know that through the vendors we partner with, our customers are getting the best technology services and solutions available in the marketplace today and tomorrow.

February 2012


DB:  Question #1.  Solution History - Can you give our audience of business end-users and technology consultants a quick history lesson on your services and solutions, how long has this service or solution category been around, and what business solutions or services are they replacing?

 AK:   Back in the early 80’s Predictive Dialers began as an on-premise hardware-based system, so they’ve been around for about 30 years. The hosted platform emerged in the 90s and became more popular as VoIP, (“Voice over IP”), technology was evolving.  Because VoIP offered lower telecom costs which were one of the expensive components, it definitely helped make the cloud-based service affordable and eventually became the preferred solution.

 

 

DB:  Question #2. Primary Customer Markets - Which vertical markets and/or customer types and sizes like your solutions or services best and pay attention to you the most? And, are there any metros where you are especially competitive?

 AK:   One of the great things about the Market Dialer is that it was designed to be universal and fit well into virtually any industry. From banking, to home improvement, to non-profit, and even political campaigning.

Our solutions will improve results in most verticals since we’ve successfully deployed our solution to various industries, and wide range of company sizes from small-to-medium size businesses, all the way to enterprise-level customers with hundreds of employees. The Market Dialer is so easy to use and so customizable that any size company in any industry can realize the benefits of the Market Dialer.

Increase Sales & Appointment Setting 400% Without More Phone Equipment Using a Hosted Predictive Dialer

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Any company that frequently contacts large numbers of prospects or customers by phone can achieve four-fold productivity increases with a hosted predictive dialer.

A predictive dialer is an amazing call center "SaaS" or software as a service solution, and can be particularly beneficial to any business that relies on inside sales people, either working on site or from a home office, to identify new sales opportunities; gather information about their marketplace, their customers, or their competitors; generate revenue; schedule large numbers of appointments; and perform other tasks that require extensive outbound outreach via telephone.

 

Phone Activities Improved by Hosted Predictive Dialing Include:

• 
  Appointment setting
• Cold calling
• Qualification and prioritization of campaign responses
• Nurturing of “hot” leads
• Phone-based sales to new prospects
• Up-sell and cross-sell initiatives to existing clients
• Customer loyalty programs
• Satisfaction surveys
• Market research
• Competitive analysis
• And much, much more!

Without a predictive dialing software package in place, agents waste valuable time repeatedly calling number after number – only to receive busy signals, voice mail messages, no answer, fax machines, or disconnected numbers. This reduces the number of “live” conversations they can conduct, and prevents them from spending as much time as possible interacting directly with their target audience. 

Predictive dialing software helps companies overcome these challenges. Predictive dialer systems are proven to dramatically improve the speed and effectiveness of agents and reduce costs, while allowing a much greater volume of calls to be initiated and maximizing talk time. As a result, business can more rapidly achieve their goals by performing faster, more successful outbound outreach. 

Industries that use hosted predictive dialers include:

• Auto Agents and Dealers
• Banks
• Carpet Cleaners
• Caterers
• Charities
• 
  Churches
• City Municipalities
• Credit and Collections
• Dentists
• Fundraising
• Healthcare
• Health/Fitness Organizations
• Home Improvement
• Insurance Agents and Brokers
• Investment Firms
• Janitorial Services
• Mortgage Services
• Physicians of all types
• Political Campaigns and Polling
• Recreational Leagues and Organizations
• Restaurants
• Retail
• Schools
• Unions
• Veteran Organizations

 

How to Choose a Hosted Predictive Dialing Solution Vendor

Multiple vendors are in the hosted call center marketplace all competing for you to conduct a trial with them.  Vendors worth considering include Five9, SafeSoft Solutions, Avaya, TelStar Hosted Services, InsideSales, YTel, StrataSoft, Front Range, Vocalcom, Angel, Telax, Contactual, Kunnect, ConnectFirst, VICIdial's VICIhost and many others.

If you don't have a hosted call center solution in place then any of these vendors will get you on the right path to increasing the productivity as much as 400% over a call center that does not use predictive dialing (or maybe not).

As with any multi-vendor and multi-application solution, the seemless integration of your existing phones, dial-tone and CRM will be critical to ensuring any productivity gains. Choose the wrong hosted call center solution that does not integrate well with your CRM and who knows what will happen?

That's why you need to work with an independent telecom agent or channel sales partner that has experience working with several different hosted predictive dialer solutions. Only working with an experienced professional can you avoid creating problems that you didn't have before you started down a hosted predictive dialer trial.

To find a channel partner or telecom agent with independent experience helping business customers choose a hosted predictive dialer, click here and scroll down to the "Call & Contact Center" category.

If you are an independent agent or channel partner skilled at helping business end-users choose a hosted call center solution please contact us at Dan@BusinessPhoneNews.com so we can provide you with a complimentary listing in our Recommended Member Directory.