Making second, third, and even fourth attempts on unanswered calls is a best practice for any telesales agent. While salespeople used to have to make notes of each unanswered call, contact center software systems handle this process now. Recycling lists is a helpful way to return these calls but what about using redial rules?
Unanswered calls are a part of every telemarketing and inside sales campaign. With varying schedules, busy lives, and the general distrust of unknown numbers today, you must expect at least some percentage of unanswered calls. But how do you handle these unanswered calls?
What is your contact center’s practice for following up on unanswered calls? Do agents call leads back individually or do you recycle your lists and campaigns? Does the software you use give you the option to incorporate redial rules into your campaigns?
Redial rules help you incorporate a strategic, direct approach to returning unanswered calls. If you haven’t used them before, learn more about utilizing this helpful feature into your dialing campaigns.
What are redial rules?
Redial rules are a set of parameters that enable the system to make another attempt to contact calls that didn’t connect. Managers determine the settings the system should follow, including:
- Which dispositions receive a callback
- No answer
- Busy
- Voicemail
- Failed
- Abandoned
- How long to wait before the next call attempt
- How many call attempts to make
- Whether or not to follow up with an SMS message
When a call is within these parameters, the system places the individual number back into the queue depending on the call back time chosen. There is no need for your agents to remember to make another attempt; the software handles these redials for them.
How do redial rules differ from recycling data?
Recycling data takes a list or an entire campaign, scrubs Live Answers and other selected dispositions and creates a new list to dial. In order to recycle, though, you must wait until the campaign is completed and every lead has been dialed.
Initiate a recycle when your list or campaign is out of new leads to dial. Determine which dispositions to While it is not as time-sensitive to recycle your lists and campaigns, it keeps all of your data together.
Which is better: redialing or recycling?
You can use redialing and recycling for two different purposes. Redialing is useful for a guaranteed call attempt after a set number of hours or days. You don’t have to wait until dialing through the entire list or campaign; redial rules insert attempts back into the current calling queue.
Depending on how long it takes your agents to move through the data on a campaign, callbacks might not happen for days to weeks at a time. If you want to call no answers again in a timely fashion, redial rules are a strategic option.
Once you’ve reached the end of your redials, though, and your campaigns have no more leads, it’s time to recycle your lists. Scrub the dispositions you don’t want to dial then reattach the new list either to your original campaign or create a new one.
Using redial rules and recycling together is the best approach for dialing through your lists. Each has positives to their use; when you combine them, you’ll follow up on more calls and your contact ratios will skyrocket.
