We often get calls from different brands in our day to day life who want to inform us about their brands, products and services. Such calls are outbound calls. Usually, the goal is to get in touch with new leads or follow up with old ones. Outbound calls are more proactive and focused on making sales.
Traditionally this process is initiated from the call centers of brands and businesses where people contact the potential customers or cold leads. Now, this trend has changed. Businesses are using software instead of human sales representatives to make outbound calls. This change is due to the inefficiency of using human sales representatives alone and high cost.
Now businesses are using AI call centers or hybrid call centers for outbound purposes. In AI call centers, AI agents improve reach and efficiency in outbound campaigns. Businesses no longer have to rely on human agents alone to handle large-scale outbound tasks; they can now use voice systems powered by AI to do it faster and more accurately.
In this post, we will discuss how AI outbound calling is better than traditional outbound calling and which are the best software for this purpose. In the coming blog of this series we will compare and contract AI outbound calling software and find out which one is the best out of all.
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What are Outbound Calls?
Outbound calls are the calls which are initiated by brands and businesses to reach their customer pool and leads. Usually, the goal is to get in touch with new leads or follow up with old ones. Outbound calls are more proactive and focused on making sales.
Outbound calls are made for many purposes, some of them are as follow:
- Reaching out to new leads or cold prospects.
- Following up with clients who have expressed interest in a particular service.
- Scheduling appointments or renewals.
- Conducting surveys or feedback collection.
What is the Difference between AI Outbound Calling and Traditional Outbound Calling
AI and traditional outbound calling are two different ways of tapping into customer pools and leads but one is by AI agents and the other is done by human agents, respectively.
AI outbound calling is comparatively more efficient and through it businesses reach out to more people in less time as compared to traditional calling. Let’s explore the differences between these two methods in detail:
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AI Outbound Calling Vs Traditional Outbound Calling |
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| Features | AI Outbound Calling | Traditional Outbound Calling |
| Who makes the call | AI voice systems automatically make calls to leads and potential customers | Human agents manually make calls to leads and potential customers |
| Call volume | It can handle thousands of calls at the same time | Volume of traditional calling is limited by the number of available agents |
| Speed | Fast and Instant dialing because of AI systems and software | Slower process due to manual dialing |
| Availability | Available round the clock because AI agents don’t need breaks of rest time | Limited to working hours |
| Personalization | It uses all the accessible data to personalize calls automatically | Depends on agent memory and preparation |
| Scalability | Easy to scale up or down instantly without any additional hiring or firing | Scaling requires hiring more agents |
What is AI Outbound Calling Software?
AI outbound calling software are AI call centers that automatically make phone calls to customers or prospects instead of relying only on human agents. These tools can dial numbers, speak to prospects and leads using AI voices, understand their responses using natural language understanding and sentiment analysis, and take action based on what the customer says.
How do AI Outbound Calling Software do this?
AI outbound calling systems use technologies like natural language processing, sentiment analysis, text-to-speech, speech to text, and Automatic Speech Recognition to converse with prospects in real time. Let’s have overview of how the whole system works:
- Speech Recognition: The Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system listens to prospects and voice inputs are transcribed into text via speech-to-text system.
- Interpretation: Natural Language Understanding systems understand the context and extract the key insights from the transcribed conversation.
- Response Generation: Conversations Module generates the correct response by accessing the relevant data available in the knowledge base. This response is initially in the form of text.
- Response Delivery: Text-to-Speech (TTS) System transcribes textual response generated by conversation module to voice note to respond to prospect aptly.
Types of Outbound Calls AI Outbound Calling Systems Can Make
- Lead generation, warm and cold calls: AI agents can make outbound calls to inform potential customers about the brand and its products and services, to ignite interest in them and to convert cold or warm leads to customers.
- Sales calls to existing customers: AI agents can call customers to up-sell or cross-sell a company’s products or services, offer upgrades, or promote special deals.
- Proactive customer service: AI agents can make calls in advance to prevent issues, answer questions early, or guide customers at the right time. For example, calling a customer and telling them that the app might not function properly on Monday from 9 am to 10 am due to a scheduled update.
- Follow-ups and scheduled callbacks: Agents can call customers to follow up on previous interactions and make scheduled callbacks.
- Customer retention calls: AI agents can make outbound calls to existing customers to ask them about their satisfaction and address concerns to maintain the relationship of loyalty and prevent churn.
- Customer feedback collection: AI agents can make calls to gather opinions, experiences, and suggestions from customers about a product, service, or overall experience.
- Appointment scheduling: AI Agents can call potential customers to schedule appointments for sales meetings or consultations.
List of AI Calling Software
Here is the list showing platforms that promote AI outbound calling for businesses and brands:
- Bigly Sales
- WooSender
- CloudTalk
- Five9
- Genesys
- Nextiva
- Lindy
- HubSpot
- Synthflow
- ElevenLabs
In our coming blogs of this series, we will compare and contrast these platforms to show which software stands out and is the best pick for your business. So, stay tuned to get exclusive information about each of them!
How to get Started with AI Outbound Calling
For AI calling, you require an AI calling platform that provides you with a calling facility to contact your prospect, leads and customers automatically using AI.
Identify your needs and preferences first. Search for the top notch platforms that align with your identified needs and preferences.
After a thorough search, you will get a list of platforms. Now, use their test versions to find out whether AI voices are natural, human-like, clear and friendly or rigid and robotic. Make sure that AI platforms must be compliant with cold calling and telemarketing regulations of your country or state.
While testing, ask AI agents similar questions a lead might ask an agent and see how well they respond.
Also, make sure that the interface of the platform should be easy to use. Some tools are no-code, which means that they do not require any programing stills or coding for initiation. Others may require some technical steps like connecting APIs or using simple Python commands.
If you have a technical background or are comfortable with coding, you can choose the platform that requires some technical steps for initiation. Otherwise go for non-coding platforms
How to get Started with AI Cold Calling
If you want to replace traditional outbound calling and customer service setup with an AI outbound calling system, it’s very important to choose a reliable system with clear, natural, and human-like voices that is compliant with regulations, too.
Choose the Right AI Calling App or Software
For AI calling, you require an AI calling platform that provides you with a calling facility to contact your prospect, leads and customers automatically using AI.
Identify your needs and preferences first. Search for the top notch platforms that align with your identified needs and preferences.
After a thorough search, you will get a list of platforms. Now, use their test versions to find out whether AI voices are natural, human-like, clear and friendly or rigid and robotic. Make sure that AI platforms must be compliant with cold calling and telemarketing regulations of your country or state.
While testing, ask AI agents similar questions a lead might ask an agent and see how well they respond.
Also, make sure that the interface of the platform should be easy to use. Some tools are no-code, which means that they do not require any programing stills or coding for initiation. Others may require some technical steps like connecting APIs or using simple Python commands.
If you have a technical background or are comfortable with coding, you can choose the platform that requires some technical steps for initiation. Otherwise go for non-coding platforms
Build your Knowledge Base
After choosing the AI cold calling platform, you have to train it by providing all the relevant data regarding your brand, products and services. Make sure to provide all the necessary information that an AI sales representative must have to answer the prospect promptly and effectively.
The data you have provided to your AI platform will decide how your AI agents will react to leads. So, it’s necessary to provide it with accurate, relevant, and persuasive information.
To build a compelling knowledge base, train your AI platform with following information:
- Provide core company information like product descriptions, pricing structures, key differentiators, and case studies. This information makes AI agents able enough to answer questions about costs, company operations, and product details
- Train your AI platform by teaching them companies’ sales methodology via sales playbooks that show how conversation flows, qualifying questions, and escalation paths.
- Provide information about competitor and market insights because prospects can ask about competitor comparisons, industry trends, and common objections. This type of information will help AI agents to handle resistance and position your products or services as the best solution.
- Make your knowledge base highly dynamic. Update it whenever you update anything in your business like features, sales strategies etc. to ensure that your agent answers correctly and efficiently all time
Stay Informed Regarding Compliance Regulations
Before choosing any platform, make sure that your selected platform is compliant with your country’s or state’s regulations. This is because AI outbound and cold calling are heavily regulated and any small mistake or violation can lead to high fines and penalties.
Test Calls and Monitor Performance
Once your AI calling system is trained well, test it.
For testing, call your team members using your AI calling systems and find out how well your system performs. Check the voice clarity, response accuracy, objection handling, and the overall conversational flow.
Make sure you test your AI in different situations. Note when it performs well and where it makes mistakes. This will help you understand its strengths and areas that need improvement.
After pilot testing, you have got a list of strengths and weaknesses of the system. Work on the weak point to make it the best platform to cater to all the needs of all the prospects, leads, and customers efficiently and effectively.
Finally, set a performance benchmark to track the performance of your AI outbound calling systems.
FAQs about AI Outbound Calling
1: What is AI outbound calling?
AI outbound calling is a process in which business and brands make outgoing calls to prospects, leads and customers using AI agents and AI calling platforms. Main purposes of doing outbound calls are to make prospects aware of your brand’s products and services, proactive customer service, surveys, feedbacks, etc
2: How is AI outbound calling different from traditional outbound calling?
The main difference between the two is who makes the call. In AI outbound calling AI agents prospects, leads and customers whereas in traditional calling human agents perform the task of calling. AI outbound calling is fast, efficient, compliant, easy to scale, personalized, and 24/7 available as compared to traditional services that are slow, less personalized and available for septic time of day (24/7/365, only inform of shifts but its very expensive)
3: What types of outbound calls can AI outbound calling systems make?
AI outbound calling systems can handle many call types, including:
- Lead generation and cold calls
- Sales calls to existing customers
- Follow-ups and scheduled callbacks
- Customer retention calls
- Feedback and survey calls
- Appointment scheduling
- Proactive customer service calls
4: What is AI outbound calling software and how does it work?
AI outbound calling software are AI call centers that automatically make phone calls to customers or prospects instead of relying only on human agents. These tools can dial numbers, speak to prospects and leads using AI voices, understand their responses using natural language understanding and sentiment analysis, and take action based on what the customer says.
5: Which AI software can be used for outbound calling?
Following are the popular AI software for outbound calling:
- Bigly Sales
- CloudTalk
- Five9
- Genesys
- Nextiva
- Lindy
- HubSpot
- Synthflow
- ElevenLabs