Despite recent legislation such as STIR/SHAKEN meant to battle robocallers, many consumers still receive unwanted calls daily. And they are fed up. Approximately 8 out of 10 Americans will not answer unknown calls at all. And if the caller ID reads "potential spam,"? Well, you can guess the answer.
The success of your outbound calling campaign depends on the quality of your caller ID solutions. In today's robocall-heavy environment, savvy consumers will not answer unknown calls or those labeled "spam" or "scam." Your contact rate depends on cultivating public trust, an essential function of accurate and trustworthy caller IDs.
Effective DID (Direct Inward Dial) use is key to developing consumer trust and producing an effective calling campaign. The number and quality of DIDs you use are often the difference between success and failure.
DID Usage Basics
Your company relies on DIDs to produce caller IDs for your sales efforts. The number of DIDs you use depends on the number of calls your agents place each day. Outbound call centers generally need between 75 and 250 of these numbers to serve as caller IDs during a campaign, or sometimes more. The number of DIDs needed per campaign varies, as we've covered in best practice discussions in other blog posts. You have to determine what number of DIDs is "enough" to ensure positive outcomes for your company.
Inexpensive DID Problems
Everyone loves a bargain, and call center executives and IT professionals are no exceptions. Many jump at offers from low-cost DID providers, perhaps believing that all DIDs are the same. They reason, "If I can get a DID for as low as $.06 a number, why pay for a premium caller ID solution from a company like Quality Voice & Data?" The answer is that you often get exactly what you pay for. That will cause a lot of trouble, including low answer rates, and potentially blowing our company's reputation.
Low-cost DID providers often sell you numbers that are not "clean." They usually appear as "spam likely" or "scam" the first time you use them because they were recently unassigned by a different customer. These numbers were often misused, collected negative labels, and passed on to the next client. You end up purchasing bad numbers that can harm your sales campaign and invite complaints from fed-up consumers.
Avoiding DID Problems
Responsible DID providers take strict precautions to ensure you receive only quality, clean numbers. Here at Quality Voice & Data, our caller ID solutions include resting our DIDs for a minimum of six months, and in most cases, 12 months, before we assign them to a new customer. That break allows negative labels caused by over-dialing or other issues to fall off and makes the number safe to use.
Another DID problem is the real-time monitoring of phone numbers. Most call center executives and decision-makers do not have an easy way to gather insights on how their DIDs are doing. You may see that your overall answer rates are low, but you cannot access data showing the answer rate for individual numbers. This lack makes it difficult to quickly and efficiently correct the issue. Instead, you unknowingly keep a scam-labeled number in service.
As you know, every day of an outbound calling campaign is essential to its ultimate success. Here at QVD, we give you these necessary insights and perform real-time DID scoring. That way, you can replace poorly performing numbers fast and improve your campaign's success immediately.
The Cost of Poor DIDs
The cost of DIDs may not seem like a big issue for you. After all, in the scheme of a call center's or sales floor's budget, it often amounts to a rounding error. The true cost of problem DIDs is the waste of your agents' time. If they are not reaching consumers because of faulty caller ID solutions, your bottom line suffers in the short and long term.
The expense of the contact list purchase also becomes a problem. To make a profit, you need to get a certain number of contacts from each list you buy. Otherwise, you are simply throwing away money. You end up trashing your list with a low answer rate thanks to low-cost DIDs. This combination is a disaster, ensuring you do not achieve your goals or maximize your ROI.
The QVD Way
At Quality Voice & Data, we understand the issues that call centers face in a robocall world. Due to consumer mistrust, you must establish and maintain your company's reputation as trustworthy. Only quality caller ID solutions can achieve that goal for you.
That's why we offer you proven ways to increase your contact rate with wary consumers. Our solutions work and help promote your success now and in the future. We can provide effective DIDs that enhance communication with current and potential clients and prevent "spam" and "scam" warnings from infesting your caller IDs.
Learn More about QVD Caller ID solutions by filling out our brief online form or calling (888) 656-5111.
Angela Garfinkel currently serves as Director for Quality Voice & Data. With 30+ years of call center and business process outsourcing experience, Angela provides the QVD team with key insights to support product development, marketing and sales.