Why You Need Proactive Outbound Forecasting & Scheduling

As we head into the latter half of 2023, customer expectations continue to rise and contact centers play a pivotal role in ensuring organizations are meeting those expectations. Focusing operations solely on inbound activity can lead to a missed opportunity in delivering the most value to your customers. Eric Keller, senior research director at Gartner, states that “receiving proactive outreach leads to a 9% increase in a customer’s value enhancement score.” But planning for outbound activity is very different than inbound. When planning proactive outreach, traditional inbound planning algorithms will not produce accurate staff requirements to improve connects or right-party connects. Contact center leaders need to have the right outbound-optimized tools within their workforce management solution to drive high customer value but also reduce costly compliance risk from dead air and slower dialing due to understaffing.

Let’s explore the value of a workforce management platform with powerful outbound capabilities and how it helps contact center leaders deliver high customer value, reduces compliance risk from dead air and increases operational efficiency.

Enhanced Resource Optimization

Outbound scheduling and forecasting within workforce management enable contact center leaders to optimize their resource allocation efficiently. By analyzing historical data and trends from their dialer, contact center managers can accurately predict outbound call volumes – helping them to schedule the appropriate number of agents at the right times and drive faster dialing overall. This proactive approach prevents overstaffing or understaffing, ensuring optimal resource utilization.

Improved Agent Productivity

When agents have a clear schedule and a well-defined purpose for outbound calls, their productivity levels soar. Outbound scheduling and forecasting enable contact centers to align agent availability with peak call volumes, ensuring a consistent level of service throughout the day. Agents can focus on making meaningful connections with customers, leading to higher right-party connects and customer satisfaction. By providing agents with advance notice of upcoming outbound campaigns, they can adequately prepare, research and personalize their interactions, resulting in more value they can bring to your customers.

Increased Customer Engagement

A workforce management solution that includes proactive outbound capabilities empowers contact centers to reach out to customers at the most convenient times, enhancing overall customer engagement. By leveraging historical data and customer preferences, contact centers can identify the best time slots to connect with customers, maximizing the chances of successful interactions and reducing the chances of costly dead air. Customers appreciate proactive outreach when it is personalized, timely, and relevant to their needs. An effective outbound strategy that includes outbound scheduling and forecasting in workforce management enables contact centers to meet these expectations, fostering stronger relationships with customers and improving brand loyalty.

Seamless Customer Experience

In a blended contact center environment, delivering a seamless customer experience is paramount. A workforce management solution with planning features for both outbound and inbound functionality plays a vital role in creating lasting impressions on your customers. By accurately predicting call volumes and agent availability, contact centers can ensure that inbound and outbound interactions are managed effectively without sacrificing quality. When customers experience consistent service levels, regardless of whether they initiated the interaction or received proactive outreach, they see the contact center as reliable and trustworthy.

Data-Driven Insights

Proactive outbound, which includes specific outbound scheduling and forecasting functionality, can generate valuable data and insights that help contact center leaders make more informed decisions. By analyzing the outcomes of outbound campaigns, contact centers can identify successful strategies, refine their targeting, and optimize their overall operations. The data collected from scheduling and forecasting can also highlight trends, enabling contact centers to adapt quickly to changing customer preferences, emerging issues, or market dynamics.

To drive the highest customer value and reduce costly compliance from dead air, contact center leaders need to prioritize an effective outbound strategy. Using the right workforce management solution with outbound capabilities, contact center leaders can align agent resources with anticipated call volumes by leveraging historical data, ultimately optimizing operations, enhancing agent performance and reducing the potential for dead air and associated penalties.

Want to learn more about solutions that enable the key components of a great outbound strategy? Check out the Alvaria Workforce data sheet for more information.