Best Automated Calling System: What to Look For
Good communication is an essential part of small businesses and is a natural part of being human in the consumer world. Business success is highly reliant on how well organizations can interact with their customers, motivating many business owners to invest in the best automated calling system possible.
Responsiveness and helpfulness are two of the most influencing factors when customers decide whether to return to a business. Small businesses that have introduced an automated calling system to their platforms have found a greater success rate in communicating with their customers and increasing their business revenues.
There is a lot of value in identifying the best automated calling system. What exactly is an automated calling system?
What Is an Automated Calling System?
The best automated calling systems are a great addition to any small business or enterprise hoping to interact with customers through a quick and automatic process. Businesses use the inclusive and automatic software to quickly send out follow up calls, product and/or notification messages, voicemail drops, alerts, surveys, and more.
With the rise in virtual voice technology, automatic calling software gives businesses the ability to call customers without the need of another human. It’s important to note that automated calling systems are not the same as automatic phone systems.
An automatic phone system is an innovative software that allows businesses to interact with their customers, and an automatic calling system is one way of doing that. These are outbound telephone systems that can be used to send automated calls to people. This may be to deliver a pre-recorded message or to establish a human interaction or connection. Think of it as an easy way for you to engage with your customers.
A high-quality outbound calling system brings all the necessary features and benefits to make your business process as efficient as possible. This type of system is implemented by businesses of all sizes across a broad spectrum of industries. After all, operational efficiencies are crucial to your bottom line whether you are a startup or a large corporation. The best automated calling systems will offer several plan options and pay-as-you-go based on the size of your business.
How Many Organizations Use Automated Calling Systems?
Not only do the best automated calling systems help make business-to-consumer communication more accessible, but they also provide benefits when it comes to internal communications. With a cloud-based system, any message or automated call can be pre-recorded and sent beforehand.
For example, you can send all of your employees a pre-recorded message at the same time, such as office closings due to weather. Over a quarter of organizations utilize some form of virtual voice software, and over 60% of business owners found outbound calling was effective in their marketing research. That is a large percentage of experienced organizations who testify to the importance of such a calling system.
Benefits of an Automatic Calling System
As we briefly touched on earlier, the best automated calling systems provide easier access and more direct engagement with consumers. Having your own virtual calling system will eliminate the need for low quality consumer grade equipment + lines from a local carrier to carry the calls.
Let’s get into some more specifics to determine the most significant benefits of incorporating a high-quality virtual broadcasting and automatic calling system into your business’s workflow.
More engagement with customers
This is, of course, a no-brainer as having a more efficient and automatic calling process will increase customer engagement. This eliminates the need to go through an individual subscriber list and manually call people one by one. Simply send out a message to your entire list at once for one of the most innovative and fastest ways to reach customers at a mass scale. Easier access.
With automated calling using the most innovative technology, the ability to reach users does not solely rely on email, social media, or the internet.
Outbound phone calls allow businesses to reach a higher number of subscribers. Phone calls are a more direct way to communicate and get people on board during campaigns. A study published by the RAIN group found that 51% of business owners would rather be contacted by phone than a simple email or alert drop-in.
Improved data analysis
With an automated calling system and virtual cloud, keeping track of data has never been easier.
Delivering more than just a traditional call log, business owners can look at old calls, messages, and survey calling activity to enhance customer service relations. This ability to simplify and manage data can help businesses see where they should direct their focus. This saves time, energy, and costs in the long run.
If your business is genuinely setting itself up for success, there is likely a data analysis plan already in place within your enterprise. Having the ability to feed more data into those systems is a definite win.
Multiple routes of communication
Reaching the largest number of consumers relies on being easily accessible and reliable in communication.
The best automated calling systems use copper phone lines, and provide accurate message delivery to humans and voicemail systems. Having a system that can deliver your messages with accuracy is necessary if you want everyone to receive the entire message you are sending.
Provide Easy and Efficient information
The busy world we are living in today makes it challenging for many entrepreneurs to answer their phones. The outbound software allows users to deliver messages to humans and voicemail systems. The software should also allow the call recipient to connect to your live operators.
Follow-up calls are extremely valuable when communicating with prospects. Most deals are closed after multiple follow-up attempts after the first meeting with the sales team. Automated calling systems make this a smoother, more efficient process.
Virtual systems can increase the number of calls made and take pressure off of the employee, leading to higher productivity. Applying less stress to employees leads to a higher level of job satisfaction, and in turn this will drive greater results.
Related: Benefits of a Virtual Phone System for Businesses and Remote Employees
Choosing the Best Automated Calling System
There are multiple automated calling systems available for businesses to choose from that will meet their needs. You may find differing features, connection types, costs, and functionalities, such as how it works with your remote employees and organization as a whole.
One of the first things to consider before choosing the best automated calling system is to decide whether you want a system capable of delivering calls accurately, or are looking for an inexpensive product that lacks accuracy. VoIP-based systems lack accuracy, whereas systems using copper lines provide extreme accuracy, and higher delivery rates.
Outbound Voice Broadcasting
The best automated calling system will ensure high-quality outbound voice broadcasting. This gives you the ability to send out interactive phone calls while managing the entire conversation from the web. The instant cloud setup allows for easy storage of data and call log information.
The best systems allow users to control how their voice broadcasting messages are sent out. Easily stop, pause, slow down, and speed up a call campaign. A visual call designer should be a key feature of any system and give you complete control to design your voice prompts and key options quickly and easily.
Caller ID and Screening
Finding a software that ensures security and privacy is extremely important. You want to ensure the provider has a solid privacy policy, and secure access. For systems using VOIP lines, the risk of the carriers flagging the call as spam or fraud can cause recipients to not answer or respond due to security concerns. Using software that utilizes direct copper/PRI lines eliminates this and equates to more delivered messages and fewer ignored calls.
Text Messaging
For additional lines of communication, look for a provider that also offers text messaging. Having multiple methods of communication will allow you to reach more people with your message. The best systems will have a web-based control panel that allows you to design your text messages and offer tracking capabilities.
Cloud System with Auto Attendant
The cloud system ensures easy and general operating of all the other features and services offered in the automatic calling system software. Within the cloud system, you can access tons of features to make calls easier and more personal. Simply transfer calls to other routes or branches.
After business hours or for periods of time when you are away, this cloud system allows you to set different messages. Set up your cloud to have both touch and voice menu options available. For the most personal outbound calling, you can easily change what your caller ID comes up as.
Appointment Reminders
Maximize your organization’s productivity and save valuable time by utilizing appointment reminders and a cloud calendar service. This feature helps integrate all your calendars (google, outlook, etc.) into one platform using direct PRI lines from the carriers. These are great for businesses with many appointments and standard meeting times, such as doctors, dentist offices, and many more service providers.
Easily Accessible Customer Support
The last feature that is critical of any business or virtual software is great customer service. We all know technology has its slip-ups. When working with an automated call system, it’s normal for things to go wrong sometimes. Look for customer service and support out of the country of origin.
This customer service team should be available 24/7 and able to answer any questions you have. This particular software service is known for excellent customer service based out of the United States.
Related: How to Choose the Right Virtual Phone System for Your Business
Choosing the Best Isn’t Difficult
Outbound voice broadcasting systems offer valuable features for small businesses to interact with their customers. The leaders in this industry should understand their customer pain points with their current outbound calling systems and offer a solution to address these issues through innovative solutions.
The best automated calling systems should use Copper PRI lines from carriers rather than a VOIP. VoIP lines can cause poor quality, increased latency, and background noise. As a result, your voice broadcast messages, and voicemail drops are delivered more clearly and reliably than VoIP competitors. In the 21st century having a poor phone connection is simply unacceptable.
VoiceShot offers a best-in-class outbound calling system. To learn more about how our software can help your business, contact us today.