Page 9 - Issue 2 2023

ROBOTICS

How virtual agents reduce the

costs and improve the success of

outbound campaigns

By Ryan Falkenberg, CEO, CLEVVA

hen it comes to outbound sales, the traditional ways of doing things have
mixed success at best. A leading mobile network, for instance, might require
Wits outbound call centre to work through huge lists of prospects, all for a
success rate of around two percent. If that sounds bad, bear in mind that it’s at the
upper range of industry averages.
That’s a lot of time, effort, and labour costs for very little success. Most outbound
sales agents work on commission and are making a lot of calls that are unproductive
and don’t earn them a better paycheque at the end of every month.
There’s a lot of room for improvement. But where should organisations start when it
comes to increasing the success of their outbound campaigns?
While there are a number of strategies they could adopt, there’s a strong argument
to be made for using virtual agents to pre-qualify leads before human agents reach
out to them. This will reduce the cost and improve the effectiveness of outbound
campaigns.

Ryan Falkenberg
The importance of knowing your (potential) customers
Think about the most annoying sales calls you get on a day-to-day basis. While the
timing of those calls -- just when you’re about to sit down to dinner -- is sometimes the message, but they may be later
irritating, far more egregious are the ones that are completely irrelevant. that day or at another time during
No wonder then that outbound call centres that outperform industry averages tend the week. They can then go back to
to use prospect lists of higher quality. For example, insurance companies that belong the original message and immediately
to larger banking groups use lists that are generated from data the bank already has on start engaging with a virtual agent. The
each customer. This means more accurate predictions can be made on which insurance virtual agent can complete the upfront
products are most likely to be needed. need analysis and qualification process,
Most call centres simply don’t have anything like that kind of advantage, however. gathering all the information required
Instead, they’re given a long list of names that they have to systematically work to confirm there is a match. At this
through. These lists tend to have been bought with no curation, no information on point, the virtual agent hands over the
where the customer is, and no idea if they might want the product in the first place. As engagement to a human agent to close
a result, most calls to these people are used to collect the data that will qualify them as the deal.
prospective customers. In many ways, it’s an entirely
different approach from those
The emergence of virtual agents traditionally used in outbound
Virtual agents can do this job better and more cheaply than human agents. Unlike campaigns. It empowers the customer
chatbots, which have limited functionality, virtual agents can ask the right questions, by allowing them to engage when it
offer the right solutions and trigger the right actions, in context with each customer. As suits them and does so in a way that
a result, they can do much of the pre-work needed to qualify a customer, at a far lower is personal, relevant, and gets the
cost. job done. It also brings much greater
Instead of receiving an unsolicited call from a human agent, a company can send chances of success.
a message with an embedded link to connect to a virtual agent, either via SMS, There are, consequently, a growing
WhatsApp or email. The customer might not be interested at the time they receive number of scenarios where human

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