Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Adopting Real Time Decisioning: Smart Decision for Outbound Call Centers

By Jaclyn Allard
TMCnet Web Editor

Call centers adopting advanced real-time decisioning (RTD) are free from ‘insight gaps’ unlike their competitors that have not adopted the technology, unveiled provider of customer interaction optimization software, Portrait Software.

The independent research, found that 75 percent of businesses with advanced RTD capabilities claimed they are "good at identifying customers who can be persuaded to consider new offers." Eighty-three percent of RTD-enabled businesses also believe they are "able to make use of customer insight to retain customers they might otherwise lose," compared to the 55 percent of respondents without RTD.

During the study it became apparent that approaches to real-time decisioning technology vary by country. Organizations in the U.K. are more likely to have one of the more sophisticated decisioning options, whereas U.S. call center agents are more likely to receive no prompts.

"The volumes available for outbound customer communication is limited and the effectiveness of traditional marketing communications has declined as ad fatigue continues to take hold," said Luke McKeever, CEO, Portrait Software, in a statement. McKeever believes that these factors are what make real-time decisioning an essential part of any customer interaction strategy. "Our research indicates that those organizations that have so far failed to implement such technologies face a clear 'insight gap' in comparison to competitors that have adopted this approach to customer engagement. As a result, they are far less able to identify which customers to target with specific offers, find it harder to retain customers that are planning on leaving and find it harder to re-establish relationships with returning customers.”

As TMC’s (News - Alert) Tracy Schelmetic recapped in recent article, running a contact center 20 years ago required a lot of guesswork. Before modern workforce management solutions, which accurately predicted call volume based on historical data and other factors, contact centers had to make educated guesses and pay the price for either being overstaffed (wasted money) or understaffed (risking poor customer service). Real time decisioning (RTD), presently helps contact centers present the right offer at the right time to customers, thanks to data that helps them understand who among their customer base would be most open to upselling at any time.