Chapter 5

What about my outbound calls?

For many businesses, the outbound call is vital to their sales efforts. This includes cold calling, setting and confirming appointments, upselling new products, and even just friendly check-ins. It's important to know how many calls are made and if your sales team is a doing a good job.

Outbound call tracking does this by tracking the phone calls made by your staff, recording them, and identifying whether or not the call reached the intended person.

How does it work?

Outbound call tracking works with any phone system?even cell phones. There is no hardware to install. To track an outbound call, simply dial a number provided by Century Interactive (hint: most businesses simply make this a speed dial). Then enter your own unique phone code and dial the customer's phone number. The phone code attributes the call to you specifically and the call is tracked and recorded.

How does it help?

Outbound call tracking offers clarity into the efforts of your team. Previously, you may have depended on confusing phone logs or the old fashioned honor system to know what was actually happening on your calls. (Or at least you thought you knew!) True outbound call tracking creates real metrics for accountability and improvement.

In Chapter 8, we'll talk further about our ability to quickly categorize phone calls based on what happened on the call. On the outbound side, this means identifying if the call actually reached the intended target. There's huge value in using this metric instead of just simply looking at how many calls are made. Which is more meaningful to you? Mike dialed 20 different customers. OR Mike spoke to 8 different customers!

What about Two-Party states?

There are 12 states that legally require both sides of a phone call to know they're being recorded. Accounting for this is easy on inbound calls because we simply play a friendly greeting and the caller is aware. Outbound calls are tricky though. Immediately playing an automated message when the person answers is obtrusive, and telling them yourself is awkward as well. As a result, many businesses decide that they can't use outbound call tracking.

Enter one-sided outbound call tracking. Our solution for Two-Party states records only the sales agent's side of a conversation. Imagine sitting at your desk and overhearing a coworker on the phone. You can't hear the person they're speaking with, but you can clearly hear what they say. One-sided outbound tracking applies this same approach to recording calls.

• Introduction: Call Tracking 101
• Chapter 6: Website Tracking?
• Chapter 1: Why Do I Need It?
• Chapter 7: Will It Affect My SEO?
• Chapter 2: What Does It Do?
• Chapter 8: What If I Get A Lot Of Calls?
• Chapter 3: What Else Does It Do?
• Chapter 9: Arguments Against Call Tracking
• Chapter 4: Is It Right For Me?
• Chapter 10: How Are Others Using It?
• Chapter 5: What About Outbound?
• Chapter 11: Getting Started