How to Implement an Inbound Call Strategy

Support center systems are used to receiving an influx of daily inbound calls. And if there are two things that upset customers, it’s being put on hold and getting transferred from agent to agent. Needless to say, customers and service providers expect a seamless experience, which is why implementing a failsafe inbound calling strategy is key.

Here, you’ll learn how to implement an inbound calling strategy that ensures customers stay happy while teams maintain inbound calling efficiency. 

What Is Inbound Calling? 

Simply put, inbound calls are calls that customer service centers and support teams receive from customers.

For call centers with multiple departments, a disorganized inbound calling strategy can cause chaotic workflows that hamper operations and harm customer satisfaction. To counter this, call centers use tools to effectively manage and distribute inbound calls. 

Instead of any team member individually tending to incoming calls, call-routing tools quickly direct customer calls to the person or team most able to assist. 

Improving efficiency through an effective inbound calling strategy is crucial, and this can have a massive impact on customer experience and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) scores. 

The Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Calling 

The main difference between inbound and outbound calling is the way conversations are initiated.

With inbound calls, customers or prospects initiate telephone contact, while outbound calls are made by sales and support teams to customers or prospects directly with the intention to sell, conduct research, help, or even update marketing contact lists.

Types of inbound calling services

• Customer service: The most typical and well-known one where customer-focused teams frequently respond to customer questions, issues, and clarifications. 

• Technical support: We all encounter technical issues, right? Frequently used by current customers, technical support centers react to inquiries that include customer queries, removing bugs, and other operation-stalling headaches. 

• Inbound sales: Prospective customers, through calling express interest in an advertised product or service. To seal the deal and develop a relationship with the prospect, the salesperson will be entrusted with indulging their curiosity. 

Types of outbound calling services

• Cold calling: Cold calling is an outbound call tactic that’s used to create interest and awareness for your product. It also increases the chances that prospects will move through your sales funnel toward the point of conversion.

• Market research: Market research helps you understand market patterns, competitors, and audience preferences and behavior. It also informs existing customer attitudes and satisfaction about products and services offered, enabling progressive improvements to deliver value. 

Software features of inbound calling services 

Call monitoring: Call center supervisors display a great deal of interest in call monitoring. It incorporates actions taken to keep a close eye on how well their teams are conversing on incoming phone calls with clients or prospects.  

Interactive Voice Response (IVR): IVR is a feature of automated business phone systems that engages callers by offering them options from a menu. The system will prompt appropriate action following the caller's captured responses. This allows for flawless call distribution and efficiency. 

Software features of outbound calling services 

Outbound dialers: An outbound dialer enables salespeople to make outgoing calls to customers or prospects. 

Click to dial: Sales teams effortlessly sift through a list of phone numbers with a single click. 

Call tags and disposition codes: Scrambling through heaps of customer data is a definite time waster. With custom tags, sales teams will classify calls for easy spotting. 

Call center agent onboarding & training

The way call center teams engage with customers during inbound and outbound depends on the level of training provided by managers. 

Teams working in inbound call centers receive customer requests, complaints, and questions that should be tailored according to the customer’s needs. 

Teams are coached to remain respectful, display enthusiasm, and exercise patience during training sessions. Active listening and asking relevant questions is encouraged when addressing customer concerns. 

On the other hand, outbound call center teams convert potential customers into new customers or conduct market research in understanding their target market better. Their primary focus is to ultimately increase sales and improve customer retention. 

How to Handle Inbound Calls: Best Practices

Planning and combining inbound calling strategy with the right processes, tactics and workflows will maximize desired outcomes. But what are some of the best practices you can use? 

Here are some of the foolproof best practices to keep a watchful eye on.   

Prioritize customer experience

Customer satisfaction is what you thrive for. Plus, salespeople should regularly look out for customer opinions about their call center experience. This is how to do it: 

Quick answer: Customers hate being on hold for too long and will frequently end their call if it takes forever. As a sales leader, you must guarantee that you have enough team members on hand to handle all incoming calls.

Relevant company information: Providing customers with relevant information is crucial for helping them make better-informed decisions. Not only does this help grow customer confidence, it also ensures stronger customer experience and retention while possibly even promoting word-of-mouth marketing. 

Making follow-up calls: Following up with customers is a great way of fostering client-customer relationships. This shows customers that you care about them, making them more likely to continue using your services and products. 

Equip your call center teams with the appropriate tools

The best way to ensure that customer-centric teams do their jobs accordingly is to equip them with modern tools that will improve their efficiency.

The amount of time it will take for the team to provide a service is greatly reduced by having relevant information accessible as soon as an inbound call is received. Callers will not need to repeat themselves because the salesperson has the client history readily available to them. 

Prioritize customer team training and onboarding 

Rigorous training and onboarding process is essential to help customer-facing teams keep sales flowing and customers satisfied. 

Getting onboarding and training right or wrong can be the difference between sales and support success or failure. Effective training and onboarding help teams avoid sales slumps and customer complaints by enabling tool, objection handling, and query resolution efficiency. 

How to Implement an Effective Inbound Calling Strategy

Needless to say, the quality of service and support you offer customers directly impacts your brand value and PR. 

To maintain customer satisfaction and build brand value, it’s crucial to implement an effective inbound calling strategy that empowers teams to engage with customers as efficiently as possible. 

Here are three great pieces of advice for ambitious call center teams keen to scale up efficiency and scale down costs.

Use a cloud-based inbound calling solution

Depending on your specific needs, inbound calling arrangements vary. In today’s competitive world, it’s important for you to upgrade your resources to provide uncompromising customer service from any part of the world and at any time. Using a multi-channel contact focus solution can help you stay connected with your customers via multiple channels.

Integrate your cloud-phone system with your CRM 

An effective and proven way to enhance the performance of your sales teams is to automatically enrich CRM data with customer interaction details. Cloud-phone telephony integration seamlessly links virtual phones to your CRM system. By doing this, you’ll reduce CRM admin and develop better sales insight while saving on strategy costs.

Place strong emphasis on the right metrics 

There are various metrics for measuring call center team performance. While all performance data has value, there are certain call center KPI data that can be easily leveraged to drive rapid performance improvements.

Average call duration: It determines the typical length of the team member and customer's conversation. This has been proven to be one of the significant KPIs used for measuring team member productivity.

Average handling time: Also referred to as AHT, the KPI combines the average call length with the time a team member needs to attend to a customer request after the call. Once this has been understood, you can have accurate information on how much time your sales team will need to manage inbound calls.  

IVR abandonment rate:  Want to know the number of dropped calls? The KPI measures the number of times a caller hangs up before being answered by a salesperson. If it is high, it signals that the IVR menu is difficult to maneuver, too lengthy, or unable to provide customers with the information they require.

Average queue wait time: It relates to periods when call centers receive more calls than they can handle, forcing customers to wait in a call queue. 

Average queue wait time is a good indication of the service standard sales and support teams are providing for customers. It’s also an effective KPI for sales and support managers to tactically decide on resource allocation. 

The Takeaway: Mastering Inbound Call Strategy Is About Combining Smart Teams With Equally Smart Virtual Telephony

To sum up, supporting your inbound calling strategy with cloud-based telephony and inbound calling software is the most customizable way of scaling team productivity, sales, and customer satisfaction. All while managing costs in maintenance, operations, and strategy. 

Why not put our theory to the test? Try Aircall’s smart inbound calling free for 7 days and add powerful convenience and productivity boosts to your inbound calling strategy. You’ll be up and running from day one. Once you’ve proven value, you can expect proven total cost savings of up to $219.3k.