BaldwinTel

Gadget Review: Plantronics' CT14 Headset Phone Connects Your Home Based Call Center Employees For Less

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

One of the big cost-saving benefits for Southern California businesses when switching their phone system to a VoIP based solution is they can instantly allow their "desk based" call center employees to work from a home office.

This saves the company the overhead of maintaining an expensive office cubicle and opens up the potential labor pool to a whole lot of qualified U.S. based call center employees who are glad to "do a quality job for less" so long as they can work from a home office.  

This single benefit is one of the biggest reasons many businesses are bringing off-shore call center jobs back to the U.S. that had, in past years, been outsourced to India, the Philippines or some other far away land where they "kind of speak English" but not completely -- and not to the satisfaction of your upset customers calling into your call center.

 

Do Home-Based Call Center Employees Need an Expensive VoIP Phone? No!

The big purchase decision question for businesses trying to properly outfit home office employees so they can tap into the new VoIP enabled office phone system is "How expensive of a phone do home workers need?"

Well if the home-office employee is the CEO of the company, then the most expensive phone that Polycom sells. But what about your call center employees that don't have stock options?

Many VoIP and SIP phone vendors will tell you that you don't need to buy your home-office workers a phone at all, saying "the beauty of our VoIP phone solution is all your home office people need is our 'soft phone' that appears right on the screen of their computer".

Well, in theory, soft phones work just fine -- until the soft phone user has opened up 27 browser windows on their computer or you get confused about using the keyboard and mouse for both their phone call and order fulfillment on their computer at the same time. 

Combining your computer and phone keyboards or trying to get your computer to be a phone is really a recipe for inefficiancy and "angry at the IT guy" home office employees.

 

Split the Different for WAY UNDER $200!

The most important phone feature for your at-home worker is the ability to work hands free. Whether your home-based employee is a call center worker keying an order into their computer or your highest paid sales person just needing to wave his or her hands while giving an empassioned sales pitch, you'll likely not find a "work at home phone" that better splits the cost difference than the Plantronics CT14.

Competitive Intelligence: How Do SafeSoft's Hosted Call Center Solutions Compare to What You're Using Now?

By Dan Baldwin

SafeSoft Solutions, a California based company specializing in hosted call center solutions recently joined Telecom Association in an effort to share with TA's 3,800 members and their business customers why SafeSoft's set of hosted call center solutions, showcased by their "Market Dialer" are different or better than the call center and predictive dialer solutions that many business customers are using now.

Since all of our readers are interested in getting new competitive intelligence to learn about a new service or solution that might be better than what they're using now, step one in introducing any new vendor is having them sit for a "Competitive Self-Analysis Interview."

 

Is SafeSoft's Call Center Solution Better for Your Company than What You're Using Now?

This is what we want to learn so we invited Aaron Kohut, SafeSoft's VP of Sales to answer our standard set of competitive intelligence questions.  

You can listen to the audio interview now with your computer speaker by clicking the audio player below. You can also click here to download the MP3 file.

 

 

The transcript of the interview is published below. Click here to print a transcript.

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Which Hosted Contact Center Predictive Dialing Solution is Right For Your Businesses Call Center Requirements?

A Competitive Self-Assessment of SafeSoft Solutions’ “Market Dialer”

A Business Phone News conversation with Aaron Kohut, the Vice President of SafeSoft Solutions, a hosted contact center solution provider. We've invited Aaron to share with us a competitive self-assessment of their services and solutions including their “Market Dialer” service so our clients know that through the vendors we partner with, our customers are getting the best technology services and solutions available in the marketplace today and tomorrow.

February 2012


DB:  Question #1.  Solution History - Can you give our audience of business end-users and technology consultants a quick history lesson on your services and solutions, how long has this service or solution category been around, and what business solutions or services are they replacing?

 AK:   Back in the early 80’s Predictive Dialers began as an on-premise hardware-based system, so they’ve been around for about 30 years. The hosted platform emerged in the 90s and became more popular as VoIP, (“Voice over IP”), technology was evolving.  Because VoIP offered lower telecom costs which were one of the expensive components, it definitely helped make the cloud-based service affordable and eventually became the preferred solution.

 

 

DB:  Question #2. Primary Customer Markets - Which vertical markets and/or customer types and sizes like your solutions or services best and pay attention to you the most? And, are there any metros where you are especially competitive?

 AK:   One of the great things about the Market Dialer is that it was designed to be universal and fit well into virtually any industry. From banking, to home improvement, to non-profit, and even political campaigning.

Increase Sales & Appointment Setting 400% Without More Phone Equipment Using a Hosted Predictive Dialer

By Dan Baldwin

Any Southern California based company that frequently contacts large numbers of prospects or customers by phone can achieve four-fold productivity increases with a hosted predictive dialer.

A predictive dialer is an amazing call center "SaaS" or software as a service solution, and can be particularly beneficial to any business that relies on inside sales people, either working on site or from a home office, to identify new sales opportunities; gather information about their marketplace, their customers, or their competitors; generate revenue; schedule large numbers of appointments; and perform other tasks that require extensive outbound outreach via telephone.

 

Phone Activities Improved by Hosted Predictive Dialing Include:

• 
  Appointment setting
• Cold calling
• Qualification and prioritization of campaign responses
• Nurturing of “hot” leads
• Phone-based sales to new prospects
• Up-sell and cross-sell initiatives to existing clients
• Customer loyalty programs
• Satisfaction surveys
• Market research
• Competitive analysis
• And much, much more!

Without a predictive dialing software package in place, agents waste valuable time repeatedly calling number after number – only to receive busy signals, voice mail messages, no answer, fax machines, or disconnected numbers. This reduces the number of “live” conversations they can conduct, and prevents them from spending as much time as possible interacting directly with their target audience. 

Predictive dialing software helps companies overcome these challenges. Predictive dialer systems are proven to dramatically improve the speed and effectiveness of agents and reduce costs, while allowing a much greater volume of calls to be initiated and maximizing talk time. As a result, business can more rapidly achieve their goals by performing faster, more successful outbound outreach. 

Industries that use hosted predictive dialers include: