The game has changed when it comes to telemarketing software. You’ve got to use a reputable outbound dialer solution with superior connect rates, exceptional reliability, and robust reporting to boot.
Ready to hang up on your old dialer? Exploring a new telemarketing solution for your team? You’re at the right place.
In this guide, we introduce all the key features you need if you run an outbound call center, whether it’s for cold calling, follow-ups, or a traditional outbound sales approach, and we shortlist our top five providers.
While everyone has their own preferences regarding the best telemarketing software for outreach, Nextiva is a worthy contender.
With decades of implementation experience, Nextiva provides all the features you need, such as advanced call management features, auto-dialing functionality, and customer relationship management (CRM) integrations that boosts your reporting and analytics.
Essential Features & Functions of Telemarketing Software
Before choosing any new technology, you should review its feature set to ensure it meets your business requirements. So, check out these must-have features for any modern telemarketing software.
Efficient call management
When making calls at scale, time is of the essence, and relying on manual dialing is inefficient and prone to error. With call management features like automated dialing for outbound calls and intelligent routing for inbound calls, you can ensure that the right sales team always connects with your potential customers.
For outbound calls, dialer software queues up the next contact and provides the next available agent with the relevant information. Phone calls will either connect automatically or once the agent has reviewed the call details, depending on your choice of dialer.
When a customer calls back, you can either route the call to the same agent who called them, the next agent available, or someone with a specific skill set based on the options the caller chose on your interactive voice response (IVR) system.
Once the call is complete, or even while it’s still in progress, you can take advantage of quality assurance features like call recording to check for adherence to call scripts and general compliance. You can also use sentiment analysis to get a real-time view of how calls are going, allowing you to jump in and help at any point.
Integration with CRM and other tools
With any telemarketing campaign, you’re going to be handling a lot of customer details, which are often stored in a CRM system. By integrating your call center software with your CRM system, you’ll have front-end access to customer information and history, ensuring your telemarketing teams have everything they need in one place.
With no need to switch apps throughout the day, fewer copy-and-paste errors crop up, as call records only need to be updated once. If you’ve already reached out to your potential customer via email, SMS, social media, or any other communication channel, your agents should have all the information they need, saving them from having to search for something in the middle of a call.
Reporting and analytics
Plans for call center campaigns should be backed with data. After all, there’s no point in continuing the same patterns of behavior if they don’t get results. With a comprehensive suite of analytics, which is now the norm for the top outbound telemarketing software, you can generate detailed reports tailored to specific metrics and KPIs.
Not only can you review performance post-campaign but you can also dive into real-time data for call performance, agent productivity, and campaign effectiveness. The best telemarketing tools stand out for their ability to provide access to trends and spikes while they’re happening.
User-friendly interface
The easier tools are to use, the faster people adopt them. When you reduce the learning curve for new agents (or agents new to the software), you also speed up their time-to-ROI. Also, with tools that are easier to use, an agent will perform better, streamlining the process of calling, managing, and selling.
With the ability to customize your interface and workflows to match business needs, your agents get a personalized dashboard that has everything they need (or want). Any features the agent uses less frequently are still accessible but are hidden away until needed.
Compliance and security
When it comes to contact center compliance, there’s a lot to consider, including:
If you’re running any type of auto-dialer software, you must ensure that you protect any sensitive customer data with robust encryption methods. It’s not worth investing in any telemarketing software that doesn’t do this for you.
To guard sensitive information and system functionalities, features like role-based access are a must. Back-end data should only be available to those who need access to it, ensuring it never falls into the wrong hands.
Scalability and reliability
If there’s a chance you might hire temporary staff, expand your existing staff, or even reduce your number of agents, then you need your telemarketing software to scale with you. This rules out using on-premises software or any vendor that locks you into minimum-spend commitments or long-term contracts. More importantly, the tool you choose must be able to scale up and down to cater to your business needs.
You need a simple way to add new users to your telephony system, CRM system, and outbound calling platform, and you also want 99.999% platform uptime to ensure you always have high availability and minimal downtime.
Customer support
There’s no excuse for poor customer service. A friendly, available, and knowledgeable team is vital for a vendor providing any form of contact center software.
When assessing service providers, look for:
- 24/7 customer support (especially if you provide this to your own customers)
- Onboarding and training documentation and videos
- Self-service help centers
Top 5 Telemarketing Software Vendors
Let’s take a look at the best telemarketing software and why each one makes the shortlist. We’ve included a rundown of Nextiva competitors as well as highlighting our own, award-winning solution.
1. Nextiva
As well as being a fully fledged omnichannel contact center, Nextiva specializes in advanced call management for telemarketing campaigns, providing auto-dialers and predictive dialing to make your sales process more efficient.
To automate dialing from contact databases and CRMs, you can choose one of the following:
- Progressive dialer
- Predictive dialer
- Preview dialer
- Power dialer
When integrated with your CRM system, Nextiva ensures agents get a preview of their contact, allowing them to personalize their call, which leads to a higher chance of conversion. When aided by voicemail and busy-tone detection, agents are only connected to live calls.
Once the call is over, you have access to comprehensive reporting and analytics with real-time insights. By using the graphs, charts, and trend analysis, you can make improvements for your next campaign instead of doing more of the same and hoping for better results. What’s more, you’re backed by enterprise-grade carrier data centers, so you have a network that’s proactively monitored and managed 24/7 as well as eight points of presence and a guaranteed 99.999% SLA.
If problems do arise, Nextiva has received countless accolades for its customer service, including:
- 2,000+ 5-star reviews on Trustpilot
- #1 Most Loved on TrustRadius 2024
- Gartner Peer Insights 2023: Midsize Enterprise Customers Choice
- G2 Highest User Adoption Mid-Market 2024
Read More: The numbers say it all. Ranked #1 year after year.
2. Five9
Known for its CRM and workforce management integrations, Five9 provides intelligent omnichannel routing and advanced dialing systems, making it a useful all-round contact center solution for enterprises. So, if your telemarketing campaigns are part of a larger, AI-focused contact center, you might choose Five9 over Nextiva.
In fact, that’s why Nextiva partners with Five9. If you need all the bells and whistles that come with Five9, you’ll also need a VoIP/unified comms system to power the calls. The direct integration between the two platforms is ideal for those looking for the best of both worlds.
With Five9, you get real-time and historical reporting to track the performance of your campaigns. It’s also packed with compliance tools for regulatory adherence.
However, the real selling point of Five9 is its AI-driven features for enhanced customer interactions. While Five9 competitors may also provide the basics of telemarketing, it’s what Five9 does with the data that’s most impressive.
Five9’s AI legacy makes it one of the foremost contact center solutions on the market, and since 2016, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant has named it a leader in contact center as a service (CCaaS).
3. CloudTalk
CloudTalk provides an array of auto-dialer, click-to-call, and call monitoring features. Focused on call center technology rather than other channels, it does a great job of optimizing outbound call campaigns for high connection rate and low agent downtime.
You can integrate this software with popular CRM systems and helpdesk tools, including:
- Pipedrive
- HubSpot
- Shopify
- Salesforce
You can also expect a real-time dashboard for in-progress calls and in-depth analytics. With a clear focus on calls, you can improve call management with features like call recording, tagging, and call logging.
4. JustCall
With JustCall, you get access to automated dialers and call distribution handlers. Whether you’re managing outbound campaigns or optimizing return calls, the focus is on getting the right contacts to the right agents.
Your dashboard uses records pulled from CRM systems and marketing automation tools like:
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
- Zoho
Before, during, and after calls, you can link call records to recordings, notes and tracking, and analytics for efficient call management.
If your campaigns involve more than just calling, JustCall offers SMS and email automation features, which are ideal for multichannel campaigns with personalized targeting. Also, if you have an in-house development team, there’s a comprehensive API set to aid you in building custom integrations. However, this might be unnecessary for small businesses or those without basic calling needs.
5. 8×8
As another omnichannel contact center provider, 8×8’s predictive dialing capability is just one feature among many, including IVR, phone number, and call queue management.
You’ll receive the expected CRM and business tool integrations, allowing for more detailed analytics, reporting, and personalization. Also, as an enterprise-grade tool, you’ll get comprehensive security and compliance features that span the entire portfolio of unified communications, supporting voice, video, and chat.
However, there is some uncertainty regarding 8×8’s pricing, as there are many options to choose from, and most of the feature lists hide the costs. If you’re looking for a standalone telemarketing solution, 8×8 might not be the best choice, as you may need to purchase a larger license to gain access to the features you need.
As such, when it comes to Nextiva vs 8×8, Nextiva can provide more flexibility in terms of pricing and consumption model.
Improve Sales Outreach Easily With Nextiva
When choosing a telemarketing vendor, you need a solution that works for you.
It must have call handling features and a proactive dialer that removes the potential for misdials and a lot of lead management admin; however, it must also integrate with your CRM system to enable better personalization of calls and empower highly detailed reporting and analytics.
Nextiva supports the following CRM systems as standard:
- Zoho
- HubSpot
- Zendesk
- Salesforce
- Oracle Sales Cloud
- Microsoft Dynamics
- NetSuite
- Bullhorn
- Workbooks
- SugarCRM
- ConnectWise
- Lotus Notes
Nextiva’s all-in-one cloud-based contact center platform is an excellent option for all sizes of businesses looking to optimize their telemarketing programs. You’ll get our auto-dialer functionality, an omnichannel inbound routing platform, and as much AI as you need.
There’s little to no technical setup to get started, and we boast the best adoption rates in the business.
So, what are you waiting for? Jump start your next campaign with Nextiva.
