What Is an AI Dialer? How It Works & Why Sales Teams Love It

Salespeople make hundreds of calls in a week, and if they use manual dialing, this wastes their time. Most importantly, it takes a toll on their drive to call and sell when they frequently reach voicemail or get a busy line. When their morale is low, they might be less motivated to make the next call.

AI dialers prevent this. These auto dialers use real-time data to call several leads in parallel and connect the agent only when a human answers. This makes reps more productive and ensures every call counts.

What Is an AI Dialer?

An AI dialer uses machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities to automate and optimize outbound calling. This software can detect voicemails and busy signals and drop prerecorded voice messages.

AI dialers leverage a parallel dialer, a subtype of AI dialer, to prioritize high-intent leads and dial multiple numbers in parallel. Based on agent availability and historical data, their predictive capabilities choose the perfect time to reach out to leads. These sales dialers are integrated with the customer relationship management (CRM) software, helping them sync call outcomes automatically.

Agents don’t need to dial calls manually. The AI dialer optimizes who to call and when, making the best use of the agents’ time with outbound selling.

How Does an AI Dialer Work?

The steps below explore every piece of the puzzle that makes an AI dialer function as expected.

1. Pull the call list and context

An AI dialer is well integrated with your CRM software, from which it gets a fresh supply of data related to leads and prospects. The software fetches a complete list of contacts to reach out to. The dialer often gives a preview of the contact it will call next, which allows the agent to personalize their approach and prepare for the conversation.

A preview dialer, which is a subtype of an AI dialer, gives the agent necessary context about the contact and any previous interactions to quickly brush up on critical points. Before entering the conversation, the agent gets a “screen pop” with the contact’s details, past interactions, and relevant notes. Here, the dialer becomes an extension of the CRM, helping agents deliver personalization at scale.

Nextiva seamlessly captures this data from CRM software like Salesforce, HubSpot, and other leading tools on the market. This personalization streamlines conversations and makes them more effective.

2. Scan numbers

AI dialers scan a company’s number for spam labels. They come with daily spam label removal capabilities, which help improve the caller ID reputation and make it easier to connect with the audience.

The dialer analyzes previous success to find the best time to call a buyer, and this information keeps on refreshing. It prioritizes warm leads with a higher intent to purchase, as measured by a lead’s recent activity and interactions.

Moreover, AI dialers’ compliance feature automatically scrubs do-not-call (DNC) lists or internal opt-out lists to ensure these numbers are never dialed. This helps you comply with several regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), or DNC lists. Some dialers have built-in consent tracking for opt-ins, helping them block calls to contacts who haven’t consented. This is important under the GDPR.

Call centers with AI-driven systems show a 40% (average) reduction in compliance violations.

3. Parallel dialing

Once the dialer has prioritized contacts, it starts making multiple calls in parallel, ensuring adaptive pacing of sales calls using AI. Unlike traditional predictive dialers that call numbers based on a fixed algorithm, the AI dialer monitors agents’ real-time availability, learns, and optimizes its dialing pace.

This minimizes idle time, speeding up or slowing down the call pace needed to maximize the number of human-answered calls. It actively filters out busy signals, voicemails, or no-answers. You’ll find that legacy dialers might connect more calls, but AI dialers will have more calls answered by the lead or prospect.

4. Call routing

In a live conversation with a human, the AI dialer immediately routes the call to the best-fit rep while pausing other dials.

An AI dialer can check if the rep who previously engaged the lead is available. If they are, the call is routed directly to them. If not, the dialer scans for an agent with similar expertise in real time and routes the call to them instead.

5. Agent assistance

AI dialers generally have an agent-assist feature. This can be through screen pops with customer information or full-fledged AI-driven live coaching. The dialer can suggest the next best action or offer real-time guidance based on the conversation.

Some of this live coaching can help you remain compliant. The dialer can show live scripts or call guides on-screen when an agent converses with a lead or customer. This script might dynamically evolve based on prospects’ CRM data. Some AI dialers come with more advanced features, such as branching scripts, which change based on real-time responses commonly seen in surveys or political calls.

AI dialers assist by dialing numbers, acting as a copilot during the call, and guiding agents with an optimized script.

6. Logging

CRM data, recordings, and notes from a conversation are automatically logged, reducing an agent’s administrative workload. This allows sales reps to focus more on selling instead of updating the most recent data in numerous places.

7. AI analytics and speech recognition

AI dialers can convert audio into text and apply natural language processing to draw critical insights. This allows the software to analyze sentiment and detect agents’ empathy and contacts’ emotions in a conversation. Based on these analytics, the software scores AI calls based on conversion likelihood to prioritize hot leads and find the best time to call them.

All of this is done at scale to enable continuous optimization of not just individual calls but the overall campaign strategy. Feedback from every call is delivered to make the next call smarter.

Benefits of Using an AI Dialer

Below are some notable benefits of using an AI dialer in outbound contact center workflows.

Increased team throughput

With the help of AI dialers, outbound sales teams can increase the call volume they manage. This saves time by detecting and skipping voicemails, busy signals, and disconnected numbers.

Multiple numbers are dialed in parallel, reducing the time invested in reaching out to a lead or prospect who answers the call. This optimizes the team’s workflow, making them more efficient and maximizing the number of people they can connect with each day.

AI dialers’ logging and note-syncing ability frees agents from spending time documenting call logs and discussion points from the interactions. The notes sync seamlessly with the CRM, reducing the administrative workload while helping agents focus more on selling.

Better lead prioritization

Based on how actively the lead engages with the agent’s previous interactions, the AI dialer prioritizes them in outreaches. This prioritization is fueled by the prospect’s recent website activity or interactions with other customer engagement channels.

You get clear insights into the prospects who are most likely to convert, providing better chances to increase conversion rate and deal velocity. Most importantly, your sales team works on deals with a higher chance of conversions, which can lift the morale of all salespeople involved. This increases a team’s success and sparks creativity and joy in its members. When you’re calling hundreds of leads weekly, you need these things to keep your motivation up.

Smarter conversations

AI dialers come with features, such as AI battlecards, real-time objection handling, and sentiment tracking. These features supply real-time insights, helping reps absorb the context quickly and stay sharp during conversations.

CRM or LinkedIn integrations of an AI dialer keep the reps up-to-date with the latest information about the prospect. This allows your agent to interact thoughtfully with leads using insights from their recent activity.

Voicemail drop and call recording

AI dialer empowers agents to automatically leave consistent voicemails when they can’t connect with the lead. These voicemails are prerecorded and compliant, so the reps don’t have to say them live, which keeps them consistent.

When a call connects and a human joins on the other side, the AI dialer ensures the whole conversation is recorded, transcribed, and available for training and auditing. These recordings allow reps to reflect on their interactions and make necessary modifications or tweaks for improvement in tricky situations where objections come up.

Seamless CRM integration

AI dialers sync with CRM platforms like Outreach, HubSpot, and Salesforce. This integration helps the team update their CRM with recent call logs, notes, and follow-up tasks. This happens automatically, which saves the agent’s time and maintains the CRM as a source of truth for all strategic decisions.

Most importantly, since the sync happens automatically, there are fewer chances of human error. It keeps the CRM data updated and accurate, helping in effective decision-making.

Performance analytics

Some popular AI dialers effectively track call volume, connection rates, dispositions, and other metrics, like talk time versus idle time, showcasing the areas that need work and guiding the team in the right direction to improve. These metrics are either shown in the AI dialer’s dashboard or populated on the CRM along with other agent performance and customer engagement metrics.

Compliance and spam prevention

The dialer checks daily for spam labels and removes them to improve caller ID reputation and connection rates. The software often comes with built-in DNC compliance. AI dialers have features to verify opt-outs and remove those contacts from the calling list, helping you to stay compliant with GDPR.

Use Cases: Where AI Dialers Shine

Here, we discuss everyday use cases and explain how to leverage AI dialer features to achieve the best results.

Outbound sales campaigns

AI dialers play a significant role in maximizing connections with potential customers and making conversions in outbound sales. Since sales teams thrive on talk time, AI dialers use predictive dialing to encourage salespeople to engage leads without wasting time searching for the contact and calling.

This minimizes idle time. The system dials and screens for you, so you don’t have to get involved in the monotonous routine. The software does the math, so you achieve more beyond your targets. AI dialers have features to show local presence, such as the caller ID displaying a local area code to encourage more customers to pick up the call.

These features can increase your connect rate and allow your agents to focus on selling while the software does the manual work of dialing and analyzing.

Lead reactivation and follow-up

Not all leads convert on the first try. Many teams run reactivation campaigns, calling previous prospects or lapsed customers to reignite their interest. AI dialers assist such campaigns to ensure quality follow-up and help personalize messaging when reaching out to old leads. You can include a reactivation call script template that a dialer can modify based on the most recent CRM data.

The script might include dynamic placeholders for the product the lead showed interest in or the last interaction date. Personal touches like this show the call isn’t random but a considered follow-up, which can warm the lead to engage again.

AI dialers in cloud platforms often tie with multi-channel platforms for lead reactivation, adopting a multi-touch sequence. For example, the dialer can schedule a follow-up if the lead responds, and if a lead isn’t answering or is relatively unresponsive, the dialer would add them to the nurture list.

Appointment setting

The AI dialer contacts to schedule meetings or appointments, such as setting sales appointments for field reps, booking consultations, or even reminders/confirmation calls for healthcare appointments.

Some AI dialers integrate with popular calendar apps or have built-in scheduling modules. This allows the agent to book the meeting in real time during the call. If the dialer is integrated into the CRM, then once an appointment is set, the CRM is updated immediately, and confirmation emails are automatically triggered. In more complex use cases, the AI dialer incorporates conversational AI agents, which automatically verify the prospect’s availability a day before the appointment.

Survey collection or Net Promoter Score calls

AI dialers help businesses collect feedback and data from many customers in a structured way. They often use IVR or AI voice bots to automate calls to customers. When the customer picks up, a recorded or AI-generated voice asks the net promoter score question. The customer responds by pressing a number on the keypad or speaking the number (which is interpreted by speech recognition).

AI dialers support branching call scripts that encourage prospects to respond to follow-up questions based on their initial response. The branching logic ensures the survey flows naturally and every question is asked properly, keeping the survey’s integrity intact.

Debt collection and renewals

Recovering payments and securing renewals with persistence is tricky. You need to respect regulations and customer relationships. Debt collection calls must follow various privacy regulations and laws like the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which covers limiting call times, disclosure requirements, and no harassment.

An AI dialer comes with built-in compliance controls to manage this. You can set calling hours based on area codes (for example, only calling debtors between 8 am and 9 pm their local time), and the system will not dial outside those windows.

It will also throttle the number of call attempts per day/week to a given debtor to comply with laws or your internal policy. Some AI dialers also incorporate machine learning models to segment and prioritize contacts, and the system might use a borrower risk score or “intent to pay” model for debt collection.

Political or fundraising campaigns

A political or fundraising campaign operates under a tight timeframe. An AI dialer enables non-profits to call hundreds of thousands of people quickly. The dialer estimates volunteer availability in real time and adjusts dial speed to maximize live answer connection.

This ensures every volunteer or agent is constantly phone banking rather than wasting time dialing. As a result, the campaign’s efficiency increases significantly, and you reach your target voters or donors before the election or event.

Risks and Drawbacks of AI Dialers

AI dialers offer several advantages for modern sales teams. However, they also come with risks, so you need to be cautious if you’re implementing them in your organization.

• Over-automation risks: If you use too much automation to deliver voicemails and robotic responses, you risk losing the human touch, which is a crucial element of sales.
• Initial setup complexity: Connecting the AI dialer with the CRM might take time and expertise. It should be integrated with the workflows to manage call cadence effectively.
• Data dependency: The AI’s effectiveness relies on access to high-quality CRM data and call records.
• Regulatory compliance: Configure automated dialers properly to avoid violating TCPA, GDPR, or DNC regulations.
• Agent overwhelm: The software needs proper tuning to prevent overloading representatives with too many live calls.
• Caller ID reputation: Make sure your phone system and dialer have spam monitoring and adopt rotating numbers. Your connection rates can tank due to flagged numbers.

Help Your Team Dial Smarter With Nextiva

AI dialers increase the efficiency of outbound sales teams, helping them cold call at scale. They maximize the connection volume of calls where a lead or prospect answers, allowing agents to invest their time selling rather than manually dialing numbers to reach the answering machine or missed call bucket.

Nextiva offers an AI-powered contact center platform, packaged in its unified communication platform. It combines calling, chat, SMS, and email, eliminating the need to switch tools. The platform seamlessly integrates with CRMs, helping reps grab context from past interactions aggregated in one place.

You get real-time dashboards with valuable metrics like talk time, average time on a call, and more. The platform comes with various features like auto-voicemail drops and high-quality transcriptions. It proactively manages your spam label and offers GDPR-compliant security to ensure high connection rates.

Try Nextiva. Let your calling efficiency increase as you scale.