From credit card promotions to property deals, many businesses rely on telemarketing to generate and convert leads. However, the sad reality is that success rates for telemarketing calls range from 0.1 to 2.3 per cent, depending on the industry. While these numbers are not encouraging, they may not be altogether surprising to agents who do the cold calling. Telemarketing is a tough job, and getting conversions often means playing the numbers game—the more people you call, the more chances of generating a good lead.

Relying on the traditional way of telemarketing has its limits. Human agents can only achieve a certain number of calls a day. Of that number, up to 60 per cent get routed to voice mail, which drastically cuts success rates. What’s more, call centre agents are often subject to unpleasant encounters—ranging from rudeness to outright abuse. It takes a lot of mental and emotional strength to power through successive rejections.

Fortunately, technology provides more workable alternatives. Voice AI solutions can help streamline your telemarketing efforts, boosting not just process efficiency, but call effectiveness and agent well-being too.

Human touch on a massive scale

Contrary to what many people may think, Voice AI does not mean subjecting customers to robotic, unresponsive voices. Gone are the days of one-way interactive voice recordings that frustrate the everyday consumer.

AI technology has made a lot of progress in recent years, thanks to natural language understanding. In fact, Voice AI has become so sophisticated that people sometimes can’t tell the difference between an AI agent and a human one.

While Voice AI can sound human, it doesn’t have many of our human limitations. A Voice AI agent can make up to 200,000 calls an hour—that’s a far cry from the average 300-500 calls a single telemarketer can make each day. If you want to reach more prospects by phone, Voice AI will get you there much faster.

Qualify and nurture leads with AI

AI feeds off and intelligently gathers data for its decision-making. Where human agents may sometimes struggle to get the right information in front of them, AI can quickly pull up records and trace past interactions as the call is taking place. This enables Voice AI agents to respond more appropriately in real-time and provide more personalised offers.

While it makes calls, AI can also quickly sort and classify leads based on pre-determined data points. Poor quality leads can be dropped sooner, and good prospects can be passed off to human agents to close the deal. This means your employees don’t need to waste time on prospects that won’t convert, and can focus on the ones who will.

Provide round-the-clock support

While human agents typically work eight-hour shifts, Voice AI agents work round the clock, 24/7. This is especially helpful if you have global operations that work across various time zones. You can reach customers or prospects halfway around the globe, any time, any day. In cases where human agents seem to keep getting to the customer voicemails, Voice AI agents can keep trying at various intervals to identify the best time.

Timing also matters to time-sensitive individuals who have narrow windows for contact. A human agent might miss the ideal timeframe to call a customer because he was occupied by another call. With Voice AI, you can schedule your calls to make sure you hit the sweet spot with your prospects, regardless of the time zone you’re in.

Take stress in stride

Stress that customer-facing agents face on a daily basis can cause burnout. They may also face engagement and energy levels dipping throughout the day. While human agents may feel drained after facing multiple irate rejections, a Voice AI agent will keep doing what it’s programmed to, which is handling difficult calls and rejections with professionalism and consistency.

In fact, AI can even transform a call into a more productive one by adopting a more appropriate tone and language. Voice AI is so flexible that it can adopt accents to match the caller’s manner of speaking, helping to put customers at ease.

The main benefit of having Voice AI deal with difficult conversations is it can lower your team’s stress levels at work. But more than that, human agents are freed up to do more valuable work. With the grunt work taken away, you can now assign people to tasks that are more fulfilling for them–like closing deals and providing stellar service. It boosts not just agent productivity, but overall well-being and employee satisfaction.

Step up your telemarketing game

In a world of competing voices, Voice AI technology can be the tool that helps get your message to customers effectively and efficiently. Optimise your lead generation efforts and empower human agents to focus on converting leads by supercharging your telemarketing with Voice AI.