There’s no getting around the fact that outbound calling has a bit of a reputation problem... and not in an edgy bad boy from a 90’s romcom kind of way.
Unfortunately, it has become synonymous with spam calls, with many people tarring all outbound calls with the same uncomplimentary brush.
This reputation has unsurprisingly led to declining answer rates. When you combine this with regulatory pressure and consumers who screen everything, the channel that once reliably filled pipelines is now working against itself in a lot of organizations.
But the teams abandoning outbound, or scaling it back significantly, may be drawing the wrong conclusion.
The channel itself isn't broken; the way most companies run it is.
This point was made by Martin Al Bakri, Sales Director at Voiso, in a recent conversation with CX Today:
“A lot of companies are still running outbound the same way they did five years ago: high-volume dialing, generic lists, hoping the numbers work out."
“The environment has completely changed in that time. Carriers are filtering more aggressively, consumers are screening everything, and regulators are paying closer attention.”
For BPOs and fintech companies in particular – where outbound volume is high and compliance exposure is real – that gap between old habits and new conditions is expensive.
The Strategy Problem Comes First
It's tempting to frame outbound underperformance as a technology issue.
The dialer is outdated, the CRM doesn't integrate properly, and the reporting is weak. While these issues are important, Al Bakri argues that the strategy usually breaks down before the tech does.
“The piece that's almost always missing is a real process for turning call outcomes into better targeting,” he said.
“The companies getting results aren't necessarily the ones with the most expensive set of tools. They're the ones who've aligned their dialing strategy, caller ID management, pacing, and targeting into one coherent operation.”
Al Bakri’s point around coherence is particularly telling. Most underperforming outbound operations aren't failing because any single component is broken; they're failing because the components don't talk to each other, and nobody has built a process that connects what happens from one call to the next.
What Actually Drives Connect Rates
If there's one metric that defines whether outbound lives or dies, it's the connect rate. Everything else – be it script quality, agent skill, or CRM data – is irrelevant if nobody picks up.
Al Bakri identifies number reputation as the single biggest lever, explaining that “if your caller ID is flagged or showing up as 'Spam Likely,' nothing else matters. You could have the best script, the best timing, the most qualified lead – they'll never see the call.”
Local presence follows closely. Displaying a number that matches the contact's area code consistently outperforms generic or toll-free numbers.
Indeed, Al Bakri details an example of Voiso seeing up to a 5x improvement in answer rates when teams use local caller IDs matched to the contact's area code.
While number reputation and local presence are two of the more well-known issues, pacing is a factor that many organizations overlook.
Teams that push dialing speed too hard don't just create a bad experience for the people being called; they actively degrade their own connect rates over time.
Al Bakri says:
“The best-performing operations treat pacing as a strategic decision, not a throughput setting.”
“They're balancing dialing speed against agent availability and caller ID strategy to protect long-term connect rates.”
Voiso's AI dialer is built on these principles, dynamically adjusting pacing and supporting local presence dialing across markets.
When combined with disciplined number management – monitoring health, rotating numbers before they get flagged, maintaining separate pools for different campaigns – teams can sustain connect rates that purely volume-driven operations can't.