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Outbound calls

Your voice agent called a thousand customers. Which numbers matter?

Putting a voice agent on a call list now takes a few clicks. That makes the number of calls the least interesting figure in the report. What belongs at the top instead – and what should read zero.

5 min read
A man in a dark teal knit jumper sits at a desk in the home-office corner of a living room early in the morning, looking out of the window, a mug in one hand and the other hand resting beside a mobile phone on the desk, while low morning sun lays a warm stripe across the floor.

Aircall launched outbound campaigns for its voice agents on 22 September, on every pricing tier. The pitch is that a contact list can become “thousands of conversations with a few clicks”. Aircall is not alone. Letting a voice agent call out is turning into a menu option rather than a project.

When calling costs almost no effort, the number of calls stops measuring anything. An agent does not tire on call number 800, and it rings the wrong number for the third time as willingly as the right number for the first. Yet it is exactly the figures that grow on their own that fill the report after a campaign.

We have written about the numbers that flatter a voice agent answering inbound calls. When the agent calls out, different numbers do the flattering.

The numbers that grow on their own

The figure in the report Why it flatters Ask instead
Number of dials It measures effort, and effort is free for an agent How many people on the list were actually reached?
Answer rate Voicemail, the wrong person and someone who hung up after three seconds all count as answers How many answers came from the right person?
Average call length A long call can be confusion, a short one can be someone giving up How many calls ended with what you called for?
Share with no transfer An agent that never transfers may have given up as easily as solved the case How many still need follow-up?
“Yes” in the transcript A spoken yes is not an agreement How many yeses were confirmed where it counts?

All five count calls. Whoever owns the campaign cares about something else: the list.

Five numbers that tell you something

1. Right person reached, as a share of the list

Count people, not dials. If the list has 1,000 names and the agent has spoken to 410 of the people concerned, that is the number: 41 percent. Not 2,300 dials and a 64 percent answer rate.

That assumes the agent asks. “Am I speaking to Kari Nordmann?” is not a courtesy on an outbound call; it is the measurement point itself. And it is a point that can slip: names are what a voice agent mishears most.

2. Purpose achieved, checked in the system

Decide before the campaign starts what a successful outcome is – appointment confirmed, payment date agreed, survey answered – and count it where it lands: in the calendar, the ledger, the survey database. Not in the transcript. An agent that says “I’ve registered that” when nothing has been registered is the most expensive failure a campaign can have, because it looks like a result.

For sales to consumers in the Nordics this is very concrete. In Norway and Sweden, a consumer agreement made in a sales call only becomes binding once the consumer has accepted it in writing. The sales figure is accepted confirmations, not yeses on the phone. What the agent is allowed to promise along the way is a question to settle before it dials.

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3. Attempts per person reached

How many times was each number called before someone answered, or before you gave up? An agent can ring the same number every hour for a week without noticing. The person on the other end notices. Set a ceiling before the campaign starts, for example three attempts spread across different times of day, and measure how often it is hit. If it is hit often, the list is the problem, not the agent.

4. “Don’t call me again”

The share of people who ask not to be called again, or who complain, is the number that grows quietly. It does not belong in a footnote. If it rises from one campaign to the next, you have the wrong list, the wrong time or the wrong opening.

Every such request has to be recorded and respected; for telemarketing, Norway’s Consumer Authority expects routines for exactly that. The figure that shows whether the routine works is how many people asked to be left alone and were called anyway.

5. Work that lands on a human afterwards

How many calls ended with “someone will call you back”, an unclear status or a case that needs tidying up? That is the cost that is not in the per-minute price. A campaign that reaches many people but leaves 200 callbacks behind has moved the work, not done it.

The numbers that must read zero

Some numbers are not there to be improved. They should be zero, and you should be able to document it:

  • Sales calls outside permitted hours. In Norway, telemarketing to consumers is only allowed on weekdays between 09:00 and 21:00 – not on Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays. A queue that got stuck and dials out at 21:05 counts.
  • Numbers on an opt-out register called in a sales campaign without an exemption. In Norway that is the Reservasjonsregisteret, checked before first contact and again in the month you call; Sweden has NIX. Denmark goes further: unsolicited sales calls to consumers are banned outright, with a handful of exceptions.
  • People who asked to be left alone and were called again.
  • Calls where the agent did not say who it is calling for, why it is calling, and that it is an AI. The number the call comes from is part of the same introduction.

Not every outbound call is telemarketing. An appointment reminder or a payment reminder follows different rules from a sales pitch. But the agent does not know the difference unless someone has written it in, and the zeros are easiest to keep at zero if they apply to every campaign.

Call volume belongs at the bottom

When calling becomes free, it is tempting to call more. The better answer is to decide in advance what should count, and leave the number of calls at the bottom of the report, where it belongs.

Threll.ai builds voice agents that call out in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, and logs every conversation. Before your next campaign: write down the one number that decides whether it was worth it, and the numbers that must read zero.

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