Having churned through a long series of disappointing dialers, lead vendor Solar Direct Marketing finally found the technology, contact rates, and accelerated growth they were after when they switched to Convoso.
We interviewed David Stodolak, President of Solar Direct Marketing, about the success his company has experienced with Convoso’s contact center software solution.
Solar Direct Marketing not only operates its own call center, it provides solar clients with qualified leads and live transfers. They also help other organizations build some of the leading call centers in the solar industry.
With over 15 years’ experience working in the call center space, President David Stodolak knows it’s all about reaching prospects: “This is a contact sport,” he says. “No matter what vertical you’re in, you have to contact enough people to make it work.”
If getting leads on the phone is what makes an outbound call center succeed, then the dialer technology is an essential component. David says the importance of the dialer is often overlooked, but it shouldn’t be. “If you don’t have the right technology, nothing else matters.”
Solar Direct Marketing’s search for that right technology hasn’t exactly been a smooth one: Since starting in 2016, the company has gone through about six different dialers. With each of these dialers, it was the same story: They may start off okay, but then after a month, things went terribly wrong. They were putting out fires left and right. And then, they had to onboard another new dialer. Meanwhile, dialer companies would claim to have features and capabilities but then it turned out “they didn’t have any of that stuff.”
It was not only frustrating, but all this churn took a toll. Contact rates and revenues repeatedly dropped. David and his team were intent on finding a dialer technology that would drive revenue and solve some of the ongoing issues they were experiencing. So with the help of some well-timed tips from industry colleagues, they decided to give Convoso a try. “A lot of people we knew in the industry had good things to say about Convoso—there was some credibility, some trust involved when we signed on.”
After all those years of dialer technology disappointment, it didn’t take long at all for Solar Direct Marketing to make a breakthrough with Convoso. Previously, their contact rates had been about 18%. But after moving to Convoso, that metric rose immediately and consistently to as much as 25%. That represents an improvement of nearly 39% to contact rates, which “made a massive difference” to their entire operation.
“Convoso has been phenomenal in terms of helping us move the needle in our contact rates, which has helped us move the needle for our clients in terms of better conversions for them.”
Call blocking and flagging are causing issues for outbound call centers everywhere. And when your caller IDs are showing “Spam Likely,” it’s no wonder why contact rates are down—even the warmest leads are unlikely to answer. That’s why having a robust set of tools to monitor and manage the health of caller IDs is essential for growth. With Convoso’s ClearCallerID™ dashboard, the Solar Direct Marketing team can always see which of their numbers have been blocked or flagged—and switch them out before they harm KPIs.
This solution immediately found its way into their team’s routine, according to Stodolak. “Our dialer manager looks at it every day, and he knows exactly where we are and what we need in terms of adding DIDs.”
“Convoso has a very good DID management system. They’ve been huge with that. I can’t emphasize that enough.”
Solar Direct Marketing has been able to achieve rapid results with the reliability of Convoso’s onboarding team, dedicated customer success managers, and “always-on” support crew. The responsiveness and proactive communication of these teams has made a big difference for their dialer managers and operations. To drive improvements and meet goals, the team helped map out proper cadences, to “make sure that everything was aligned properly.” With the skilled support of product experts to tweak and optimize the system according to their needs, this solar sales leader was able to be far more competitive and increase productivity. So much so that they’ve had the confidence to expand. “We told them what our goals were and they helped us get there.”
“We have a great relationship with the people there. The whole team is great. From the moment we onboarded with them, they’ve been hands-on, and we can reach them at any time of the day.”
Strong DID management and call center operations aren’t just about performance. In today’s highly regulated communications environment, any business reaching out to lead lists needs to be vigilant about compliance. And, Solar Direct Marketing is serious about both high performance and adherence to the rules. That’s why it’s been a big relief for David and his management team to have Convoso’s built-in, up- to-date compliance support that helps them to stay on top of TCPA compliance and other regulations. Taking advantage of Convoso’s integration partners has made all the difference for their operations for both compliance and quality assurance. For example, they use Contact Center Compliance to scrub leads against Do Not Call Registries and filter out litigators.
“Convoso also has great plugins. We can integrate with any technology without an issue.” The company also uses a quality assurance integration to ensure that they’re hitting their KPIs and not getting into trouble from a QA perspective. This way, David says, “we can address things right away, and nip them in the bud. They allow us to be proactive rather than reactive. In this industry, that’s huge.” When it comes to call center compliance, David attributes his confidence and relief in part to the support of Convoso’s staff, that they’re on top of things and “they’re looking out for our best interest.”
“We have attorneys who do the same thing, but sometimes they’re quicker than our attorneys…they have a good pulse on what’s going on.”
Lift in Contact Rates Lifts Spirits on the Sales Floor
David knows that to deliver consistent results, call center agents need to stay in rhythm and build confidence. As the saying goes, ‘success breeds success.’ When agents are really enthused, they’re happy to be working. When they feel like they’re making a difference, they’re going to perform better. This has proven true at Solar Direct Marketing. Since Convoso first sent their contact rates soaring, he says that the positive energy on the sales floor has been palpable. “I love when I go into a call center and hear a lot of buzz and a lot of chatter—that means people are making contact. It means we’re doing what we’re supposed to do and we’re driving conversions.” It’s had an amazing impact on morale.
“To have that constant activity, where you’re constantly speaking to qualified prospects is a game-changer. It makes everybody happy: The client’s happy, the agents are happy, and it makes us happy as owners of the call center.”
David says he and other leaders at the company are breathing easier since switching to Convoso. With a stable dialer, stronger contact rates, white glove support, compliance tools, and easy integrations, Solar Direct Marketing has discovered new levels of efficiency and ROI. Bolstered by this new momentum, the company has been expanding. David says they plan to double their call center’s headcount. “Now we can focus on the bigger items and we can hire more people.”
But it’s not just their headcount that’s growing— it’s their entire portfolio. Stodolak says the company is reproducing its resounding success in solar by expanding into other verticals, including home improvement. From there, it would seem, the sky’s the limit.
“Your time is the most valuable asset you have. And the less time you need to put toward putting out fires, the more time you have to put toward more productive items like hiring people, expanding, and moving forward with your initiatives.”
Convoso is the ultimate dialer solution for sales and lead generation teams. Our outbound call center customers report dramatic increases in contact rates of up to 3X when they switch to our cloud-based omnichannel contact center software, giving them higher conversions and significantly improved ROI.
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Convoso is a leading CCaaS contact center software provider for sales and lead generation teams. Since 2006, Convoso has remained at the forefront of innovation, consistently developing solutions to foster customer growth while supporting adherence to regulatory standards. Its omnichannel capabilities include conversational AI game-changer Voso.ai to scale sales and revenue further.
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