Voice Calls: Channel, Hours & Rotation in Spoki (v18.2.0)
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Are you a marketing manager, business owner, or e-commerce operator looking to optimize your customer communication? In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, efficient and compliant outbound communication is paramount. Automated voice calls, when managed effectively, can significantly enhance customer engagement, streamline operations, and drive conversions. However, without precise control over how these calls are initiated, businesses risk inefficiencies, customer dissatisfaction, and even non-compliance with regulations like GDPR. This is where Spoki’s latest update, v18.2.0, steps in, offering unparalleled control over your automated voice calls directly from the Spoki Voice step. This update empowers you to define the channel, set specific call hours, and manage multi-number rotation with ease, ensuring your outreach is always strategic and compliant.
Take Control: Channel Selection for Your Automated Calls
The first crucial step in optimizing your automated voice calls is selecting the right channel. Spoki v18.2.0 gives you the flexibility to choose between a traditional Phone call or a WhatsApp call for each voice step. This is a game-changer for businesses leveraging the power of WhatsApp Business API for customer communication.
Phone Call vs. WhatsApp Call: Choosing Your Channel
When you configure a voice step in Spoki, you’re presented with a clear choice. This decision directly impacts which numbers are available for use:
- Phone Call: Ideal for reaching customers who prefer traditional voice communication or for situations where WhatsApp might not be the primary channel. Spoki will only offer numbers connected for standard phone calls.
- WhatsApp Call: Perfect for businesses deeply integrated with WhatsApp Business API. This option allows you to leverage the familiarity and convenience of WhatsApp for direct customer conversations. Crucially, Spoki will only present numbers that are connected and configured for WhatsApp calls, ensuring seamless integration with your existing WhatsApp Business setup.
This granular control over the call channel ensures that your outreach aligns perfectly with your customer’s preferred communication methods and your overall communication strategy. For businesses utilizing WhatsApp Business API Documentation, this feature is particularly valuable for maintaining a consistent and integrated customer experience.
Precision Timing: Setting Your Call Hours
Compliance and customer experience go hand-in-hand. Unwanted calls outside of reasonable hours can lead to frustration and damage your brand reputation. Spoki v18.2.0 addresses this by introducing robust Call hours settings, allowing you to dictate exactly when your automated voice steps are permitted to dial.
Ensuring GDPR Compliance with Smart Call Scheduling
With Call hours enabled, you can select specific active days and define a precise start-end window for each day. Spoki ensures that your call times adhere to strict GDPR limits for outbound calls, which are:
- Monday to Friday: 09:00–20:00
- Saturday: 10:00–18:00
- Sundays: Excluded
This built-in compliance mechanism helps marketing managers and business owners avoid potential legal issues and maintain a positive relationship with their customers. By respecting these limits, Spoki empowers you to engage customers effectively without being intrusive.
Account Working Hours vs. Step-Specific Call Hours
What if you prefer a simpler approach? If you leave Call hours off for a specific step, Spoki will automatically default to your account’s predefined working hours. This provides flexibility:
- Step-specific Call hours: Use this for campaigns or specific customer segments that require unique calling windows.
- Account working hours: Ideal for general outreach where your standard business hours are sufficient.
This dual approach ensures that you have the right level of control, whether you need highly specific scheduling or prefer to rely on your established account settings. This is particularly useful for e-commerce operators running various promotions or customer service initiatives that might require different outreach timings.
Optimizing Outreach: Multi-Number Rotation Strategies
For businesses with multiple connected numbers for a chosen call type, Spoki v18.2.0 introduces powerful multi-number rotation capabilities. This feature is designed to optimize call distribution, prevent number fatigue, and enhance overall call success rates.
From Fixed to Flexible: Managing Multiple Numbers
When you have two or more numbers connected for a specific call type (Phone or WhatsApp), you can switch from using a single fixed number to enabling multi-number rotation. This allows you to select precisely which numbers to include in the rotation pool.
Spoki then intelligently spreads calls across these chosen numbers using one of two methods:
- In Sequence: Calls are distributed one after another, ensuring an even spread across all selected numbers. This is useful for maintaining fairness and predictable usage.
- Random: Calls are distributed randomly among the selected numbers. This can be beneficial for campaigns where unpredictability in caller ID might be advantageous.
This flexibility in rotation methods allows marketing managers to tailor their outreach strategy based on campaign goals and desired customer experience.
Advanced WhatsApp Rotation: Respecting Quality Scores
For businesses heavily reliant on WhatsApp automation, Spoki offers an additional layer of intelligence for WhatsApp rotation. You can choose to let Spoki respect each number’s quality score, actively favoring numbers in good standing.
Why is this important for WhatsApp Business API users?
- Maintain Sender Reputation: WhatsApp assigns quality scores to numbers based on user feedback and messaging patterns. Numbers with low quality scores can face restrictions or even be blocked.
- Maximize Deliverability: By prioritizing numbers with good quality scores, Spoki helps ensure your automated messages and calls are more likely to be delivered and received positively.
- Prevent Account Issues: Proactively managing your WhatsApp numbers based on quality scores helps prevent issues that could disrupt your customer communication flows.
This intelligent rotation feature is invaluable for SMBs and e-commerce operators who depend on WhatsApp for critical customer interactions, from automated order updates to chatbot-driven support. It ensures your WhatsApp Business API usage remains compliant and effective.
Practical Applications and Use Cases for WhatsApp Automation
The new features in Spoki v18.2.0 unlock a wealth of possibilities for businesses utilizing WhatsApp automation. Here are some practical examples:
1. Personalized Customer Onboarding
Imagine a new customer signs up for your service. With Spoki, you can set up an automated WhatsApp call to welcome them, explain key features, or offer immediate support. By using Call hours, you ensure this welcome call happens during business hours, and with WhatsApp call channel selection, it seamlessly integrates with their preferred communication app. If you have multiple support agents, multi-number rotation ensures calls are distributed efficiently.
2. Abandoned Cart Recovery with a Human Touch
For e-commerce businesses, abandoned carts are a major challenge. Spoki can trigger an automated WhatsApp message followed by a WhatsApp call to customers who haven’t completed their purchase. The Call hours ensure you’re not calling too early or too late, and number rotation with quality score respect ensures the call comes from a reliable WhatsApp number, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
3. Appointment Reminders and Confirmations
Service-based businesses can automate appointment reminders via WhatsApp calls. Set specific Call hours to send reminders a day before the appointment, and use multi-number rotation to manage call volume if you have a large client base. This reduces no-shows and improves operational efficiency.
4. Feedback Collection and Surveys
After a customer interaction or purchase, an automated WhatsApp call can be used to collect feedback. Schedule these calls using Call hours to catch customers at a convenient time. The ability to choose the WhatsApp call channel makes it a natural extension of their existing communication with your brand.
5. Proactive Customer Support
If your CRM integration (learn more about Spoki Blog for CRM strategies) flags a customer with a potential issue, Spoki can initiate a proactive WhatsApp call. With number rotation, your support team can efficiently handle these outbound calls, and the intelligent quality score feature for WhatsApp ensures high deliverability.
Conclusion: Elevate Your Automated Voice Strategy with Spoki
Spoki v18.2.0 empowers marketing managers, business owners, and e-commerce operators to take unprecedented control over their automated voice calls. By offering precise channel selection, intelligent call hour scheduling, and sophisticated multi-number rotation, Spoki ensures your outreach is not only efficient but also compliant and customer-centric.
Whether you’re looking to enhance customer onboarding, recover abandoned carts, or streamline support, these new features provide the tools you need to optimize your communication strategy. Embrace the power of intelligent automation and transform how you connect with your audience.
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