Marketing generates leads. The sales team evaluates which ones have potential. The SDR starts the outreach process. But after several attempts, the message comes back to leadership:
“We couldn’t reach the customer.”
This situation happens every day across companies in different industries. What is even more concerning is that, in many cases, no one really knows whether the opportunity was lost due to a lack of interest or because the conversation never happened in the first place.
While teams discuss lead quality, sales approaches, or pitch effectiveness, there is a challenge that comes before all of that: contactability.
Over the past few years, reaching people has become increasingly difficult. Unknown numbers are ignored, calls are flagged as spam, and many consumers prefer to start interactions through digital channels. As a result, companies invest time, technology, and budget to generate opportunities, only to struggle with making the first connection.
At Nuveto, we see that organizations with higher contact rates tend to approach this challenge strategically. Instead of simply increasing the number of outreach attempts, they focus on understanding the barriers preventing meaningful connections between businesses and customers.
Some practices can help improve this process:
- Combine voice and digital channels within the same outreach strategy.
- Use trusted and identifiable phone numbers.
- Create context before making the primary call.
- Retry contact attempts at different times.
- Adapt communication channels to customer preferences.
- Use customer journey information to make interactions more relevant.
Another important factor is recognizing that customers do not always prefer phone calls. In many cases, a contextualized message can significantly increase the likelihood that a future call will be answered.
For this reason, improving contactability is not about making more calls. It is about creating the right conditions for conversations to happen. After all, before any sale, negotiation, or service interaction, there is one fundamental challenge: establishing a real connection between a business and its customers.