Frequently Asked Questions about PhoneBurner

About PhoneBurner

PhoneBurner is software that increases outbound sales productivity and performance. Our cloud-based platform combines power dialing with contact management, email tracking, smart lead distribution, and reporting to help drive dramatic sales growth.

PhoneBurner is cloud based – you log in using your web browser – it requires no downloads or installation. No need to call your tech expert. And if you ever have questions, our incredible, on call support team is here to help.

You’ll need a computer, tablet or mobile device with an internet connection to log into your account, and then any phone or our soft phone to conduct a dial session. A headset is helpful (and generally appreciated by your head and neck) but not mandatory.

You can import contacts and start your first dial session in minutes. Customizing your account with pre-recorded voicemails, email templates, disposition sets, and other workflow shortcuts takes additional time, but will yield further increases in efficiency and sales potential. Need help? Our onboarding staff will amaze you with their knowledge and friendliness.

Great question. PhoneBurner is a power dialer, or preview dialer. It dials contacts and streamlines (or automates) repetitive and time-consuming tasks to maximize the quantity and quality of live conversations. The agent is in complete control and is ALWAYS there to hear the phone ring, so contacts have no idea technology of any kind is being used. Agents typically go through 60-80 contacts per hour.

This is in stark contrast to “multi-line” dialers which route answered calls to available agents. Because it takes time for these dialers to a) determine if a call is answered by a human, and b) subsequently route the call to the first available agent, there is typically an audible (and awkward) delay – which are notorious for adversely affecting the quality of live conversations. Additionally, companies that use multi-line dialer are at risk of potentially violating federal law should agents not be available when contacts answer.

PhoneBurner also includes a host of features developed to help agents build more active sales pipelines including one-touch emails and email tracking, advanced lead filtering, smart lead distribution, real-time lead delivery, team reporting and more.

No! You know when you get a call and say “hello” and then you hear that “dead air” for a second or two? We’re not about that. Especially because they tend to make the person who answers the phone annoyed, or skeptical, or prone to hanging up. And we’re about helping you grow sales!

Predictive dialers have that issue – they are multi-line dialers which seek to maximize "live answers" by routing calls to available agents. Of course that can only be done once the software makes the determination that someone answered. This routing process takes time, causes pauses (fun rhyme!) carries inherent risk of violating federal law and TCPA compliance standards (not fun, and possibly very costly), and risks alienating people who answer.

PhoneBurner is a power dialer. It carries none of these risks, yet it can realistically multiply your contact rates and live conversations by a factor of 4.

No, PhoneBurner is not an auto dialer. Like predictive dialers, auto-dialers route answered calls to live agents (again, producing that dreaded awkward pause) or play recorded messages when a human answers, or if an agent "presses one." With auto-dialers, the software controls the dial session and process, which can cause companies to run afoul of new FCC regulations with heavy fines.

Not so with PhoneBurner, which gives you complete control of the dialing experience. You (or your admin) decide which contacts to dial and you’ll remain on the phone live from the beginning to end of each call. You’ll blaze through contacts, leave one-touch voicemails and emails, and streamline workflows. And you’ll multiply the quantity and quality of live conversations in the process.

PhoneBurner goes through great lengths in the design of our network infrastructure, data center security, and software coding standards to ensure your data is safe and secure. Here are some ways that we go above and beyond to protect your data:

  • We use Palo Alto Networks firewalls that provide next generation data protection
  • Switch, our data center provider, is arguably one of the best in the world
  • We do all of our coding based on industry standards and best practices
  • All of our hardware is powered by redundant power supplies
  • We are PCI compliant
  • Software updates are released only after full code reviews and testing
  • Core components of our infrastructure including database servers and web servers are 100% owned and controlled by us

Our clients LOVE working with us. And we’re not just saying that. On top of video, webinars, and written tutorials, we're fanatical about live, one-on-one support. Our goal is to help you connect with more people, discover more opportunities, and close more deals, so we're always reachable for advice, support, and training.

Using Our Dialer

Once contacts are selected (either by you or your admin) simply press “Begin Dial Session.” PhoneBurner will provide you with a phone bridge to dial into from any landline, mobile phone, or VOIP phone line. Alternatively, we can provide you with a soft phone, which is not really a phone at all as it means you make the calls directly over the internet.

Once in a dial session, the dialer window puts everything you need at your fingertips – allowing you to leave voicemails, send emails, take notes, schedule follow-ups, access scripts and more all in just a few clicks – as you blaze from one contact to the next. Sell on!

No! Your contacts will never have to say “hello” more than once (unless you take a sip of water at an inopportune time, but that's on you buddy). With PhoneBurner there are no awkward pauses or delays, and your contact will be unaware that you're using technology of any kind.

Naturally, it depends on the length and duration of your live conversations, but agents typically average around 60-80 contacts per hour.

Yes! Store as many pre-recorded voicemails as you need. During a dial session, you can leave your chosen VM with the click of a button.

No! Listening to other people’s voicemail boxes is totally boring and time consuming. You can drop your voicemail as soon as you know you’ve reached a voice mailbox. PhoneBurner instantly moves you on to the next contact, while simultaneously waiting to leave your message. A big time saver.

Yes. You can use any verified phone number as your Caller ID.

Please do! You’ll improve your productivity in a big way. Create as many dialer sets and dispositions as you need. You can “program” your buttons to perform all kinds of desired actions:

  • Leave a pre-recorded voicemail
  • Add someone to your do-not-call list
  • Set a disposition for your contact
  • Record a note
  • Move the contact to a folder
  • Send a personalized follow-up email/attachments
  • And more

Definitely. Access PhoneBurner from any device with an internet connection and do dials from any phone. But we don’t recommend using PhoneBurner while on vacation (just for sanity sake, you totally can if you want to).

Yes. Call recording is included free with our unlimited and team accounts. Recordings are kept for 30 days and can be played directly within your account, or downloaded. You have the ability to access individual call recordings, as well as entire dial sessions.

CRM & Lead Management Questions

Our simple import tool walks you through the process. Select your source file CSV, choose a destination folder, administer settings (tags, handling duplicates, do-not-call scrub, etc.) and then map the fields to your CRM.

Absolutely. PhoneBurner features a built in CRM (or integrates with yours) to make it easy to manage contacts, monitor history and activity, and maintain well-organized workflows.

PhoneBurner offers advanced search capabilities to help you filter leads in valuable ways for more targeted and productive dial sessions. You can also save searches that you frequently perform because doing the same thing over and over is annoying.

In all likelihood, yes. Our integration capabilities include:

  • A direct Salesforce integration available in the AppExchange
  • An API for custom integrations, available here
  • Third-party integrations are also available for many more CRMs and platforms including Zoho, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, SugarCRM, Pipedrive, PipelineDeals, Vtiger CRM, Close.io, BaseCRM, Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, MailChimp, Constant Contact, and many others. Contact us for specific info for your CRM.

More direct integrations will be available soon.

Absolutely. Email contacts manually, or, send fully personalized “one-touch” emails from the dialer window based on the outcome of a call. Emails can be sent from our server or your own.

Emails can come from our server, or you can use your own SMTP server (available on Unlimited and Team accounts).

Our SmartSender feature is like email attachments on steroids. You can include individual attachments as well as bundled attachments or “Smart Packs” - all of which are tracked. You’ll know when contacts open emails, click links, view attachments, watch videos, and more – so you can follow-up with engaged prospects at the perfect time.

Yes. You can track email opens, link clicks, video views, attachment views and more. Email tracking is included free with our unlimited and team accounts.

Of course! You can easily schedule follow-up calls and appointments with PhoneBurner. Our calendar can seamlessly sync with your Google calendar. Cat wall calendar not included.

Managing A Team

Phoneburner is built for teams of all sizes. Our clients range from a handful of seats to hundreds. Despite our enterprise level functionality we are super SMB friendly. We have no contracts, no setup fees, no consultation fees, and let you test drive as many seats as you need – for free. That makes us a perfect fit for teams big and small.

Efficiently! Team accounts feature a dedicated admin portal where you can manage seats for your account. Add or remove seats as needed, edit permissions and settings, and effortlessly get agents up-and-running by sharing custom scripts, button configurations, email templates, attachments, and more.

Absolutely. Your admin portal gives you the tools you need to hold agents accountable, assess training needs, and make success-minded decisions. Easily create real-time and historical reports featuring the metrics that matter most. Want to get reports emailed to you daily or weekly? You can!

Yes! Manual lead distribution is really kind of a downer. That’s why we built an advanced and automated lead distribution platform called LeadStream. Easy to use yet powerfully customizable, LeadStream intelligently and automatically delivers leads into the accounts of your agents. Using customized sets of rules and multiple distribution types (ie. round-robin, blind pull, real-time LeadBlitz, etc.), you can handle sales processes of all kinds. You'll save time and money, reduce lead waste, and maximize the value of each and every lead in your agents’ pipelines.

Yes. Pay only for the seats you need. You can add or remove seats from your account at any time.

Pricing & Terms

No. And we’re really proud of that. We built a sales platform that’s both easy to use and that really delivers on features and functionality. And, we’re enthusiastic about supporting our clients to the point that you get results you rave about. That’s why we’re willing… no, excited to earn your business month after month. So there!

No to both. We offer straightforward month-to-month pricing, and include all of the support and guidance you need.

  • $67.50/month for 450 rollover minutes of dialing
  • $149/month for unlimited dialing

Teams enjoy tiered discounts of up to 50% off per seat, with unlimited dialing for every agent and an exclusive set of tools to help admins manage their team, improve productivity, and drive growth.

PhoneBurner does not charge any per minute fees to dial your contacts. If you use a phone to dial into PhoneBurner, and your phone carrier charges you by the minute you are responsible for those charges separately.

PhoneBurner does not charge any long-distance fees for the calls PhoneBurner makes to your contacts. However if the phone you use to dial into PhoneBurner charges you for long distance calls, then you are responsible for the charges imposed by your carrier (and you should probably get a new carrier).

Yes. You can change your plan at any time. If you change your plan at 2:22pm on 2/22/22 something really cool might happen (more likely not).

Actually, we insist on it. We’re confident then when you experience PhoneBurner you’re going to have an “Aha” moment. So we want to make it as easy as possible for you to get started. PhoneBurner is free to try without a credit card, and we’ll load your account with free minutes so that you can conduct a real dial session, and explore our CRM and sales-accelerating features. Have a team? We want to set you up with a free team trial – which gives you full use of our admin portal, reporting, and lead distribution engine, plus as many seats as you need for your agents.

For individual users there is no set time limit. Use the free minutes on your own schedule until they run out. Once you decide PhoneBurner is a fit, you can easily upgrade to keep dialing. For team trials, we do our best to give you and your agents a reasonable amount of time to explore our platform. Get in touch and we'll be happy to set that up for you.

Compliance Questions

Unlike users of predictive and autodialers, PhoneBurner users do not risk incurring TCPA fines and penalties for dropped calls. Our single-line dialer is built to maximize quality, live conversations and allow you to fully comply with the TCPA.

You are responsible for complying with all applicable regulations concerning calling including, but not limited to “do-not-call” lists, and calling during legally permissible hours.

Absolutely. PhoneBurner helps you manage a personal do-not-call list.

Good news… PhoneBurner is looking out for you! Our system will NOT call any number after 9:00pm local time as determined by the time zone where the area code of that number is located. As mobile numbers don't always match up to locations, we recommend excluding locations if it is potentially after-hours when you are dialing.

No. PhoneBurner is not a multi-line dialer. Dialing multiple contacts simultaneously puts companies at risk of costly TCPA violations and results in connection delays that are infamous for negatively impacting outbound calling campaigns. We want to help you grow your sales! PhoneBurner will help you multiply your contact rates by about 4x, but we do it one dial at a time to maximize the quality of your live interactions. Boom!

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Talk to our sales team:
888-369-9131

Existing client support:
888-928-7637

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