Outbound Call
An outbound call is a phone call someone in your org places out to a customer or prospect, not one the customer places to you.
Definition
An outbound call is a phone call someone in your org places out to a customer or prospect, not one the customer places to you. In Salesforce the dial almost always starts from a record, so the call carries that context: who you are calling and what it is about.
Outbound calls cover case callbacks, renewal check-ins, collections, and sales prospecting. The telephony provider connects the actual line. Salesforce supplies the record context and stores the result as a call record or task on the customer's timeline.
The layer underneath is shifting. Open CTI, the long-standing bridge between Salesforce and third-party phone systems, is now in maintenance mode with a published retirement date. Salesforce Voice is the named successor.
In plain English
“Think of it as your team picking up the phone and calling the customer first, instead of waiting for the customer to call in. Salesforce shows you who you are calling and why. When the call ends, it writes down what happened so the next person knows.”
Worked example
A regional solar installer runs callbacks on stalled installs. A rep opens Case 00042317, Status "Awaiting Customer", and clicks the phone icon next to the contact's Mobile field, 415 555 0142. The number renders through lightning-click-to-dial with record-id set to that contact. Open CTI fires onClickToDial and hands the adapter the number, an objectType of Contact, and the recordId. The softphone opens a line and the vendor creates the call record. The rep sets Call Result to "Reached, Reschedule Requested" and creates a follow-up Task due in two days. Anyone opening that case later sees what was tried and what happens next, without having to ask around.
How an outbound call actually gets placed in Salesforce
Click-to-dial is the usual starting point
Most outbound calls in Salesforce begin with a rep clicking a phone number rather than typing one. The lightning-click-to-dial component renders a formatted phone number as click-to-dial enabled or disabled for Open CTI and Voice. It takes three attributes. value is the phone number to dial, and record-id is the Salesforce record Id tied to that number. params is a comma-separated list passed to the third-party phone system. Two requirements trip people up. You have to enable the phone system first, because only an enabled phone number can be clicked. And the component does not support iFrames. That rules out a phone utility, or a Lightning Out app hosted in one. When a rep says the phone icon is dead, check the phone system and the hosting context before you go looking at code.
What the phone system receives on a click
Clicking a number passes more than digits. The onClickToDial() method registers a function that runs when users click enabled phone numbers in Lightning Experience. The payload handed to the telephony adapter carries the surrounding context. That object includes number for the phone number clicked, plus recordId, recordName, and objectType describing the record it came from. Person accounts get a personAccount boolean and either an accountId or a contactId, since a person account spans both objects. A params string carries any extra values the component was configured with. Two companion methods, enableClickToDial() and disableClickToDial(), switch the behavior on and off for the session. All three are available in API version 38.0 or later. This payload is why a decent adapter can log against the right record and pop the right screen with no retyping. One catch: it cannot be used with the older Visualforce support:clickToDial component.
Open CTI is on a clock, and the date is public
This is the part that should change how you plan. The Open CTI Developer Guide now carries a plain notice. Open CTI is in maintenance mode and scheduled for retirement in February 2028, and no new features or enhancements are being added to it. Salesforce points new development at Salesforce Voice instead. There is a sharper edge for new orgs. The same notice says that effective immediately, Open CTI is deprecated and unavailable for newly created Agentforce Service orgs. A greenfield org may simply not have the option, whatever an older implementation guide told you. None of this breaks a working click-to-dial setup today. It does mean that starting a fresh CTI adapter on Open CTI in 2026 buys a short runway. If you are scoping telephony work now, price the migration into the plan.
The Voice product got renamed, and Sales Dialer is going away
The partner telephony developer guide says it outright: Service Cloud Voice is now Salesforce Voice. You may still see references to the old name in Salesforce applications and documentation. Trailhead adds another layer, describing the partner telephony offering as Partner Contact Center, formerly Salesforce Voice. Sales Dialer, the older outbound calling tool on the sales side, is scheduled for retirement, with no new features or enhancements being added. The stated guidance is to move to Salesforce Voice for telephony inside Salesforce. When you search Setup or Help for the telephony product, the label you remember may not be the label you find. Screenshots and internal runbooks written before the rebrand still say Service Cloud Voice. Treat the two names as one product and check the date on anything older.
Preview and progressive dialers scale outbound past one click
One click at a time is fine for a handful of callbacks. Campaigns need automation, and the partner telephony framework documents two modes. A preview dialer shows the rep the record before anything connects. Per the developer guide, you create a preview dialer Lightning component, then call startPreviewCall in the Aura-based Toolkit API. That fits complex accounts where a little reading improves the conversation. A progressive dialer inverts the order. The docs describe it as working much like an inbound call. The vendor telephony system dials the customer without notifying the rep. After pickup, the vendor follows the inbound call flow, creating a Voice Call and sending CALL_STARTED before the rep accepts or declines. The tradeoff is honest. Preview protects call quality on high-value records. Progressive protects rep minutes on long lists with short scripts. Most contact centers run both, split by campaign.
The call is only worth what it leaves behind
An outbound call that logs nothing is work with no evidence. Someone has to record whether the call connected, hit voicemail, reached a wrong number, or earned a callback. That single field, the disposition, is what makes connect rate and attempt counts reportable at all. Skip it and your outbound reporting decays into a count of numbers dialed. Enforce it at the process level rather than hoping. Make disposition required on wrap-up. Keep the picklist short enough that reps pick accurately, and review the "Other" bucket monthly. A fourteen-value list with one honest option produces clean-looking data that tells you nothing.
How organizations use Outbound Call
Dials alumni from the contact record during the annual giving push, with pledge outcomes written back so the next caller does not repeat the ask.
Works its renewal list through a preview dialer, giving reps the account history and open cases before the line connects on six-figure accounts.
Points a progressive dialer at a large, scripted list so reps only hear answered calls rather than ringing and voicemail.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Get Started with Open CTI (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Salesforce Voice with Partner Telephony Developer Guide (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Configure Outbound Dialers (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- lightning-click-to-dial Component Reference (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Sales Dialer (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Outbound Call.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Outbound Call.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
+5 pts / dayQ1. According to the Open CTI Developer Guide, what is Open CTI's current lifecycle status?
Q2. A rep says the click-to-dial phone icon does nothing inside a custom phone utility in the utility bar. What is the most likely cause?
Q3. In the partner telephony framework, what distinguishes a progressive dialer from a preview dialer?
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