In 2015, BIA Advisory Services projected that smartphone inbound business calls would reach 162 billion by this year. A 2015 report from We Are Social stated that calls from mobile devices are expected to increase by 74% by this year. BIA Advisory Services also reported that calls convert 10 to 15 times more often than online leads.
With so many people using their mobile devices to call businesses and the increase in conversions compared to online, call tracking and monitoring is extremely important and useful. It can help you get a handle on your customer service issues, particularly when it comes to customer frustrations with phone automation, hold times, your staff’s phone etiquette, how or if their issue was addressed, and so on.
How Call Tracking Works
Call tracking records the number of inbound phone calls to your business and then figures out what locations the calls are coming from. Normally, this is done by adding a piece of JavaScript code to a site’s source code. The JavaScript replaces the business’ actual phone number listed online based on predetermined rules. After that, a dynamic call tracking number will appear on the website, which lets the digital marketer view PPC calls separately from other calls on a call-tracking dashboard and see where they came from.
Additionally, monitoring phone calls allows you to hear the conversation from both (or all) sides. You’ll know what’s going with your business’ phone customer service, and you’ll be able to address any issues.
With that in mind, here are some specific reasons your business should have call tracking and monitoring.
Inbound phone calls are important for your particular business sector
If you’re in an industry where the vast majority of clients book with you over the phone, you’re going to want call tracking. 75% of people searching for insurance do so through phone calls. Within the healthcare industry, 88% of patients set up appointments over the phone. Businesses providing home services (e.g. home cleaning, painting, plumbing, and other home maintenance) or financial management assistance (e.g. CPAs, mortgage lenders, etc.) receive a large number of calls as well.
If phone calls are how you get the majority of your business, you’re going to want to know what is driving those calls so that you can making more informed business decisions and potentially bring in even more calls as a result.
You can separate the calls by the channel they’re coming from
Having a grasp of how paid, organic, and referral traffic influence your business’ call conversions will help you figure out where to focus your energy. For PPC calls, you’ll want to pinpoint which campaigns and/or keywords are prompting those calls. Google Analytics can only provide information when someone clicks somewhere on your site. This is why having a dedicated call tracking number is important.
It allows marketers to show a particular phone number to each website visitor based on what medium they came from—PPC, organic, or referral. Individuals who click on a paid ad would see a different number from those who clicked on an SEO listing, while the people who didn’t click on either would see either the actual business phone number or a different number altogether.
This makes it easier for a marketer to distinguish which mediums are bringing in more calls than other mediums, and how to move forward with future marketing efforts in order to bring in more potential customers.
You can separate the calls by the location they’re coming from
By using call tracking and dynamic number insertion, you have the ability to show local phone numbers to people based on where they’re searching. A 2018 MightyCall article stated that 86% of consumers trust local businesses more than both national and international businesses.
That same article stated that potential callers see toll-free numbers as indicators of a larger business (possibly an international one) where they might have to speak with someone in a call center, wait on hold and then receive potentially bad customer service. A local number elicits consumer confidence and is more likely to draw in leads and convert them.
You can see which keywords are prompting calls
There are two kinds of call tracking: One-to-one and session-based. One-to-one provides a special call tracking number for every medium, particular ad platform, campaign, ad group or keyword/key phrase you desire to track. While the accuracy is flawless, it’s costly if you want to monitor multiples of any of those mediums.
This is where session-based call tracking comes in, where you can assign a group of call tracking numbers to your website based on the average number of visits your site receives for a specific traffic source (e.g. 20 PPC clicks hourly = 20 phone numbers). The numbers rotate hourly so each visitor sees a different number each hour. The call tracking software will also save web sessions and associate clicks to calls. While this is less accurate, the insights into the keyword prompting the calls are more detailed.
You can show PPC campaign value, both online and offline
You can attribute revenue to calls in two ways—dictate a set value for every call, or work with a call-tracking provider.
With a set value, a contractor might be able to offer an estimate concerning the average revenue value for every call/lead received. A data marketer can then designate a multiplier for every call so that they can report on the revenue from generated calls and provide a ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) metric.
With the right call-tracking provider, you’ll have the ability to track revenue linked with calls made to call centers and/or stored in CRMs. You can then work with providers to facilitate that revenue attribution.
You can monitor and improve customer service
If you’ve noticed a decrease in phone calls, or you’re wondering why you don’t receive more phone calls, it could be because of how your employees speak to your prospects and customers over the phone. How do they sound? Are they answering questions effectively? Are they leaving people on hold for a long time? Are those calling in being transferred multiple times to different employees in order to have their needs addressed? Is your phone service more automation than human conversation? These are all issues that can be addressed in one of two ways—call scoring, or reviewing and listening to the phone calls yourself.
Call scoring used to involve paying people to listen to phone calls and then rate them. But current technology—including voice recognition and machine learning—allows call-tracking software to be effective enough to accomplish that on its own.
If you listen to calls yourself, you’ll hear why your customers and prospects are frustrated. Then you can train your employees to speak more effectively on the phone with customers and prospects. Additionally, if there is something your employees are frustrated with when it comes to answering the phone, you can return to those phone calls and address their concerns, particularly if it’s preventing them from providing good customer service.
You can optimize ads for a particular time of day
Call tracking can show you when your business is receiving the most phone calls. Call detail reports, which can segment calls by the hour, provide essential information for ad scheduling strategies, help data marketers earmark part of the budget for the busiest business hours, and maximize return on ad spend.
You can understand the average time spent on a call
Call-details reports can show information about the average call time. Data marketers can use this information to help businesses with branding and marketing tactics. In addition to signifying call quality and call representative engagement with callers, the call length average can indicate other things.
For instance, for calls that last 10 minutes or longer, if callers are on hold, consider a voiceover with additional information about the products and services you provide online (or, at the very least, some enjoyable on-hold music).
You can offer reporting on call details, recordings, and analytics
As mentioned before, having this information is valuable in assessing customer service quality and employee performance. It can show how calls bring about revenue, how call ads and online phone numbers influence online traffic, what the cost of acquisition is and how to decrease it, which channels are producing the best leads, and what role call tracking has with attribution (including detailed customer journey insights through dynamic number insertion and moving past just last click models).
You can have more detailed call metrics for reporting
Call tracking can give you more details about what happened once the caller hung up. If you know how many calls were answered, how many went to voicemail, how many weren’t answered and didn’t go to voicemail, etc., and you use hourly segmentation, you can see when the calls were made.
You can then figure out how to address this moving forward. For example, during the time period which your business gets the most unanswered calls or voicemails, considering temporarily switching to a voiceover that lets callers know when to call back or tells them to visit your website and submit a form or use a live chat function.
By now, you should be able to see the value in having call tracking and monitoring for your business, and how it can improve your customer calls and customer service overall. If you’re ready to get your business set up with call tracking and call monitoring, contact Barge Marketing to get started.