Know the Value of Phone Calls & Grow Your Business with Call Tracking

By recognizing the need for seamless customer interaction, forward-thinking companies are prioritizing the value of a phone call as they provide the means for customers to instantly reach out to service representatives with a mere touch of a button. For many, this is an easier solution than tapping their way through a mobile website to find the answer to their question.

Unfortunately, some businesses are missing out on the click-to-call commerce opportunity due to lackluster customer service, agonizing wait times, or complicated automated telephone systems. These all represent a missed opportunity.

Why Track Phone Calls?

It is essential to recognize the impact phone calls can have on a business. About 65% of Fortune 500 companies say phone calls are their highest quality lead source, and 61% of local mobile searches result in a phone call. In other words, the majority of people yearn for a human touch in their purchasing journey and this results in a huge sales opportunity. When you track phone calls, you gain insight into how customers reach you. Whether they’re calling from digital ads or a billboard on the highway, it can help determine which marketing methods yield the most returns.

How Does Call Tracking Work?

Call tracking works by assigning unique, trackable phone numbers to each of your marketing sources (including but not limited to PPC campaigns, Facebook Ads, print ads, billboard ads, TV spots, etc.). When the tracking number is called, data is collected which can include:

• Caller information
• Keyword
• Referrer type (e.g. search ad, social media ad, banner ad)
• Referral source (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.)
• Call origination
• Call time and duration
• And much more based on advanced capabilities and AI-powered tools.

Keyword Level Tracking

Call tracking allows you to see what keywords are driving the most phone calls and conversions. This can be really useful when tracking the success of PPC campaigns. Whenever a customer finds your business online through a paid ad and calls your business, you will know which source and keyword drove the call.

Keyword-level tracking allows you to fine-tune your marketing efforts as you’ll have a better understanding of what is working and what isn’t.

Routing Calls Intelligently

Nothing can frustrate a customer more than being placed on a lengthy hold or getting sent to someone who cannot answer their questions. When using call tracking, you can route phone calls based on customer segmentation. Let’s say you work for a landscape services company. Your company offers tree planting and you also offer tree removal--two different services. This also means that your business has a tree planting department and a tree removal department. If a customer lands on your tree removal section of your website, with proper call tracking, their call can be routed to the removal department who can likely answer their questions better than anyone in the planting department.

Improve Customer Service

With call tracking, you can measure call length, conversion rates, and other crucial business stats with your reports. This will help remove pain points for the customer and greatly improve their experience.

For your customer service representative(s) who are answering phone calls, how great would it be to know that the incoming caller was on your tree removal pricing page when the phone call was initiated? This would give your CSR a small inclination of what the caller is looking for based on the webpage they were visiting.

Or how about sending repeat customers to agents that they’ve spoken to before? By improving the customer experience you are increasing customer satisfaction.

Since call tracking records all phone calls, by listening to those calls you can identify an accurate image of your customer and their likes and dislikes. This can lead to additional insights into what services and products your customers need the most, and you can monitor your staff to help them provide the best levels of customer support.

Geo-Location of Callers

Call tracking allows you to find out the geographical locations of the people who are calling your business. This will enable you to assess which geographic areas are generating the most business, which could influence your ad targeting decisions and potentially identify opportunities for business expansion.

Tracking clicks is one part of the narrative. Since customers live on their mobile devices, tracking phone calls can help tell the entire story so it pays to know the how and why behind phone leads. Leveraging call tracking for your business can set you up for success so you can make the best business decisions moving forward.

Answering phone calls is one way to show digital responsiveness. 🎧 Listen to the Hoist Hangout:How to Attract Homeowners with Digital Responsiveness podcast for more insights.