The approach to customer service has completely shifted in recent years. Now, 54% of customers have higher expectations for customer service compared to one year ago, which has left many organizations reviewing their operations to meet targets.
However, no two organizations are the same. Each has their own targets to meet and challenges to face, so making data-driven decisions is key. With the consumer journey now favouring omnichannel touchpoints, strategies must act on key metrics whilst still lowering the cost of every interaction.
Enter call tracking – which bridges the gap between sales calls and advertising spend. Call tracking makes it possible to monitor exactly which online marketing channels are driving phone calls and customers to your business.
Here are four reasons why larger businesses need call tracking to meet customer service targets:
1. See the Customer Lifetime Value
Understanding the lifetime value of a customer is crucial to encouraging repeat business. After all, encouraging current customers to re-purchase is easier as they have lower associated costs and are likelier to give higher satisfaction ratings. This metric is usually calculated through average order value, purchase frequency and customer time length.
However, the path to purchase is complex with consumers switching between online and offline channels before becoming a sale. So omnichannel tracking is necessary.
If 70% of consumers phone your business directly from a search results page, it’s clear your online marketing is driving offline sales. But how can you track an individual customer’s lifetime journey to prove their value?
Call tracking from providers such as Mediahawk tracks all online to offline interactions, providing seamless information on the entire customer journey.
For example, if you send an email to an existing customer promoting a new product and they decide to call directly from your listed phone number, it’s clear this online marketing channel is driving over-the-phone conversions. You can then calculate how valuable these interactions and conversions are from lifetime customers.
2. Retention and Return Rates
Consumer expectations have changed drastically. Our patience has weakened with on-demand services (social media, email, live chat) and we expect instant results.
But in the day and age where it is 9x more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one, meeting customer immediacy is a must for improving retention and return rates.
There’s still a perception among customers that filling out contact forms or sending an email means waiting days for a response. They know a phone call can resolve a query in minutes compared to a week’s worth of emails.
Considering that improving customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 95%, you could be exceeding your customer service targets by huge margins.
Call tracking software helps your sales team close more deals and negotiate higher value sales. Once you know which channels are driving calls and where an individual customer is in the buyer journey, you can draw conclusions and improve the way your team communicates. This might be through adjusting your over the phone offering to meet specific caller’s needs.
Having this information available aids the call handler’s ability to meet the caller’s needs through better service, making the customer likelier to buy again.
3. Preferred Communication Channel of Final Conversion
Because of the digital world, consumers now expect quick responses and have communication preferences. Identifying these preferences is a crucial metric for customer satisfaction, especially when the final conversion turns a lead into a sale.
This will vary from enterprise to enterprise, as different purchases will require different forms of communication.
For example, expensive purchases (e.g. a holiday or a car) will require more in-depth conversations, making customers likelier to close sales over the phone, whereas an enquiry over a product’s availability could be answered quickly over social media or live chat.
Call tracking monitors which channels customers are most likely to complete purchases on. Your enterprise can use this data to plug resources into optimizing these channels and guarantee the highest conversion rate possible.
For example, if you identify that a considerable number of leads are converting over the phone after downloading an eBook, you could create more eBooks to target specific industries and widen your customer base.
4. Personalize the Customer Experience by Tracking Offline Conversations
As consumers are jumping across online channels to the phone and back, your sales representatives need to know exactly where a caller has been, who they are and, most importantly, why they are calling. Without this information the chances of achieving a sale are greatly reduced.
By personalizing the customer experience, leads will feel more valued and be more focused on making a purchase, which is why 94% of large enterprises worldwide are using their customer data to deliver personalized experiences.
Call tracking analytics generate real-time insights about each caller. Your sales team can view information on the customer they’re communicating with, such as the page they landed on, the keywords they used to find your website and if they have called before. You’ll be able to tailor conversations to specific customers and close more deals.
This can also be used to automatically route and filter callers, so they are sent to the correct person or department, eliminating call transfers.
For instance, if you were a retail company with a customer who had an item of clothing in their basket, but they decided to call before completing their purchase, they would be directed to the correct sales representative to help complete the sale.
Together this all forms a frictionless customer journey. Customers will feel reassured that you know exactly what they want and happy customers lead to better conversion rates.
Although larger enterprises have a bigger market share, they can still suffer from the difficulty of reaching customer service targets. However, by introducing call tracking, your business can gain comprehensive customer insights, guaranteeing that you are using the best omnichannel marketing strategies to increase customer satisfaction and sales.
About the Author
Natalia Selby is Marketing coordinator at Mediahawk, with over 10 years experience in analytics, content management and eCommerce.
