Can someone pick up the phone?

The Calltracks team recently attended the MeasureCamp London event to hear business leaders give their insights into the world of analysis and data. We really wanted to find out their perspective on sales calls and call tracking. Customer service calls have been in the news recently with ‘This is Money’ kicking off a campaign about customer service wait times and we wanted to find out if calls from customers have been de-prioritised.

At the centre of the news article is a UK couple who have been trying to contact British Gas for over 5 months. This problem appears to be consistent across many industries and include some big names like British Airways, Virgin Money and Scottish Power all coming under fire. As a result there is a call for government to hand out fines for companies that leave you on hold for longer than 10 minutes. It is also suggested companies should be obliged to publish daily call waiting times on their websites.

Are calls are being ignored! Are the calls being left un-answered?

Maybe not entirely ignored, but the emergence of chatbots, email, lead forms, online live chats, and social media, as a way to interact with customers, means calls (or some of them) have been deprioritised. Some companies make it virtually impossible for their clients to call them. This has only resulted in frustration and a chasm of potential customers being lost in the ‘hold’ waiting room and subsequently hanging up, never to interact with that business again.

Just because you get less calls, it doesn’t mean they are not important. When we asked MeasureCamp attendees how many lead forms they get through each week, they usually knew the number off the top of their head. The number of calls? No idea. They probably feel calls are dead. Out of sight and out of mind because they are not being tracked and monitored as other channels.

Marketing teams do a great job of tracking leads by channel, conversions by type, reach, social media followers etc etc but calls aren’t tracked and managed with the same rigour. When there is such a focus on churn rates and customer retention and conversion rates being increased, then surely the phones could have a very big part to play.

Actually, speaking to customers is especially important for sellers of high-ticket and low frequency products like automotive dealers, estate agents, travel agencies, insurance companies and medical and professional services. Customers want to speak to a knowledgeable sales person to ratify their choice before going ahead with a purchase. Good management of your phones and call tracking data can be crucial in retaining customers and converting more sales leads. Even if you really do have less calls coming into your business you still need to check that all your enquiries are dealt with quickly and answered properly. Does all the call information get lodged in the CRM?

With Calltracks detailed reporting you can easily see all your call activity and the valuable data it produces. By understanding what drives customers to make that call, you can reverse engineer your marketing to reduce costs or increase sales.

Let’s boil it right down! – Calls can make you money if they are managed well and lose you money, and damage your reputation, if handled badly. Please start taking calls seriously and track them as diligently as you do with all other digital KPI’s. Your customers want to speak to a human when they are about to make a big financial commitment or need help to solve an urgent problem.

Get in touch with the Calltracks team to discuss how call tracking could help your business improve it’s customer service and marketing ROI.