The benefits of a toll-free vanity phone number are clear. It gives your business a phone number that’s easy to remember, which improves your chances of generating inbound business leads.
For many businesses, however, securing a vanity number is only the first step. There are many other tools and strategies you can utilize to ensure you’re getting the most from your custom phone number. One of these tools is call tracking.
Many companies offer call-tracking services, so it’s important to know what to ask vanity phone number providers when setting up a call tracking program. Whether you’re completely new to the concept, or have used similar tools in the past, you always want to make sure you have a good understanding of the complete services offered and how they can help you grow your business. For example, many call service providers offer additional call-handling services like advanced call routing applications, and call monitoring tools like call recording, missed call alerts, and automated call analysis.
Here we will take a look at some key questions to ask call-tracking providers when setting up a tracking and analytics program that’s right for you.
What Is Call Tracking?
It’s important to know how your provider defines call tracking.
As the name indicates, the service tracks calls coming in to your toll-free vanity number to help give you insight on when and why the number works. It gives you an idea of which forms of advertising work best for your number, and the time of day potential customers are most likely to call.
Call tracking gives you insight about each caller, including caller location and demographic information such as average home value and household income. A good provider should also include the ability to record calls to help you capture more details about each caller, as well as to analyze how various sales techniques perform.
A robust call-tracking system can categorize calls to let you know whether the person on the line is a unique first-time caller, or if they’re a repeat caller. This data allows businesses to segment based on customer profile and then market to these two groups accordingly. Finally, if you happen to miss a call or two, a call-tracking service reports this and helps you minimize lost leads by sending automated missed call alerts, which can be delivered by SMS or email for immediate follow up.
Is Call Tracking Right For Me and My Business?
If you have a toll-free vanity number for your business, be sure you’re working with a provider that provides detailed call tracking data. Some may argue that call-tracking features are just as valuable as the phone number itself because it gives you a vast amount of powerful customer information and business insights that can help your business grow in the future.
Small and medium-sized businesses often have tight budgets. The data that is collected with a call tracking solution helps companies identify productive advertising channels, as well as channels that are not generating leads. This allows you to scale back low producing advertising campaigns or media channels, as well as boost the budget for campaigns and channels that are generating leads. Call tracking is easy to set up – in fact it takes no effort on your side. Once you have activated a toll-free vanity phone number and completed a few test calls to make sure it’s routing to your business, you’ll have instant access to 100% of your inbound call data
What Kinds of Metrics Are Included?
When choosing a call tracking provider, you’ll want to get a complete rundown of what exactly they will be tracking. With call tracking service from 800response, we provide you with all of the metrics you need to make sure you’re making the most efficient use of your vanity number, including caller addresses and demographics, contact names and phone numbers, and much more
We like to think of our metrics as a top-down overview of each individual call. There are 18 real-time call reports available, including where callers are located, their physical address, demographic information such as age and sex and which advertising efforts led them to call in the first place.
The top zip codes, area codes, cities and counties that incoming calls come from are some of the provided metrics. Data on missed calls, details on whether callers are first time, repeat or unique in any way and information on the contents of the call such as whether a sale was made or a problem solved are other included metrics.
You can also export and sort data on all of your calls, highlighting the information that’s most important to you and your business. This allows you to sync the data with any other customer relationship management efforts you have in place.
Which Metrics Are Most Important?
Some providers may tell you that all of their metrics are important, but determining which of them are most important all depends on your goals and how you use the data. Each call tracking metric is important in its own way, but some may be more relevant to you than others based on the individual needs of your business.
For example, if you have advertising programs in both Minneapolis and Milwaukee, the ability to see where your calls are coming from can come in handy. If you know you’re getting twice as many calls from Milwaukee, it might make sense to decrease ad spending in that market and use some of those funds to boost your initiatives in Minneapolis.
Or, if budget concerns mean you’ll have to cut back on TV advertising during a particular quarter of the year, you can track which TV ad placements, both channel and time, bring in the most calls compared to how much it costs to run the ads. This will help you make more informed ad-buying decisions and get the most out of your spending.
So, the real question isn’t which metrics are most important; it is which metrics are most important for your business model based on your goals.
How Will Call Tracking Impact Sales?
Call tracking can help your business increase sales, but let’s be clear — it’s not the tracking information itself that increases sales, it’s how you make use of that data. Again, this will all depend on your business model and sales goals.
For example, you may be a florist with a vanity number and your advertising campaigns are generating inbound inquiries among older folks who see your ads during daytime TV programs. That business is great, but you might also want to boost sales among younger audience segments as well, with the hope they will become life-long customers.
Call tracking analytics will help segment customer profiles. If the segment you’d like to increase sales with is millennials – those 18-34 years old, you can easily see the times of day people in this group calls and which types of advertising they respond to most. You can then come up with a targeted media plan based on the media types and times of day that audience seems to respond to most.
When it comes to sales, the more knowledge you have about the marketplace, the easier it is to go after your desired customers. Adding a call tracking program to your toll-free vanity number is a good way to do that.
What Are the Benefits Of Real-time Call Tracking?
The benefits are many. Like any form of data collection, the more you have, the more informed decisions you can make. And the best way to collect as much information as possible is to have a real-time call tracking service so you can access current information at any time.
Call tracking is an easy way to do research on your own company and the tendencies of your potential customers. The more you use it, the more you’ll get out of it. For example, if you’ve only used it for six months, it can deliver you some solid information, but it won’t be as useful as it would if you’ve used call tracking for six years and have historical data to conduct business comparisons related to the success of advertising campaigns, and where you use the toll-free vanity number you’re tracking. If one of your business goals is long-term and sustained growth, then it makes sense to use long-term metrics and customer trends and data as well. How Does Call Tracking Affect SEO?
If you’re a small or medium-sized business, there is a good chance you’ve used digital advertising on a local level, including search engine optimization (SEO). This is the process that involves making sure your business shows up on search pages based on non-paid search engine results.
Combining SEO with call-tracking data can be a potent mix. Call tracking allows you to see which searches each caller responded to, which means you can also see which online searches are more likely to lead to you chatting with potential customers. You can then use that data to make more efficient SEO decisions.
For instance, say your business emphasizes ten different keywords or phrases to help improve search engine rankings and results. Call tracking allows you to see which of those search queries bring in calls, and which ones don’t. You can then reduce or eliminate search terms that simply aren’t bringing you results, and bring new ones into the fold.
Are All Call Tracking Services the Same?
The answer is an emphatic, no! When thinking about what to ask call tracking providers, this question could deliver some interesting responses. With many companies you’re likely to hear, “they’re not all the same, we’re the best,” or a similar variation.
It’s true; all call tracking services are not the same, just the way that all small businesses or all customers are not the same. Many call tracking providers say they deliver call details, however, their reports and analytics are basic and their platforms do not allow for integration with your CRM, or they don’t provide caller demographics. We’re confident that the data we provide through our call tracking service can be helpful to businesses of all types and sizes. The insights we generate are versatile and can be used in lots of different situations based on your business goals.
So while some call tracking services are similar, they’re certainly not all the same. With 800response you know we’ll work with you to make sure you get personalized data about your incoming calls to help you increase call and sales volume. It’s our job to help your toll-free vanity number drive business.
Do You Offer Call Recording?
Call recording can be a very useful tool in a call tracking program in many ways. First, it allows you to analyze calls to determine which techniques lead to sales and which don’t. It’s an excellent training and learning tool for you and your sales associates because it helps you gauge performance in live sales situations.
Think of it like a sports team. Top teams and players are known for analyzing the game video, so they have an idea of what works and what doesn’t. The same is true with call recording.
Taking it a step further, we can also give you access to CallFinder, our proprietary application for speech analytics, which automatically monitors your recorded conversations with potential customers.
Data you can gather using CallFinder includes:
- Average call times.
- First-time call resolution rates.
- Sales staff productivity and up-sell rates
- Script compliance by sales agents.
This information can be useful for any business with a toll-free vanity number, but it’s particularly useful to those with high call volume. Receiving more calls means more data to sort and organize, and CallFinder is a good way to do that quickly and automatically.
Consider 800response
Now that you know the important questions to ask your call provider when setting up call tracking, take a look at the call tracking features and services we offer. We have everything you need to maximize the effectiveness of your toll-free vanity number, making your business more efficient and advertising efforts more cost-effective in the long run.
Add in data from CallFinder, our speech analytics platform, and it won’t be long before you see sales surge based on the analytical decisions you make and the improved customer experience your business delivers.