What is call tracking?
Call tracking is a call tracking system that captures incoming calls, shows which ads the user saw before calling the company, and helps analyze the effectiveness of traffic channels.
Call tracking is based on a chain of replacement numbers. The client does not see the real company number, but a replacement number that is assigned to a specific ad or to an entire channel. This is how the call tracking system tracks the source of the call.
Without call tracking
The company receives requests from calls – one month more, another less |
The company has one number, it is indicated on the website, on landing pages and in advertisements |
Sometimes clients cannot get through from the first call, but the company does not know the quantity of these clients and how this affects the conversion |
With call tracking
The system captures each call and its source — it’s easy to track which channel the client came from, how the channels work in general: they bring targeted traffic or just spend the advertising budget |
The company still has one number, but the traffic sources use replacement numbers and calls received from these numbers are forwarded to the main number |
Call tracking makes it easy to take multiple calls at the same time. Incoming calls are automatically distributed to a free manager. With the help of pop-up windows, managers can immediately see if the current client is calling and can get the client card in CRM |
Call tracking records all conversations with customers. You can listen to these records, it helps to evaluate the work of sales managers. Successful calls can be shown as a guide during manager training, and unsuccessful conversations can be an example of how it shouldn’t be.
Static call tracking
Each traffic channel is assigned a separate number. You will get information about the performance of the channel, but not how a particular creative or individual marketing start-up worked.
Dynamic call tracking
In this case, a separate number is assigned not to a traffic channel, but to each user on the site. One user saw an ad on YouTube, another saw an ad on Google, both proceeded to the website and saw different numbers: the first one called one number, and the second one used another number. Thus, the call tracking service will identify where the request came from.
Dynamic call tracking provides more data for analysis than static call tracking, but it also costs more. In this case, you can find out not only channel data, but also analyze the effectiveness of individual creatives and even keywords that converted a call into a request. This will allow you to adjust your marketing launches by turning off inefficient channels.
Combined call tracking
This option combines both types of call tracking where static call tracking is used for some channels (statistics from offline advertising), for others it is dynamic (for example, contextual advertising).
How call tracking works step by step
- The user saw an advertisement, clicked on it and proceeded to the company’s website.
- using the code on the site, the call tracking system obtains information about the user – click history and client_id;
- the company has dynamic call tracking, so the service selects a free replacement number and binds it to the user’s client_id for 10 minutes;
- This is the number that the user sees on the site as soon as the site loads. This is an automated process that happens in seconds.
- The user calls the number on the site.
- the call tracking system receives the call and redirects it to the final number of the company;
- the call is recorded in the database along with the client_id and click history. This allows to identify the source of the call.
- Call tracking distributes the call to a free manager, and he answers the call.
- call tracking records that the manager picked up the phone and records the conversation;
- in some call tracking systems there is an option with a pop-up window where CRM displays the client card to the manager. He can click on the link and see the history of conversations with customers, his purchases and other information;
- if the manager does not answer, call tracking will mark a missed call in the report.
- The manager closes the deal.
sales information is recorded in CRM and proceeds to the end-to-end analytics service. This helps to evaluate the whole picture of advertising: where the application came from, how the user was guided through the sales funnel, how much profit and revenue a particular traffic channel brought.
Why call tracking is needed
- To save advertising budget
If you do not track the sources of calls, there is a risk of making decisions based on incorrect information about advertising. For example, there’s a risk to disable effective traffic channels that do not lead to regular requests, but convert profits from phone calls. Without knowing the indicators for all advertising, you can turn off such channels and get less profit.
Call tracking helps to determine the effectiveness of traffic sources. It is easy to notice channel that brings few calls and does not pay off in the reports. It is better to turn off such channels and redistribute the budget to more converse channels.
- To optimize the managers’ work
Call tracking is a useful tool for analyzing the work of the sales department. The system records calls, some services even decrypt them and mark suspicious conversations where the manager was rude to the client or didn’t stick to the scripts.
This helps to quickly analyze the work of sales managers and get an idea who of them bring more revenue and who loses customers. It is worth pointing out problem areas in conversations with customers in order to improve interaction with customers and increase the effectiveness of calls.
Who needs call tracking
If your business receives requests on phone and uses multiple promotional channels of traffic, you need a call tracking system. You can see the full picture of the effectiveness of advertising and it is easy to follow the user’s path from seeing an ad to a request and identify what ads encourage them to make calls.
Call tracking features that are important for business
- Evaluation of advertising effectiveness
Call tracking helps you identify which advertising channels are cost-effective and which are not. Call tracking is built into the analytics system, and you see the big picture. Knowing where all the requests and sales come from, you can identify which traffic sources are the most effective, and which only spend the advertising budget.
- Customer segmentation
Call tracking is convenient in call distribution between sales managers. Thus, more experienced employees receive calls from more important customers with a high average bill. Call tracking will automatically divide calls into categories: by transaction amount, by number of orders, etc.
- Data collection automation and analysis of conversations with customers
Some call tracking services not only record conversations with customers, but also decrypt calls. The transcripts are entered into the database. The head of the sales department can study this data to find unsuccessful calls by keywords and point the manager to problem areas that should be improved.
Speech Analytics can be responsible for this. Using this tool, you can find examples of successful and unsuccessful communication with customers and estimate how effectively agents work. Speech analytics automatically analyzes transcribed calls using predefined dictionaries. If the tool finds a word or expression from such a dictionary during decryption, it will tag the conversations with the appropriate tag.
It is easy to identify unsuccessful calls from the Speech Analytics report – the tool highlights problem areas with red tags. For example, “the manager provokes the client” or “unsatisfied client”. Such tags are an occasion to listen to the recording and understand what went wrong in communication with the client.
- Evaluation of the work of the sales department
The call tracking service has a convenient dashboard that captures the performance of sales managers. This report will show the number of leads assigned to sellers and the number of leads converted into purchases. For each seller, you can see the impact on the company’s business metrics – how much profit they brought, how many deals they closed.
