Why Call Accounting Efforts Need More than Traditional Call Tracking
February 18, 2015
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
When was the last time you reviewed your call tracking technology? If the answer is never, you’re not alone. This is one of those technology advancements companies tend to put in place and then forget about it. You’re getting the information you need for call accounting – why make a change?
The reason it may be time to take a closer look has more to do with the advancements in customer care technology than the call tracking system itself. Customers are interacting in omnichannel environments and to meet their expectations, you have to be able to connect the offline phone call with the online channel. It’s the proper way to reinforce your brand and can help increase conversions and the average value of your orders.
To get a true picture through your call accounting efforts, you need something better than the traditional call tracking technology. The goal is to track conversions over the phone that result from your marketing campaigns. If you can’t track all interactions and activities, you aren’t capturing an accurate picture and thus your reporting will be off.
Consider the traditional approach to call tracking. The company today that sends out a postcard with a phone number tied to that campaign can measure only one thing – the number of individuals from the targeted campaign who actually respond to the Call to Action. They have no way of knowing if that customer conducted research online, engaged in social media conversations or engaged in an online chat with a representative before making a call. Therefore, the attribute that is being measured is inaccurate and tells very little about the success or failure of the campaign.
The omnichannel environment of today demands call tracking that gets much more granular that simply attaching a phone number to a campaign. You need insights into the entire digital footprint that includes information on the interactions and activities that lead to the call, the call itself and activities after the call. It’s all about capturing the customer journey, measuring satisfaction and then improving the overall experience.
Understanding each touch point and what the customer hopes to experience is important in measuring success. While you will have some marketing activities that are done simply to reinforce your brand, others need to be closely measured as the competition is closely lurking to take any unhappy customer. If you can shore up your efforts and tighten the customer journey by catering specifically to their needs, you’ll stop filling the competition’s pipeline.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi