"Just what is the value of a phone call? That's a good question, and the answer depends on whom you ask. Many organizations consider incoming phone calls a necessary evil, and are only excited when a phone call directly results in a sale. Those companies underestimate the importance of the telephone as an acquisition channel. As a result, they miss out on a lot of sales.
The value of telephony varies by industry
The reasons for which (potential) customers contact an organization by phone vary greatly by industry. In practice, we see that people like to call when they are about to make an expensive purchase, or a purchase to which they are tied for a longer period of time, such as a subscription or service contract. People also like to call when it comes to a more complex product or service. For example, consider a remodel, a mortgage, or a medical procedure. So the value of those calls also varies by industry. Someone calling to agree to an expensive remodel has a different value than a customer calling to take advantage of a warranty.
Not only hard conversions are valuable
We live in a time when you can buy, order or reserve almost anything online. Nowadays, there are even cars that you can add to your shopping cart online, and checkout directly via iDeal. Too often, only the channel or ad that preceded the sale gets all the credit. But many sales would never have come about without the support of other touchpoints in the customer journey. For your own organization, try answering the question of whether website visitors convert immediately during their first visit. In the ideal world, of course they would, but in practice your leads will come in contact with your company several times before they eventually convert. For example, a customer journey can look like this:
- Someone googles the service or product you provide and comes to your website through an advertisement.
- This is where the lead orients, and then thinks about it again.
- A few days later, he still wants to know more and returns to your site via branded search.
- The lead reads interesting information here, but for his specific questions he calls your company.
- The lead has no more questions and is completely convinced he must have your product/service.
- Again, the lead comes to your website via branded search and converts online.
Would you look only at the last click? Then all the credit would go to SEO, as the channel that provided the conversion. It would be fairer to also assign conversion points to SEA, which provided the first website visit, and the telephone, because it really convinced the lead in the end. Without telephony, the conversion would have either never happened, or the customer journey would have taken much longer.
Optimize your marketing using telephony data
In the example above, you can see that phone calls play an essential role in the customer journey. This is not surprising, because during such a conversation you can inform, reassure, convince and make the customer feel confident. All elements that can contribute to your choice of provider. Knowing this, it is smart to do more with the data that phone calls generate. For example, did you know that with this data you leave better choices for more leads?
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