Marchex https://www.marchex.com/ Wed, 17 Jul 2024 22:59:44 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.1 The New Home Services Success Formula: Delighting Customers https://www.marchex.com/blog/marchex-sentiment-suite-for-home-services/ Wed, 17 Jul 2024 22:59:44 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33903 Marchex’s Sentiment Analysis Suite for home services offers many benefits that help businesses better understand customer feedback, improve service quality, and enhance customer satisfaction. You might wonder why sentiment analysis is necessary when you already collect reviews and send out surveys. It’s still important because Sentiment Suite can collect customer emotions for your team, provide […]

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Marchex’s Sentiment Analysis Suite for home services offers many benefits that help businesses better understand customer feedback, improve service quality, and enhance customer satisfaction. You might wonder why sentiment analysis is necessary when you already collect reviews and send out surveys. It’s still important because Sentiment Suite can collect customer emotions for your team, provide deeper insights such as how customer emotions fluctuate throughout a call and their overall view of your business. For this reason, it is critical to understand why your customers may be frustrated (technicians are late or rude, for example), whether this is a location or agent problem, and take steps to remedy the issue – and then track that it has improved. 

Capture All Customer Emotions 

Sentiment analysis provides a deeper understanding of customer emotions and attitudes by analyzing the nuances in their language. It captures the subtleties of positive, negative, and neutral sentiments in real-time conversations. Going further, Sentiment Suite identifies likely reasons why a business’ customers feel the way they do, which can provide a holistic understanding of the customer across all conversations. These deep insights can help businesses pinpoint where to focus their efforts to improve the customer experience. After each call, Sentiment Suite generates a text-based summary of the positive, negative, or neutral sentiment and then describes the likely reasons why the customer expressed the sentiment from an emotional standpoint. 

Drawbacks to Surveys 

Surveys often rely on structured questions with predefined answer options, which often miss the subtleties of customer emotions and experiences. Written reviews provide a general sense of customer satisfaction but often lack the depth to fully capture the emotional nuances and specific pain points. Reviews can be influenced by individual reviewer biases, leading to a less balanced view of overall customer sentiment. 

Both surveys and reviews lack scalability and volume. Sentiment analysis can process large volumes of conversation data automatically, making it scalable and efficient for ongoing sentiment tracking. However, knowing the customer’s emotion is only the first step. Understanding customer perceptions of your business is equally important. Here’s why both aspects are critical and how they complement each other. 

Emotion vs. Perception 

Emotion: Sentiment analysis captures how customers feel (happy, frustrated, satisfied, etc.) about their interactions with your business. 

Perception: Perceptions provide context and detail, explaining why customers may feel a certain way (emotion) and highlighting specific areas for improvement or reinforcement, such as perceptions of poor customer service, lack of follow up, service delays, product quality, unhelpful agent, technician knowledge or professionalism.   

For example, a caller was frustrated and annoyed at an HVAC business because despite being promised a refund for a service cancellation, it had not been processed for 11 days. At the beginning of the next call, her Sentiment was labeled as negative, and her emotion as frustrated. However, the tone of the call shifted as the agent patiently listened to the caller’s concerns, checked the account details, confirmed the refund had been issued, and provided reassurance about the refund process. This left the caller feeling satisfied and appreciative of the assistance. As a result, the caller left the conversation satisfied, and their overall View of the Business is positive. The Sentiment Summary noted that as the agent provides information and reassurance about the refund being processed, the tone shifts to relieved and appreciative. The caller ended the conversation on a positive note, thanking the agent and expressing gratitude. 

Look at emotion as the VoC or voice of the customer and perception as VoB, view of the business.  Understanding both emotion and perception provides a more holistic view of the customer experience, giving you actionable insights that may require urgent attention to prevent potential damage to the reputation of your home service company. 

Understand the Full Scope of Customer Sentiment 

In conclusion, sentiment analysis provides crucial insights into customer emotions, understanding customer perceptions offers a complete picture of how your business is viewed and experienced. By integrating both, businesses can gain a comprehensive understanding of customer needs, make more informed decisions, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

With Marchex’s Sentiment Analysis Suite, you can gain insights into both the emotions and perceptions of your customers.  

Learn More 

For more information about how Sentiment Suite can help your home services business enhance customer understanding, better inform agent training, and increase customer satisfaction, book some time with our team today.  

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Sentiment Suite Wins 2024 Business Intelligence “Sammy” Awards https://www.marchex.com/blog/sentiment-suite-wins-business-intelligence-sammy-awards/ Thu, 11 Jul 2024 22:45:18 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33897 Marchex is happy to announce that we have won a Business Intelligence Sales and Marketing Technology Award in the Insights and Analysis category for our Sentiment Suite offering! The Sales and Marketing Technology Awards annually recognizes organizations and products that facilitate companies’ and customers’ abilities to connect and collaborate. This is the third time that […]

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Marchex is happy to announce that we have won a Business Intelligence Sales and Marketing Technology Award in the Insights and Analysis category for our Sentiment Suite offering! The Sales and Marketing Technology Awards annually recognizes organizations and products that facilitate companies’ and customers’ abilities to connect and collaborate. This is the third time that Marchex has won the Sammy Awards. The company previously won the award in 2021 for our Engage for Automotive product, and again in 2022 for the Marchex Conversation Intelligence platform.  

“We’re honored to recognize these Sammy winners,” says Maria Jimenez, Chief Nominations Officer at Business Intelligence Group. “Their vision and leadership are crucial for businesses to effectively educate and engage with customers in today’s dynamic landscape.” 

About Sentiment Suite 

Sentiment Suite rose above the competition because the solution not only identifies customer sentiment–it goes further by identifying for a business the most likely reasons why their customers feel the way they do, allowing for a holistic understanding of the customer across conversations. This ultimately can help businesses identify where to focus their efforts to improve the customer experience. After each call, the solution generates a text-based summary of the positive, negative, or neutral sentiment and then outlines the likely reasons why the customer expressed the sentiment from an emotional standpoint.  

Emotion ratings are a key differentiator for Marchex. The Sentiment Suite can identify whether the caller’s overall view of the business was positive, negative, or neutral, but using a combination of emotion ratings and call context, the “why” can provide additional details that are important for sales and marketing teams because customer sentiment often fluctuates throughout a call. For instance, a customer who was feeling initially frustrated at the beginning of a call (negative sentiment), may actually end the call feeling more satisfied with the company after the agent successfully alleviated their concern (positive emotion). This event would be documented in a natural-language explanation for why the customer ended the conversation with an overall positive state of mind, even though the sentiment was categorized as negative.  

About the “Sammy” Awards 

Every year, Business Intelligence Group’s Sales and Marketing Technology Awards program honors individuals, technologies, and companies that create solutions that help organizations better connect and do business with customers. Business Intelligence Group’s awards are unique because they are judged by business executives, who use their personal experience and insights to assess the nominees.  

Learn More 

To learn more about how our award-winning AI-powered technology can help your business enhance customer understanding, better inform agent training, and increase customer satisfaction, book some time with our team today.  

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Marchex Wins the 2024 Appealie SaaS Customer Success Award https://www.marchex.com/blog/marchex-wins-the-2024-appealie-saas-customer-success-award/ Wed, 05 Jun 2024 22:18:38 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33839 Marchex is excited to announce that we have won the 2024 APPEALIE SaaS Customer Success Award! The APPEALIE SaaS Awards annually acknowledge top tier SaaS platforms for high quality products and outstanding customer experiences. Marchex won the award for going above and beyond in our partnership with Sierra Air Conditioning & Plumbing, a Las Vegas-based […]

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Marchex is excited to announce that we have won the 2024 APPEALIE SaaS Customer Success Award! The APPEALIE SaaS Awards annually acknowledge top tier SaaS platforms for high quality products and outstanding customer experiences. Marchex won the award for going above and beyond in our partnership with Sierra Air Conditioning & Plumbing, a Las Vegas-based company providing heating, air conditioning, and other services.  

The Challenge 

Sierra Air Conditioning & Plumbing approached Marchex after facing issues obtaining conversation analytics from their existing solution. They needed assistance deciding where to best allocate advertising dollars. The Sierra team had worked with Marchex in the past and was looking to leverage that expertise to solve their current challenges.  

It was difficult for Sierra’s staff to determine the number of booked appointments from a given marketing source, leaving them uncomfortable making business decisions without better insights into the number of calls from specific marketing activities as well as the associated booked appointments, and booking percentages. 

Marchex’s Solution 

The Marchex team scheduled a consultation to learn more about Sierra’s business challenges. Upon understanding their business goals and metrics, Marchex recommended a plan for Marchex Platform Services to help Sierra achieve their objectives of optimizing marketing spend and obtaining deeper insights into conversation outcomes, specifically appointments. Once the solution was accepted, implementation and onboarding by Marchex specialists only took a few days. Sierra’s team saw impactful results quickly thereafter.  

According to Ryan Field, Vice-President of Marketing at Sierra Air Conditioning & Plumbing, “Marchex was able to extract valuable insights from the calls recorded by our field management software. We would struggle to allocate advertising spend without the critical data from Marchex.” 

Learn more about how Marchex helped Sierra improve marketing campaign ROI, optimize call center staffing, and better train customer service representatives by watching our webinar. 

About APPEALIE 

The APPEALIE Awards are regarded as the most selective in the software space. Entrants undergo an extensive vetting process upon submission to ensure only the standout platforms are given accolades. Marchex’s stellar customer service, knowledgeable staff, and thoughtful strategy involved in its partnership with Sierra Air Conditioning & Plumbing impressed the APPEALIE judges and were deciding factors in the company’s win.   

“Customers are the driving force behind any successful software platform. We are proud to honor those SaaS platforms that prioritize customer satisfaction above all else,” said Arabella Solaybar of APPEALIE. “In an ever-growing market of vendors, our data-driven award methodology highlights those who consistently deliver superior customer outcomes, setting them apart from the rest.” 

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Sentiment Suite: The Next Generation in Customer Sentiment Analysis https://www.marchex.com/blog/sentiment-suite-the-next-generation-in-customer-sentiment-analysis/ Wed, 22 May 2024 19:57:35 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33819 In today’s fast-paced and customer-centric business environment, understanding the nuances of customer sentiment has never been more critical. Traditionally, businesses have relied on direct feedback mechanisms like Google reviews or customer surveys to gauge customer satisfaction. These traditional methods miss the subtle nuances of customer emotions during interactions. Online reviews happen after-the-fact – when your […]

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In today’s fast-paced and customer-centric business environment, understanding the nuances of customer sentiment has never been more critical. Traditionally, businesses have relied on direct feedback mechanisms like Google reviews or customer surveys to gauge customer satisfaction. These traditional methods miss the subtle nuances of customer emotions during interactions. Online reviews happen after-the-fact – when your brand reputation has already taken a hit – and surveys capture a surface-level view of the customer experience. Finding a way to effectively monitor your online reputation is certainly worth it, as a one-star increase can lead to up to 28% more revenue! With the release of Sentiment Suite to Callcap, Marchex Platform Services, and Marketing Edge, let’s walk through how Marchex’s latest generative-AI-powered sentiment analysis revolutionizes how businesses understand and engage with their customers. 

A Novel Form of Sentiment Analysis 

Marchex’s Sentiment Suite has been deeply influenced by our insights from analyzing billions of minutes of business-to-customer (B2C) conversations. Our expertise in conversational analytics, combined with the invaluable insights gained from our early adopter program, has been instrumental in developing a feature that stands out from other sentiment analysis solutions. 

The early adopter program for Sentiment Suite enabled Marchex to glean feedback from industry leaders in the Home Services, Auto Services, and Healthcare verticals. Processing hundreds of thousands of calls through the Sentiment Suite models and reviewing the results with early adopters enabled Marchex to understand the needs and applications for sentiment analysis across various industries and use cases. Ultimately, this feedback resulted in a refined product built to meet the needs of several personas, from call center managers looking to monitor agent performance, to digital marketing managers seeking to confirm campaign and media-source success.  

Most sentiment analysis capabilities in the market offer little more than a positive, negative, or neutral rating of conversations, but Marchex has created a comprehensive solution that leverages state-of-the-art generative AI to decode the complexities of human interactions. 

Let’s look at how Sentiment Suite distinguishes itself: 

Discovering the Why 

Marchex’s Sentiment Suite offers a curated set of AI signals that present a holistic view of customer emotions, giving businesses visibility into likely reasons why customers are frustrated. Conversations receive a structured rating so businesses can aggregate and analyze conversations according to the sentiment, satisfaction, and frustration expressed by a customer. However, businesses can also view the likely reasoning behind their customers’ frustration and dissatisfaction in both structured formats and natural language explanations, a few examples being pricing issues, agent knowledge gaps, and long hold times.  

Beyond Satisfaction to Brand Perception 

It is vital to look at agent-customer interactions with a holistic view to understand how agents are or are not meeting customers’ needs. For example, just because a customer started a call with a frustrated tone does not mean that they ended the call feeling frustrated. The best agents can quell customer concerns, leaving them satisfied with the call outcome. That’s why Marchex’s Sentiment Suite labels and explains each customer’s View of the Business, helping distinguish brand advocates from potential negative reviewers and giving businesses a near real-time view of customer satisfaction. Each rating is accompanied with a natural-language explanation for the likely reasons why a customer left the conversation with a positive, negative, or neutral view of your business. 

The pairing of customer emotion with customer perception enables businesses to track how sentiment fluctuates throughout a call. Managers can swiftly identify which agents meet the needs of frustrated customers or identify common factors in conversations where customers are left with a negative view of the business.  

Conclusion 

The launch of Marchex’s Sentiment Suite marks a new era in conversational analytics, one where understanding the emotional undercurrents of customer conversations is no longer an aspiration but a reality. “Understanding the emotional sentiment of our customers as they interact with our business, in real-time, gives us a powerful application,” Ryan Field, Vice President of Marketing at Sierra Heating and Cooling, an early adopter participant. “It can help drive strategic marketing insights and operational improvements to help our business.” With Marchex’s Sentiment Suite, businesses are not just listening to their customers; they are truly understanding them, paving the way for unparalleled customer experiences and business growth. 

If you want to see what kinds of insights Sentiment Suite can uncover for your business, reach out today 

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Benefits of Call Summaries for Home Services Companies https://www.marchex.com/blog/benefits-of-call-summaries-for-home-services-companies/ Thu, 09 May 2024 22:11:56 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33772 “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half” – John Wanamaker   We often discuss what home services companies can do to prioritize calls and focus on calls that matter. To re-cap, here are four easy to use, cost-effective technologies:  Record all calls  Utilize AI-powered call […]

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“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half” – John Wanamaker  

We often discuss what home services companies can do to prioritize calls and focus on calls that matter. To re-cap, here are four easy to use, cost-effective technologies: 

  1. Record all calls 
  1. Utilize AI-powered call summaries 
  1. Leverage call scoring 
  1. Utilize a short easy-to-navigate IVR, if necessary for you to segment callers based on their needs 

However, you might be thinking, “I’ve been recording calls for years. My software already generates complete transcripts, and we listen to calls to evaluate leads and agents. I am not a fan of using an IVR. Why is this so significant?” This is a fair concern. For all its benefits, call recording has its share of shortcomings.  

Challenges with Call Recording 

Indeed, recording calls has been a longstanding practice. One could argue that an entire generation has grown accustomed to hearing that calls will be recorded for quality and training purposes. Are you really listening to every call for quality and training purposes? Of course not. That would be expensive and time-consuming. There’s also the issue of bias. Can your internal managers listen to calls and remain impartial regarding the outcome of those calls? 

Call transcripts often turn out to be extensive and perplexing. Additionally, transcription technology struggles to accurately render regional accents and language nuances. This issue could lead to a misinterpretation of the call, which might impact sales and overall revenue.  

Benefits of Call Summaries 

This is where utilizing AI-powered call summaries is valuable. These summaries condense the call content into three or four of the most crucial bullet points, irrespective of call length.  

Artificial intelligence (AI) provides a wealth of opportunities for sales and marketing teams. These tools can boost over-the-phone appointment bookings, elevate overall customer service excellence, help optimize marketing spend and ensure you can seize any missed opportunities. 

How much value do you estimate you’d gain from implementing AI-powered call scoring, complete with alerts for missed opportunities and concise summaries highlighting the conversations key points? Consider this: no human intervention means significantly reduced costs, AI-driven processing for quicker turnaround from call completion, and concise three to four bullet points detailing the conversation and outcome. This enables immediate action without the need to listen to lengthy calls or decipher perplexing transcripts. 

Call Summaries in Practice 

One home services company found success with call summaries provided by Marchex. This franchise industry leader worked with Marchex to gain a more detailed understanding of what took place during calls across the almost 2,000 locations, the goal being to improve customer service. Outcome-focused call summaries were a key tool that helped them achieve that goal. These short text synopses of calls highlighted caller intent, key events that took place, and topics covered. Here is an example of a call summary: 

  • The caller contacted business regarding issues with their AC unit 
  • Caller provided their information and described the problem, but ultimately declined the offer to receive a technician due to scheduling conflicts 
  • The caller mentioned that they would try another service provider and declined the agent’s offer to hold the appointment 

Optimize Your Calls and Save Money 

As a home services company, failing to implement AI-powered call scoring, missed opportunity alerts, and AI-powered call summaries within your call center (big or small) could result in wasting valuable marketing dollars and missing a sales or service opportunity. 

Keep in mind that you likely don’t require more calls; instead, you may just need to optimize the ones you currently receive. By doing so, you’ll be well-prepared to expand your business and market for additional call volumes when the time is right. 

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Key Benefits of Marketing Edge + GA4 Integration https://www.marchex.com/blog/key-benefits-of-marketing-edges-ga4-integration/ Wed, 01 May 2024 21:21:15 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33767 Last summer, Google officially retired Universal Analytics (UA) and transitioned over to Google Analytics 4. The new generation of digital analytics notably tracks both web and app activity. A few months prior to the launch, Marchex introduced the general availability of its GA4 integration with Marketing Edge to help marketers and businesses meet the customer […]

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Last summer, Google officially retired Universal Analytics (UA) and transitioned over to Google Analytics 4. The new generation of digital analytics notably tracks both web and app activity. A few months prior to the launch, Marchex introduced the general availability of its GA4 integration with Marketing Edge to help marketers and businesses meet the customer journey opportunities in front of them.     

Using Marchex Marketing Edge’s call tracking and conversational intelligence and Google Analytics 4 (GA4)’s combined capabilities, businesses gained the ability to develop a deeper understanding of the customer journey with greater visibility into customer phone calls. These insights can be leveraged to create a better customer experience, improve phone calls with customers, and increase revenue.  

In the year since Marketing Edge’s integration with GA4, our customers benefitted greatly from its features, including some that were introduced post-launch:   

Flexibility 

A key benefit of Marketing Edge’s GA4 integration is the ability it gives users to support any schema with configurable event names and parameters. As an example, auto dealers that use the Automotive Standards Council (ASC) schema can successfully set up their Marketing Edge GA4 integration using the ASC recommended event names and parameters. Companies that use their own custom schema are also supported. 

Marketing Edge’s GA4 integration has been developed further since its inception. In February 2024, the ability to send events to multiple GA4 instances per call was introduced. It can support tailored schemas to meet respective measurement strategies, and allows all entities involved in the implementation and reporting of marketing initiatives to perform their own unique analysis in GA4 using data collected by Marketing Edge. Different advertising partners and businesses can obtain easier access to marketing information including web traffic and offline data in their respective GA4 instances, such as those looking to generate as many leads as possible, those interested in total aggregate leads to a business, and those wanting to understand more specific demand for their products and services. 

Multiple Events per Call  

The Marketing Edge GA4 integration provides users with the ability to upload multiple events per call using simple or advanced criteria driven by conversational intelligence. This results in a clear view per channel into the quantity, quality, handling, and outcomes of calls driven by your efforts. Using multiple events per call simplifies setup, enhances reporting, and enables more granular conversion tracking.   

Scalability  

Marketing Edge’s GA4 integration is configurable via UI or API. Built taking multi-location franchises into heavy consideration, businesses can apply the integration to tens, hundreds, or thousands of properties. From single businesses to thousands of locations across an entire organization, Marchex + GA4 can help businesses of all kinds observe their call activity.  

Filling in the Offline Blanks in Online Journeys with Session-based DNI  

Phone calls are one of the key interactions in your customer journey. While they may be driven by online activity, phone calls often happen offline. For example, a visitor may arrive on your website on their desktop or tablet but make the call to your business using their mobile phone. By default, Google would be unable to tie these two activities together, or even know the phone call occurred.   

When using session-based DNI, Marketing Edge can connect the offline call back to the online session that drove it, turning what was previously a blind spot into events, conversions, and audiences that enable businesses to create better experiences for their customers.   

Marketing Edge’s GA4 integration promises to bring a wide array of benefits to your phone call reporting in Google Analytics. The integration provides actionable data to help shed more light on the customer journey, create better customer experiences, and make important decisions about your marketing strategies. It also provides Google with identifiers it needs from the web session to algorithmically optimize campaigns and find new leads. 

To learn more about Marketing Edge’s integration with GA4 or to get started contact us. 

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Industries that Need Call Tracking and Analytics to Succeed https://www.marchex.com/blog/industries-that-need-call-tracking-and-analytics-to-succeed/ Wed, 17 Apr 2024 01:56:24 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33757 Updated 4/16/24 Phone calls are critical conversion paths for multi-location and franchise businesses. When consumers search for a local business or healthcare provider, they often contact them by calling. This is especially true for industries with complex, expensive, urgent, or infrequently ordered products and services.   For industries like automotive services & repair, home services, senior […]

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Updated 4/16/24

Phone calls are critical conversion paths for multi-location and franchise businesses. When consumers search for a local business or healthcare provider, they often contact them by calling. This is especially true for industries with complex, expensive, urgent, or infrequently ordered products and services.  

For industries like automotive services & repair, home services, senior living, and healthcare, consumers want to call to get help from a person before booking appointments, placing orders, or visiting a location. And every time a location mishandles a call, the business could lose that customer or patient forever. 

Automotive Services & Repair 

In the competitive automotive services and repair industry, where the top 50 companies only make up 10% of revenue, customer choice is paramount. Research highlights the crucial role of phone interactions in the customer journey. Failing to answer calls and deliver top-notch experiences risks losing potential customers to rivals, especially considering the national average repair cost of $356.04 per visit. 

Conversational analytics offer a powerful solution for auto service centers, enabling them to uncover insights from customer calls. By understanding the customer’s journey better, businesses can improve operational efficiencies, uncover incremental sales opportunities, and enhance the overall customer experience, fostering stronger loyalty and repeat business. Discover how Meineke uses call tracking to elevate customer satisfaction. 

Home Services 

Many home services franchise businesses use centralized call centers and a scheduling service mainly handled over the phone. When franchise businesses have all their call data from each location in one place, they can have a scalable view of their company’s performance (i.e. adjusted for one location or the entire business). This view can help home services franchise businesses make informed budget decisions regarding sales and marketing. See how Authority Brands optimized sales calls across multiple franchise locations and increased return on investment (ROI) with Marchex call tracking and analytics. 

Senior Living 

With insights obtained from call analytics, marketers in the senior living and skilled nursing industries can reallocate their media budget to drive calls more likely to result in sales. Call analytics can help these businesses better understand their call traffic volume and quality so they can make data-driven decisions. Learn how Juniper Communities learned about its call volume spikes, adjusted its employee resources and improved the caller experience with Marchex.  

Healthcare 

Utilizing call tracking and attribution platforms like Marketing Edge can help healthcare companies eliminate what is known as the marketing blind spot, and provide visibility into what happens during calls. Call tracking can link conversations back to the marketing sources that drove them to place the call, making it easy for health organizations to determine which parts of their marketing plans are successfully reaching their audience. If certain channels underperform, teams can adjust the marketing budget toward methods that are more effective at attracting patients.     

Learn More 

Call tracking and analytics are invaluable tools that can help your business attribute calls to the sources that drove them and observe what took place on each call. If you’d like to learn how call tracking and analytics can help your company identify and optimize high-intent customer calls, Contact Us. 

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Use Session-Based DNI to Improve Your Marketing Strategy https://www.marchex.com/blog/use-session-based-dni-to-improve-your-marketing-strategy/ Tue, 09 Apr 2024 20:22:09 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33736 Session-based dynamic number insertion, or DNI, is a call tracking tool that helps marketing teams link phone conversations to the online sources that drove them.  What Does DNI Track?  Session-based DNI is a key component of call tracking solutions that allows you to see which actions lead a customer to call your business. The tool […]

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Session-based dynamic number insertion, or DNI, is a call tracking tool that helps marketing teams link phone conversations to the online sources that drove them. 

What Does DNI Track? 

Session-based DNI is a key component of call tracking solutions that allows you to see which actions lead a customer to call your business. The tool can track many types of actions a customer takes prior to calling the dynamic tracking number such as:  

  • Referring Source (ad clicks, social media, email, etc.) 
  • Searched keywords 
  • Webpage navigation (history of user clicks to pages within the site prior to the call event) 
  • Web form submissions 

How Does it Work?

To start, a business defines dynamic number replacement rules and either assigns unique numbers that will be displayed to all visitors to track channel level attribution or sets up a number pool to assign a unique number to each visitor and track session-level attribution. A JavaScript snippet will be generated that once included on the website, will execute display a tracking phone number to the user and identify the source of the incoming traffic if session-level attribution is enabled. Thus, when a site visitor arrives at the website via one of the online sources, the dynamic tracking number assigned to that source is prominently displayed for the visitor to contact. 

Why is it Useful? 

Your team can automatically send call event data associated with the dynamic tracking numbers into marketing analytics applications such as GA4 and Google Ads. This allows your business to view not only which online sources generate the most calls, but which ones end up generating calls that convert to a sale. From here, your business can optimize its marketing budget towards the most successful channels. When your business finds out which ads, keywords, content or campaigns are driving the calls most likely to lead to sales, you could significantly boost your overall revenue.  

What data and insights do you get with DNI? 

  • Source (PPC, Organic, Referrals, Google My Business, Facebook etc.) 
  • Keyword 
  • Campaign 
  • Ad Group 
  • Landing page URL 
  • The Landing Page, in which the caller landed 
  • Referring domain 
  • UTM Parameters 
  • Which tracking number was called  
  • Date and time of the call 
  • Caller ID and Duration 
  • UTMs or another custom URL parameter 

Marketing teams can gain further insights into call outcomes by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) with their platform—boosting the value of session-based DNI programs. In addition to the information that is collected through the use of DNI, by adding Marchex AI-powered insights, business can also see a number of other valuable signals, providing a robust view of their interaction with the customer. Signals such as service or product a caller inquired about, department caller intended to reach, if an appointment was set, summaries of the call and so much more. 

Learn More 

Session-based dynamic number insertion (DNI) is an invaluable tool for marketing teams that helps them analyze the customer journey, find out what’s working and what isn’t, and adjust their marketing strategy accordingly. To learn more about how DNI can help improve your marketing efforts, schedule a demo with us today.  

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Marchex Wins the 2024 AI Excellence Award https://www.marchex.com/blog/marchex-wins-the-2024-ai-excellence-award/ Fri, 29 Mar 2024 02:49:32 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33729 Marchex is excited to announce that we have won the 2024 Business Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award in the Generative AI category for Marchex Platform Services! As artificial intelligence (AI) enters mainstream consciousness, technology continues to evolve at a breakneck pace. The AI Excellence Awards recognizes people, products, and companies that apply AI tools to […]

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Marchex is excited to announce that we have won the 2024 Business Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award in the Generative AI category for Marchex Platform Services! As artificial intelligence (AI) enters mainstream consciousness, technology continues to evolve at a breakneck pace. The AI Excellence Awards recognizes people, products, and companies that apply AI tools to real-world problems.  

“We are truly honored to recognize Marchex Platform Services with this prestigious award”, said Maria Jimenez, chief nominations officer for Business Intelligence Group. “The unwavering commitment of their team to excellence and their innovative AI applications have catapulted them to this remarkable achievement. Congratulations to the entire organization!” 

The win is a highly notable achievement for Marchex, as 2024 marks the fourth consecutive year the company has won this award, and the first time Marchex Platform Services has been recognized. Marchex Platform Services was acknowledged as a key player in the conversational analytics space for transforming the way businesses engage with their customers.  

With a focus on ingesting and analyzing business-to-consumer (B2C) conversations via phone calls and conversation transcripts, Marchex Platform Services employs state-of-the-art AI technologies that unearth rich insights for organizations across several verticals. 

“Marchex’s unique approach to harnessing generative AI for conversational analytics sets us apart in the market, providing invaluable tools for businesses to enhance sales and customer service, train agents, and improve overall business performance,” said Edwin Miller, Marchex CEO.  “This latest award reflects our team’s hard work and focus on delivering products that can help companies interact more effectively with their customers, ultimately boosting the bottom line while improving the overall customer experience,” 

“Artificial Intelligence is now playing a more important role in our lives,” said Maria Jimenez in a parting statement. “We are so proud that such an incredible group of companies won this year’s program. Congratulations to all the creativity and hard work of every employee involved.” 

Marchex’s advanced conversation intelligence platform is designed to equip sales and marketing teams with actionable insights. These insights facilitate immediate and effective responses to customer needs and drive successful business outcomes. Marchex’s expansive reach is evident in its processing of over a billion minutes of consumer-to-business voice conversations. 

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Take the Mystery Out of Measuring Performance https://www.marchex.com/blog/take-the-mystery-out-of-measuring-performance-in-automotive-industry/ Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:08:40 +0000 https://www.marchex.com/?p=33714 The automotive industry is continuing to change at an accelerating pace. It is imperative to stay ahead of this change and use that flexibility to sustain success. There is an expression in the business that goes something like: “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” This will be an ongoing conversation throughout the year. This […]

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The automotive industry is continuing to change at an accelerating pace. It is imperative to stay ahead of this change and use that flexibility to sustain success. There is an expression in the business that goes something like: “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” This will be an ongoing conversation throughout the year. This week I want to focus on some of the ways performance is measured and why.  

Focus on Behaviors that Lead to Sales 

When operating a dealership, it is smart to focus on behaviors that will lead to the outcomes you desire. A good example is the connection between a test drive and a vehicle sale. A test drive significantly increases the likelihood of closing a deal. The desirable change in behavior here is straightforward. If you consistently engage customers in test drives, you will increase your sales. There are companies that have built processes specifically to help increase test drives.    

With more opportunities flowing to dealerships in a multitude of ways, it’s important to stay connected to what is happening in your showrooms and business development center (BDC) offices to closely identify and focus on behaviors that are proven to yield results. The ways to measure this are limited due to the connection between activity and results being difficult to define or, more importantly, to prove.  

Look Beyond the “Mystery Shop” Method 

The most common way is the mystery shop–a method where a person or group of people pose as in market shoppers (phone, internet and/or walk-in). This person or group measures the salespeople against a rubric (a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations) to determine a score based upon how closely they manage the opportunity. The score is pre-defined by a process proven to gain optimal results. I think there will always be a place for this method but not in every case. Allow me to explain why: 

  • Dealerships don’t love the idea of spending a salesperson’s time toward a deal that will never close to a “fake” customer 
  • You only get to sample a small subset of the entire sales team  
  • The mood of the salesperson that participates can be influenced by unknown external circumstance (everyone can have a bad day)  
  • The mystery shop results are not necessarily aligned with sales turnover and seasonality  
  • Not everyone will agree with the rubric  
  • Dealerships know (sometimes) when you are mystery shopping them 

I present this not to denigrate the practice of mystery shopping, but to call attention to how and when there could be a more optimal measurement method. My focus is on inbound callers and the ways dealerships can successfully manage these opportunities.   

Measure Performance with Real Customers 

A phone call represents a unique opportunity with an in-market shopper. The time elapsed for a customer to decide where and when to purchase a vehicle is shorter via a phone call than nearly any other opportunity type. The sense of urgency of inbound sales calls in the automotive industry cannot be overstated. So why are we measuring performance in ways that require waiting for results before coaching to performance? Measuring performance of calls as tied to outcomes in real-time or at least with real customers will empower teams to improve quickly and clear out any of the above shortcomings of traditional mystery shops. 

The mission is to say things that lead to the caller choosing your dealership, measured by calls that are happening at your dealership with results from calls at your dealership.  

Think about it this way: we all know there is a right and wrong way to say things. Active measurement of both the intent of the customer and the outcome of the engagement is what we call gold in the sales world. The optimal combination would be to use mystery shops to collect baseline data to train against across all opportunities. Next, we want to measure both the intent and outcome of calls as close to real time as possible, to be able to impact results literally the same day. In short, choose the measurement that best aligns with the opportunity, and for calls that is whatever method offers the quickest and most actionable feedback.  

Marchex is in the lab as we speak with several models being developed with input from users in an effort to help measure and match to the proven urgency of inbound callers in the automotive industry. Watch this space as it unfolds.  

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