The highest spending, fastest converting, and most loyal customers are those who pick up the phone to call businesses. This means that companies who put an emphasis on optimizing the phone experience are giving their business a clear-cut edge compared to their competitors. In our work with top brands in a variety of industries, we understand how businesses can get the best outcome out of each phone call. Here is the Marchex 3-step process to Phone Optimization that you can implement today to drive more revenue.
Eliminate unanswered calls
The first step in optimizing your inbound phone calls is to make sure every call that comes into your business is successfully answered. Across industries, a portion of calls to businesses fail to connect with the business in the first place. For instance, in the auto industry, a recent study showed that 19.3 percent of total inbound calls to dealerships failed – meaning they went unanswered or were abandoned by the caller at some point before reaching a business representative. While rates vary across industries, all businesses can benefit from improved answer rates. Even a small improvement in call answering can have a significant potential revenue boost – one that is often completely missed.
Businesses can capitalize on these opportunities by ensuring they have adequate staff focused on calls, reducing or eliminating old times, and securing the transfer process by staying on the line until the call is successfully handed off.
Offer better interactions
What gets measured, gets improved. Now that all your callers are reaching your business, your next step is to optimize your interactions with potential customers. By understanding caller intent and measuring the call-handling performance of your salespeople, you can adjust call handling to improve the customer experience and optimize the outcome. With a leading Conversational Analytics program, all calls can be measured automatically against performance metrics set by the business, giving businesses much-needed clarity into agent and location performance, and caller intent.
Communicate what matters
The final step in phone optimization is to communicate successfully. Key habits and customs on the phone yield higher results than others. It is important to understand which mannerisms work best to guide callers to becoming customers. Implementing these insights can help turn more high-intent calls into revenue.
Recently, the Marchex Institute released a study that analyzed the top 25% of sales performers on the phone at auto dealerships. Here are some traits top performers exhibited compared to bottom performers:
- Request the caller’s name early on—and use it on the call
- Use ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ generously—the caller is your reason for being in business
- Laugh often—keep the call positive and enjoyable
- Before closing, ask for contact information and provide direct contact information in return
It is often the little things that resonate most with callers. Training your salespeople to use best practices with every potential customer can make a real difference in revenue.
This 3-step process can act as a roadmap for any business that relies on phone calls for revenue. By optimizing inbound calls at every point in the customer journey, your business can drive more revenue from the calls you already receive. If you are interested in learning more about optimizing call handling throughout the path to purchase, check out this on-demand webinar: 3 Steps to Optimizing Inbound Sales Calls.
