8 Ways to Improve Your Inbound Call Quality in 2017

Most business owners want to receive more phone calls from potential customers. It's becoming common knowledge that customers value the option to call almost as much as sales teams value this form of lead. What seems like a win-win situation can quickly go downhill if you're dealing with the wrong type of caller. There are many reasons for poor inbound call quality. Thankfully, there are solutions for almost all of them and several approaches you can take to bringing in better leads for your sales team. Thankfully, there are solutions for almost all of them and several approaches you can take to bringing in better leads for your sales team. 8 Ways to Improve Inbound Call Quality

Any action you can take to bring only high-quality leads into your business will make it more efficient and improve conversion rates. The return can be especially valuable when you improve call quality because phone leads convert up to 10x better than other lead sources. Consider which of these eight approaches aligns best with the way your sales team works:

• 1. Route Your Calls Correctly: Few things frustrate callers more than being connected to someone who can't help them -- or having to jump through several hoops before they find someone who can. Make sure that you have a system in place to identify callers in as many ways as possible. This could mean flagging callers you've already spoken to, those in certain service areas, or even separating callers based on specific ad campaigns. Call tracking technology can help you identify callers and achieve better routing based on what your customers actually need, even before they've spoken to anyone.
• 2. Review Your Advertising Channels: Sometimes you have to travel further upstream to find the reason for poor quality calls. It could be that some of your ads simply connect with the wrong type of consumer, meaning the calls from those channels are less productive than others. As highlighted above, with the right system in place you can highlight the call source and gather data on which advertising channels deliver the highest quality calls. This will give you a base to weed out underperforming channels and adjust or abandon those sources. As an extra bonus, you can invest the ad dollars that you save into campaigns that are delivering higher quality calls.
• 3. Create Sales Specialists: Just as important as routing your calls correctly is ensuring your sales and service teams can get into the nitty gritty of caller questions. Whether that means providing extensive resources to enable general sales staff to get down into the detail or having a specialist available as back-up, this is one way to turn uncertain customer calls into promising sales leads.
• 4. Establish (and Review) Caller Quality Metrics: While you're assigning quality scores to advertising channels, it pays to do the same for callers across the board. Each call should be logged and ranked with an internal success metric, which managers can then use to gather data and assess what it says about overall caller quality.

[search-tag]

• 5. Target Callers By Location: If your business is focused in certain areas of the country, doesn't it make sense to try to maximize callers from those locations? Using a local area code helps to encourage customers in your area to call because they see a familiar number. That isn't limited to just your existing number either. You can buy local numbers to cover other advertising channels or expand to new area codes. It doesn't prevent you using an 800 number either, as nationwide toll-free numbers can be licensed for specific area codes. In either case, you'll receive more calls from the area codes that convert best for your business, increasing the overall quality of the calls you take.
• 6. Put a Phone CTA Front and Center: When you want more calls to come through your primary marketing channels, it's smart to let your phone number lead the line. Where you put your number matters. If you have it set alongside e-mail address, contact buttons, and other eye-catching offers, your CTA is diluted. That might be right for some website pages, but most ads and landing pages should focus on a single action you want the customer to take. In this case, that's calling your business! We've talked about using a custom number as a call-to-action in the past, so experiment with different numbers and placement to see what works best for your business.
• 7. Fine-Tune Your Training: Not all calls are created equal and there's no guaranteed way to prevent callers who will never buy from you getting through. That being said, the right training can help your team identify the common traits of low-quality calls and find ways to end them more quickly. Caller quality metrics help again here, as managers can run back through those recorded calls with service reps to help them listen for telltale signs.
• 8. Encourage Name Calling: In the best possible sense, of course! One of the quickest ways to establish rapport is by confirming someone's name and continuing to use it throughout the conversation. Remind everyone in your organization to get this right from the beginning, by clarifying pronunciation and creating a record for future use. It can be surprising how an average call can quickly be turned into a quality lead with this one simple social skill!

 You can make changes that will improve your inbound call quality as we enter the New Year. Many of these tips will take time to develop, but the investment will pay off for years to come. If you need a more memorable number and the technology that comes with it, don't hesitate to contact us. We can help you implement the tools that will make your inbound call strategy a runaway success in 2017!