Why Need To Develop Outbound Call Tracking Software

Call-tracking software allows you to capture all traffic sources, including offline conversions. As a result, this enriches statistics and improves analytics. Without call-tracking software, it’s impossible:

  • Fix offline conversions and be aware of the effectiveness of outdoor ads, business cards, radio, or TV ads.
  • Track the full conversion route of customers with accuracy down to the keyword and advertising image.
  • Improve sales scripts and avoid torturing customers with “How did you hear about us?” conversations.

This article will discuss why you need to develop outbound call-tracking software. But first, we will start with tasks that call tracking helps to solve.

What tasks call tracking help to solve?

The pool of tasks that the call tracking helps to solve includes: 

  • Evaluating the usefulness of each advertising channel. Businesses learn which ads bring in more targeted calls and what to focus more on.
  • Optimizing marketing budgets. Businesses will stop wasting money on ads that don’t bring in leads and conversions.
  • Improving the performance of the sales department or the call center. The management will be able to listen to conversations with clients, analyze appeals statistics, and identify and eliminate gaps in the work of managers.
  • Classification of inquiries. Businesses will be able to divide calls into targeted and spam, to classify calling customers into classes according to readiness for an order, by geography, gender, age, and other criteria as needed.
  • Increase call processing efficiency. The system details all information about the customer at the moment the call is accepted. The manager receives detailed data on the caller’s interaction with the site in the first seconds of the call. The manager knows the client’s preferences and what to offer him or her.

Formally, call-tracking software is an addition to IP telephony, which is responsible for tracking the traffic source and the correct exchange of statistics between the PBX, CRM, and external analytics service.

Real-life issues solved by call tracking

Call tracking is often criticized. Some entrepreneurs say it’s expensive, complicated, and not clear why. They make other people think that the real benefit is contrived. This is a typical conclusion for those who bought a monthly subscription and hoped to increase sales by 200%. Or even didn’t buy it but just signed up for a free subscription for 7 days and waited for the results. It is a sophisticated tool, and when approached correctly, it answers difficult questions. Here are a few cases from practice.

Issue №1. The website gets a lot of organic and ad traffic. But there are no conversions to the contract. What is the reason?

Solution. Call-tracking software connection to the website. It allowed: 

  • Listen to conversations between managers and clients. Managers worked without a script and often did not push to purchase. More than half of the callers left without an order. 
  • Analyze refusals. After sending detailed instructions, customers often refused the company’s services. It turned out that the benefits stated in the advertising did not correspond to the real characteristics of the promoted product.

Issue №2. An entrepreneur integrated ready call-tracking software with his business. Of all the calls, 30% of them were calls to other departments of the company. How can this be?

Solution. The entrepreneur analyzed the semantic core, conducted speech analytics, and matched the keys to the content of incoming calls. The semantics of the landing pages generated calls to related departments. He adjusted the search terms, and the untargeted calls went away. 

Issue №3. Entrepreneur spends huge budgets on advertising. There are calls but few conversions to bids. He attracts different audiences, including businesses and individuals. He suspects that the sales department is underperforming.

Solution. The entrepreneur turned on dynamic call-tracking. With his help, he got a bunch of statistics on incoming calls. He drew up portraits of customers and segmented the target audience by type, the degree of progress of the lead, and the amount of the average bill. He distributed callers between call center and sales department employees, transferring more important clients’ calls to more experienced managers.

The cost of ready call tracking software

For obvious reasons, each ready call tracking software has a different pricing policy. Some sell customers basic rates with a ready-made set of options, tools, and certain limitations that are eliminated in the more expensive subscription version. Others approach the cost calculation individually, taking into account certain metrics. Still, others measure the cost only by the number of phone numbers connected.

In any case, there is a certain set of metrics that determine the final cost of connecting an out-of-the-box call tracking software. Here are the main ones: 

  • Type of call-tracking. Static is less informative and requires less cost – only one phone number per channel is enough. And therefore, it is cheaper than dynamic. 
  • The average number of sessions per day. The more traffic passes through the eCommerce website and receives unique numbers, the more expensive it will cost. The cheapest ones are usually priced for a small number of 100-500 visits per day.
  • The number of advertising sources monitored. The more advertising campaigns run, and the more of them require tracking, the more expensive out-of-the-box call tracking software is.
  • The number of unique phone numbers. The more traffic passes through the website, the larger the pool of unique numbers should be. Each number costs money. Many out-of-the-box call tracking services allow you to connect your numbers for tracking. But if you don’t have them or don’t have enough, you have to pay extra for virtual numbers to the service or its partners. Everyone has their rates for this option.
  • Recording and storage of conversations. If this option is available, it is usually chargeable. There are also options with a free recording of conversations, but in this case, the storage period is usually short. Paid services store records for up to 12 months. 
  • Time of fixation of a number for a session. If the service allows you to manage this option, it will charge you. The longer the fixation time, the higher the accuracy, but also the more expensive the service.
  • Software and forwarding. You may need special software to connect the system. For this, the company may charge an additional subscription fee. The same is for the call forwarding option when a call from a virtual number goes to your call center numbers.
  • Integration. Many services include this option in their starting plans or offer basic integrations for free. But note that not everyone does so.
  • E-mail tracking. An additional option that allows you to link calls not only to advertisements but also to mailings. Usually provided for extra money.
  • Speech analytics. An additional option involves translating conversations with customers into text and analyzing them by keywords. Helps to classify calls according to their contents, analyze calls and sales department performance. Cost is usually linked to the duration of calls. 
  • Targeting. Classifying your audience into clusters and selecting only target addresses may also be chargeable.
  • Wholesale. Usually, if a business buys a 3+ month subscription, services provide a 10-15-20% discount or extend the plan for a certain period. For example, if you subscribe for 6 months, the 7th is free. 

So, we have 12 criteria that determine the cost of ready call tracking software. Obviously, this is not all. Again, each ready service defines its pricing policy and criteria for determining the cost.

Why does custom outbound call tracking software development is needed?

Custom software solutions adapt to existing business processes and allow for the rapid implementation of new ones. As a result, such a system greatly affects sales. 3 main reasons to develop a custom call-tracking system:

  • You will get a software product that meets all the individual characteristics of your company, its development prospects, and current trends in IT.
  • Due to the optimization of business processes, the financial return from the implementation will be much higher than the cost of software development.
  • Customized software for organizations with a large staff is several times more effective than the standard ready-made version.

The most important advantage is that you end up with exactly what is required. That is, the system will not contain “this doesn’t fit” or “this needs to work differently”.

Your custom outbound call-tracking software will not have unnecessary functions. This is a very important factor for effective analytics because your employees don’t have to enter data and fill out useless sections to either the business process or the company. There are no unnecessary fields to waste time on, or that take up unnecessary useful interface space. Moreover, with customized outbound call-tracking software, you can link it up with other programs allowing data exchange.

Steps of call tracking software development

Call tracking is essential for transparent analytics and correct conversion data collection. Here is how to develop outbound call-tracking software.

Set objectives for the outbound call-tracking software development

Before you develop something, you need to make a plan. It consists of two components – analysis and design. Before you design the outbound call tracking software, it is necessary to decide on the tasks you intend to solve. And here is the first difference from the ready-made best call tracking solutions. Ready-made call tracking software is made for everyone, trying to please everyone. Each company operates in its way and has different business processes from other companies. Therefore, ready-made call-tracking software is characterized by redundant functionality, which is not required for customized outbound call-tracking software. 

It is necessary to start with the requirements and call tracking metrics. And they should be formulated based on the actual business processes. When the requirements are formulated, you can choose the implementation options that are sure to solve problems in the best way.

Design before outbound call-tracking software development

There are preliminary and main designs. Preliminary designing allows you to preliminarily estimate the amount of work and cost of developing outbound call-tracking software.

The main design stage starts with the design of interfaces, which is called prototyping. This is the preparation and drawing of interface prototypes with which the future outbound call-tracking software user will work. This approach allows you to visualize the future process of working with the software and, most importantly – do not miss the details. What does it mean? 

You can imagine working with the future outbound call-tracking software and find out that there is no needed button or function you forgot to tell about. At this stage, you add functionality and understand what’s missing. And adding this functionality will not lead to altering the existing solution. You will not have to spend money changing the code and the already-made interfaces.

After this visualization and accurate determination, the terms of reference are written. The terms of reference are written based on the approved interfaces and describe the technical implementation. TOR contains a description of the data stored in the system, a textual description of the interfaces and the mechanics of their work, and user logic.

The terms of reference also contain requirements for the system regarding quality and safety as well as a set of technologies used.

The actual development of the call tracking system

This is a boring process of programmers’ work. The customer does not interfere in this process and expects the result. Then there are internal processes inside the developer’s company for testing the project, and the project returns to the customer as a ready and working system. Then, as a rule, the processes of improving the system follow. The developed system may contain errors no matter how much it is tested. What matters is how developers respond to their detection and how quickly and free of charge they fix them.

Conclusion

In conclusion, outbound call tracking software is a critical tool for businesses of all sizes. It provides numerous benefits, including improved sales performance, better customer service, increased productivity, enhanced call quality, and comprehensive reporting. With the right outbound call tracking software, businesses can gain a competitive edge, improve their bottom line, and better serve their customers.


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