How to Prepare Your Inbound Calls for Conversions

For call-reliant companies – calls to U.S. businesses from ads have doubled since 2014 with incredible sales potential – there are two existential questions to answer:

• How can I generate more inbound calls?
• How can I convert those inbound calls?

How well you process inbound calls makes you a winner or a loser, with no room in between.

But don’t worry! You will succeed if you consume this easily digestible read to the very end.

• We will teach you about the tools you need to manage inbound calls so you can draw and convert more callers.

Read on to become the boss of your inbound calls.

The Inbound Call Prospect’s Journey, in a Nutshell

To manage inbound calls effectively, you must understand the customer journey that suits your business model:

1. The caller sees your ads and dials your phone number
2. Your Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or call agent answers the call
3. The caller converts or bounces (sometimes orders another call)

This simplified example illustrates the touchpoints where you can collect the caller’s data while qualifying them and addressing their needs. The customer journey is more complex, with more variables and outcomes.

The Bedrock of Successful Inbound Call Management

The focal point of inbound call management is call tracking and analytics software, as it’s the only way to get the precision, speed, and call processing volume. Not for nothing, half of businesses use automated software.

• Call Logic, Phonexa’s unique call tracking and distribution software, will help you make data-driven decisions without guesswork. Likewise, the synergy of Call Logic and LMS Sync, Phonexa’s lead tracking and distribution software, will automate and scale your business, taking care of every click and call.

The truth is that there’s no alternative to using inbound call tracking and analytics software, as this solution makes it impossible to manage calls manually, regardless of your business model or size.

Part 1 – Sales Prospect Tracking Before They Get to Your Call Agent

Before the phone starts ringing, it’s vital to get as much information on the caller as possible and transfer it to a relevant sales agent.

Here’s how you can dissect the caller:

• Use an optimal format of the call tracking number. You can hook callers with one of the following phone numbers:
• International numbers (800) – for Google Ads paid search campaigns, landing pages, and other international traffic sources.
• Local numbers – for local callers nearby your physical stores.
• Vanity numbers (for example, 844-PHONEXA) – for imprinting your brand into the prospect’s mind.

Phone numbers can be static and dynamic. Static numbers are adequate for conventional inbound call marketing channels (TV, billboards, etc.); dynamic numbers – are for online campaigns. With static phone numbers, you need one number for one traffic channel, ad, etc.; with dynamic numbers, you need around 33 numbers for 10,000 website visits.

Any inbound call gives you a glimpse into the caller’s location and the marketing channel that triggered the call. Usually, you can know much more.

• Use an advanced IVR. Part of your inbound call service, an IVR can help you customize your service for every inbound prospect with the following information:
• Demographics: location, age, gender, occupation, etc.
• Psychographics: goals, values, desires, lifestyle, etc.

An IVR can handle any number of calls simultaneously and solve requests independently of sales reps. Among other advantages are fraud prevention and a customizable brand voice.

Part 2 – Call Routing

As the caller interacts with your IVR, the system analyzes their answers to redirect them to a relevant sales rep.

Callers distribution criteria

Factor	Pros	Cons
Availability: the first available agent – or the most relevant of the available agents – receives the inbound phone call.	Instant call processing	Possible mismatch if an irrelevant sales rep picks up the call
Location: the nearest sales rep – or the one best aware of the features of the product in question – gets the call.	High call processing accuracy (for example, a California-based agent will likely succeed in selling earthquake or flood insurance in California)	Possible disbalance in the number of calls for agents from popular and unpopular locations
Performance: agents with top call handling skills take the call.	Increased conversion rates	Low conversion rates by aspiring agents
Simultaneous distribution: the first agent that picks up the call gets it.	Instant call processing	Possible mismatch if an irrelevant sales rep picks up the call

 

When the sales prospect is distributed to a sales rep, you can track the rest to get a full picture of the call:

• Call parameters: location, phone number, name, duration, new or recurrent, converted or bounced, etc.
• Sales rep’s performance: converted vs. bounced calls, the average bill, the average callers’ satisfaction rate, upselling performance, the performance with different demographics and psychographics, etc.

Part 3 – Post-Call Analytics

Sales prospect tracking doesn’t end at the end of the call. Once the caller hangs up, call analytics software steps in.

Phonexa’s call analytics software comprises:

• Comparison reports to compare different call data sets
• Traffic flow reports assessing the quality of call prospects
• Filter analyzer to uncover hidden revenues
• Waves predictive modeling to visualize possible outcomes with different input data
• Call recording to get back to any call you want to re-evaluate

The Advantages of Automated Inbound Call Management

• Sales: When sales reps know their prospects, they have a great shot at converting them. Happy callers are likely to return and generate recurring sales.
• The customer experience: Catering to the sales prospects’ needs and wants is paramount to growing your bottom line and making your business sustainable in the long run.

Statistics don’t lie:

• 59% of callers love tailored engagement based on previous interactions.
• 40% of callers will abandon the call if waiting in a queue for too long.

• Automation and scaling: Call processing software is the only way to process an increasing number of calls without sacrificing the quality of your service.
• Budget allocation: Phonexa’s Comparison Reports, Traffic Flow Reports, Filter Analyzer, and Predictive Modeling will allow you to allocate your budget based on your strengths and weaknesses.
• SEO: Automated call management software will give you a glimpse into profitable keywords, so you can apply SEO to your traffic sources and improve your Google rankings.
• Compliance: Compliant call software can ensure you collect data within the legal framework, which is especially important at the age when most customers are proactively seeking ways to protect their privacy.

How to Increase the Performance of Your Call Center?

Inbound call management is a surefire way to grow your bottom line, but nowhere near the exclusive one. You can also increase your sales by incentivizing your agents, investing in supervisors, and keeping an optimal number of sales agents.

Incentivizing Your Sales Reps to Boost Sales

To motivate your agents to sell better and more, provide incentives. From individual statistics to personal feedback to monetary benefits, choose what your sales agents are susceptible to and make it your standard practice.

For example, you can use various inbound call metrics – average inbound call conversion rate, abandon rate, handle time, first call resolution, call satisfaction rate, Net Promoter Score, etc. – to reward the best agents.

Hire Supervisors to Train Your Employees

Training your employees to handle calls, especially when the situation escalates, requires more than setting up the software to track their performance. Investing in call supervisors is paramount to improving your sales.

Keep an Optimal Number of Sales Reps

As much as you want to automate your calls, the lion’s share of customers will speak to a live agent. For young companies, to estimate how many callers you may have, analyze your competitors and survey your customers on your other channels, such as, for example, social media.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Inbound Call?

There are two types of calls: inbound and outbound calls.

• Inbound phone calls are calls from sales prospects to your call center (inbound call center sales department, customer support, etc.).
• Outbound calls are calls to your customer initiated by your call center.

Call centers may be designed to handle either inbound or outbound calls exclusively or deal with both inbound calls and outbound calls.

What Is an Inbound Call Center?

• An inbound call center addresses the callers’ requests via a customer service agent, support team, and sales rep. The ultimate goal of handling inbound calls is to make inbound call sales via various inbound call center sales techniques.
• An outbound call center makes calls to sales prospects and leads, including cold calls, to increase sales and the company’s customer base.

What Is Sales Prospecting Software?

Sales prospecting software is a set of tools helping you to automate or simplify the search for leads, leads qualification, conversion, and creating your prospecting database.

When choosing between paid and free sales prospecting tools, it’s worth comparing the features and level of automation of the tools in question, as free prospecting tools are usually limited in features and time of use.

What Are the Best Call Center Practices?

The best practices for call centers include:

• Integrating customer relationship management (CRM) software and call tracking to personalize your services easily to heterogeneous audiences, increasing the request resolution time and the overall customer satisfaction rate.
• Integrating an IVR, call routing, and queueing to direct callers to the right department, decreasing the wait time.
• Filling out a ‘Google My Business’ profile to make those searching on Google aware of the location and details of your business.
• Adding the Click-to-Call technology to enable immediate toll-free callback and mobile and web calls.

These call center practices can significantly increase your inbound call center conversion rate.

What are Call Handling Best Practices?

To increase an inbound call conversion rate, your sales rep must build a relationship with their callers. In other words, they must create value before asking for commitment.

The standard inbound call handling practices, such as keeping a positive tone and overcoming objections, may work better if supplemented by data collected by inbound phone call tracking software.

How Many Calls Should an Inbound Agent Take?

As much as you may want to load your sales agents with calls, you have to keep in mind that an agent can process a limited number of calls before their productivity drops. As a business owner, use your agent performance data to ensure all agents perform as expected and are in good shape.