Any contact center or business with call center operations can attest to the fact that tracking outbound calls is crucial to the sales funnel. Tracking your phone calls eliminates the guesswork. The outbound call center metrics you measure help you make data-driven marketing decisions and provide valuable information that will help your business grow.
Improve your ROI, increase your conversion rates, advance your call handler’s or agent’s skills, and enhance your customers’ experiences with outbound call tracking and analysis.
One crucial factor to consider before deciding on which call center metrics to implement is the difference between inbound and outbound call tracking metrics. You can’t and shouldn’t measure the same data for inbound as you do for outbound.
Inbound calls refer to all calls customers make to your business. If someone sees one of your ads (no matter the platform), finds the phone number, and calls you, that’s an inbound call. Outbound calls are the ones your business makes to prospects. If someone completes a form on your landing page and enters their phone number for you to call them, that’s an outbound call.
5 Key Outbound Metrics
The best way to measure the strength of your outbound strategy is to obtain and analyze the following outbound call center performance metrics.
1. Volume
Call volume tells you what promotions and campaigns are generating the most calls so you can track the ROI of your marketing efforts. If your business call volume is high, tracking where your prospects come from is critical. When you have multiple salespeople calling out to customers, you’ll want to keep track of who makes which calls and how many calls they’re making each day.
However, even if you have one or two salespeople making outbound calls, you should track the calls they make. This will also help you determine if you need to grow or scale your team.
2. Lead Source
The source of your leads is perhaps the most important metric to report. Lead source tracking metrics are crucial because they tell you where your best leads come from. For example, if you have two different landing pages or two different campaigns each asking leads for their phone numbers, be sure to keep track of which landing page drives more leads.
Even if one page is outperforming the other in terms of click through rates (CTR), the page with fewer numbers might be better targeted if it yields a higher close rate from your phone calls. You’ll never know if you’re not tracking.
3. Call Duration
Lasting conversations generally lead to sales. The longer you keep a lead on the phone, the longer you have to get to know your customers. The longer they stay means that you are answering the questions and providing solutions to their pain point(s).
If you’re continually dialing out calls that last less than 30 seconds, you might want to reconsider the source of those leads and the questions you are asking once you get those leads.
The ad might not be targeted properly, the text may be misleading, or you may want to consider adding negative keywords. If you find certain campaigns yield longer conversations, callbacks, and more closes, you should probably put more resources into that campaign.
Keep track of how long each call lasts and see if you can find any correlation between that and over or underperforming campaigns.
4. Time, Date, and Platform
Deciding when to post, what to post, and where to post directly impacts conversions. Understanding the correlation between the time of day and what day you run a campaign can help you plan for future promotions. Tracking the time, date, and platforms of your campaigns allows you to measure what time of day people are more receptive to outbound calling.
Be sure to track how many voicemails you reach, how many callbacks you get, and the success rate of getting through based on the time you’re calling.
Over time, that data will show the exact time of day/week to call prospects for a specific campaign.
5. Triggers and Objections
To have a successful outbound calling campaign, you need to master objections and overcome them. What key phrases make people want to buy, and what turns them away? If you’re not tracking this, you’re missing out.
Your outbound calling team should keep a running tab of every objection and notes on how the call could have gone better. No objection is too big or small for you to keep track of it. Take note and supply responses for each one. This can increase your conversions and make conversations easier, because you’ll have a response ready for whatever they throw your way.
Why Tracking Outbound Call Metrics Matters
Outbound call metrics can provide valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points, enabling businesses to tailor their messaging and approach to better meet the needs of their target audience. By leveraging data-driven insights, businesses can create a more personalized and engaging customer experience, which can lead to higher customer retention, loyalty, and advocacy.
At AnswerNet, we arm our highly-trained outbound call agents with the most sophisticated outbound call software to provide the best metrics. These metrics tell the story about your customers, their journey, and what affects their purchase decision. Don’t say no. Say AnswerNet.
