Whether it’s for business or personal use, there are plenty of reasons you may want to know how to track a phone call. But what exactly does this entail? We’ll discuss what call tracking means and how to track phone calls to improve your business.
What is call tracking?
Call tracking goes beyond the simple capabilities of caller ID. It is a technology that allows you to gain in-depth information about each individual person who calls your business, including how they found your number in the first place.
There are two different types of call tracking: business and personal. For the sake of this blog post, we’ll be focusing on how businesses can use call tracking to improve their sales and marketing strategies.
So, what does call tracking for businesses involve? The main attraction of call tracking is the ability to correlate incoming calls with advertisements and marketing campaigns. Knowing exactly which campaign or ad drove a phone call is huge and can help businesses better tailor their strategies for capturing and converting leads.
In addition to determining the source of a phone call, call tracking also helps businesses get a better grasp of who their customers are. By tracking each caller’s name, location and even which device they used to reach your business, you’ll gain a better understanding of your customers and how they interact with your business.
Finding a call tracking service
To track phone calls, you’ll first need to invest in a call tracking service. There are many call tracking service providers out there, so it’s important to know which features you’re looking for before doing business with one.
Some must-have features include:
- Dynamic number insertion – Dynamic number insertion is the cornerstone of call tracking. This feature dynamically swaps out numbers from your very own pool of phone numbers so you can correlate incoming calls with specific sources. Dynamically swapping phone numbers also allows you to track the source of incoming calls, such as a specific advertisement or marketing campaign. Knowing who your customer is and which source is the most effective at driving calls eliminates any guesswork to allow you to make better business decisions down the road.
- Multi-channel attribution – Using call tracking to determine which source drove a phone call is great, but being able to track your customer’s entire journey leading up to a call is even better. Multi-channel attribution gives you the ability to see each touchpoint that led to a call, including which campaign drove a caller to your website, which pages they interacted with and the last action they took before calling you.
- Call recording – Call recording is essential for quality assurance. How do you know how well your staff handles customer calls unless you record them? We’ll talk more about the benefits of call recording later on in this post.
- Integrations – Call tracking shouldn’t take the place of your existing analytics platform — it should enhance it. Make sure your call tracking platform can integrate with programs you regularly rely on such as Google Ads (formerly AdWords) and Analytics, HubSpot, Kissmetrics and more. Here are CallRail’s integrations.
- User-friendliness – You have enough to worry about, and learning how to use your call tracking service shouldn’t be another annoying thing on your to-do list. Your call tracking service’s interface should be clean, easy to understand and intuitive. It should also offer outstanding customer support to help you when you need it.
How to set up call tracking
Once you’ve found a suitable call tracking provider, it’s time to set up call tracking for your business. Like everything else, your provider should make this process quick and easy.
Here at CallRail, getting started is simple. Simply create an account, create your first tracking number, set up call recording and activate your number. You’ll then be able to use this number for specific sources and see the corresponding data. How easy is that? We have thousands of local and toll-free numbers from which you can choose.
We also understand how important it is to keep your existing phone number intact. That’s why we make it easy to port your existing number (or numbers) into CallRail, so you can begin tracking phone calls immediately without disrupting your brand.
How to track a phone call
Once call tracking is set up, your call tracking service will do all the heavy lifting for you. With CallRail, you can see all the vital data about your incoming calls right in your CallRail dashboard to successfully track phone calls.
The dashboard lets you clearly see calls and their corresponding data in real time. You’ll find vital information such as caller name, tracking number dialed, source of the call, caller phone number and location, and any PPC keywords your caller used to find your business online. You can then download reports straight from your dashboard or sync your call tracking data with Google Analytics and Ads for in-depth insights.
Since the data about your callers is displayed in real time, you can use it to shorten your lead response time to boost conversions. You’ll also be able to use this information to better optimize your business as a whole.
Benefits of call tracking
There are other benefits of call tracking that span well beyond simply knowing who’s calling your business. Call tracking can also help you:
- Boost your marketing ROI – Call tracking’s in-depth features allow you to track your campaign performance and give you insight into which campaigns are performing the best to help you tweak your marketing strategy for increased ROI.
- Improve your staff’s customer service skills – Many call tracking providers offer call recording as part of their services. This means you can listen back on conversations between your employees and customers to identify areas that could use improvement.
- Get to know your customers – Call recording also enables you to better understand your core customer — their wants/needs, demographics and behavior. Knowing exactly who your customer is and how they interact with you is extremely valuable information you can use to boost conversions and customer satisfaction.
Summary
Call tracking is incredibly helpful for businesses who want to get to the root of who exactly their customer is. Gaining in-depth insight into caller demographics and behavior gives businesses that use call tracking an enormous edge over their competition, and can ultimately help them capture more leads and win customers.
To learn more about how to track calls and how this can improve your business, request your free CallRail demo or sign up for a 14-day free trial.
