Phone calls are over — or at least, the days of straightforward, easily-managed calls are over. In a survey of over 600 business owners, we found that small businesses are using 4 or more different tools to communicate with their customers on average — meaning your teams have to deal with increasing volume and complexity.
Communication centers have always been important to businesses, from switchboards to receptionist desks. Now systems like Lead Center have become the hub for simplifying customer communications, reducing chaos, and providing insights into what your customers want (and what marketing is making them reach out).
How does Lead Center’s unified communications software work?
So, what is Lead Center? It’s a centralized platform in the cloud where you can manage all your contacts and communications, including calls, chats, texts, and form submissions.
One inbox means teams won’t lose or forget messages. Every team member also has full context about which marketing source or keyword prompted customers to contact your business, as well as a record of all previous conversations. This information creates an experience that is better for both customers and customer service representatives.
Lead Center exists in the cloud, so you don’t need to worry about hardware investments, setup, and maintenance. And Lead Center’s companion mobile app allows you to access your communications system from your smartphone and keep your organization’s calls and messages separate from your own.
The 3 key benefits of Lead Center: productivity, customer experience, and marketing insights
1. Bringing all communications into one inbox improves business productivity
Small businesses that use unified communications systems like Lead Center report increased productivity without the need for added resources. Here’s why:
- Work together better. Lead Center supports real teamwork by providing a unified inbox, so everyone knows who’s picking up a lead, which customers still need to be helped, and more.
- Understand customers. Lead intelligence — full visibility into each touchpoint along the customer journey — allows employees to access background and context that drive better customer conversations. Artificial intelligence (AI) can also help transcribe and analyze communications, so you get insights into trends and topics that translate to real business value.
- Analyze performance. Integrated team analytics and reporting can help you evaluate data like answer rate, time spent on calls, and the number of completed calls. You can view by individual or team and quickly see how your teams are doing and where you can make adjustments or improve training.
- Simplify business infrastructure. Without complicated phone systems, IT teams can focus on business initiatives rather than supporting communication equipment. Unified communications systems like Lead Center make it easier to scale as you grow.
- Save money. Lead Center is more cost efficient than many other solutions, with a faster return on investment and the predictability of subscription pricing.**
According to a recent CallRail study, 95% of SMB leaders reported wanting to improve their customer communications tools. Learn more about the reasons they cited, along with key solutions on the horizon by downloading the full report: Making the Dream Work with Team Work: How small businesses can keep leads from falling through the cracks with better communications.
2. Cohesive, frictionless conversations lead to better customer experiences
Lead Center can also help businesses provide better service to customers. Here’s how:
- Have better conversations. With call attribution, you can guide conversations based on source information. Knowing what inspired a customer to call you will help you have the right conversation with the right information at the right time.
- Respond to customers faster. Get back to prospects and customers more quickly by seeing who still needs a reply and what they requested. You won’t waste time asking colleagues, “Did you call this customer back?” when you have every bit of information you need at your fingertips.
- Give the right information. Customers don’t like to repeat their requests or explain an issue over again for each new agent. With a snapshot of a customer’s record, you can quickly give customers the answers they want.
3. Understanding which marketing sources bring in qualified callers helps you optimize your marketing campaigns
Lead Center is the only communications system built on CallRail’s powerful marketing platform. By combining your contact center with CallRail’s AI-based Conversation Intelligence®, Call Tracking, and Form Tracking, you can unlock the data in your calls to optimize your marketing and outmaneuver your competition.
- Understand calls without hearing them. Conversation Intelligence provides automatic call transcriptions, as well as a two-sentence call summary, letting you get a quick takeaway of each call without having to listen to the recording.
- See which marketing drives qualified leads. Not only is it possible to see where your calls are coming from, you can understand which marketing brings in your best customers — those that are marked “qualified” by your agents or by Conversation Intelligence®.
- Visualize trends in your customers calls. Your business wouldn’t exist without your customers, so it’s important to understand which products or services resonate most strongly and what questions your customers ask.
Why move to Lead Center’s unified communications system?
With Lead Center, you centralize and simplify customer communications. You don’t have to manage multiple sources of incoming calls and messages. Look in just one place for calls, texts, live chat, and even form submissions from all the different platforms where you run marketing campaigns.
Choosing the right communications software
How do you choose the platform that’s right for your business? Consider whether the software:
- Includes reporting and analytics. Can you review call lengths and agent response times? Can you analyze calls and texts for important words or phrases?
- Transcribes calls. In addition to call recording, can you easily access transcriptions?
- Eases call transfers. Can you hand off calls between agents without losing the context of the conversation? Can agents communicate with one another before making a transfer?
- Monitors calls and performance. Can you monitor customer calls so you can provide coaching and training to improve the customer experience?
- Uses artificial intelligence. Does the solution use AI to help analyze calls so you can improve customer communications?
Lead Center Success Stories
One of the best ways to find the best unified communications software is to look at customer reviews and case studies. This is some of what CallRail’s customers have been able to do with Lead Center:
- Reclaim lost leads. The employees at Toronto Tees had a hard time juggling calls and in-person customers, so many calls went unanswered. After implementing Lead Center, they were able to capture those calls and rescue 15-20% of lost leads and convert 10% more.
- Increase productivity. With a small team, Screen Medic—a home screen repair shop—missed a lot of customer calls. However, once they started using Lead Center they were able to return calls without wasting time trying to learn whether someone else had contacted the customer. Now they get more work done with the same size team.
- Save revenue from lost leads. Without visibility into leads, homebuilder D.R. Horton was contacting leads multiple times and repeating questions, which was frustrating for both customers and sales representatives. Lead Center gave the sales team insights into customers’ previous calls and interactions, helping agents improve performance and saving the company thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- Get back time. DCI Properties is a real estate business that buys properties directly from sellers. Agents working in the field or from home couldn’t access the office lines, and the VoIP providers they tried didn’t provide adequate call quality. With Lead Center, agents have access to lead tracking, one-click responses, and business numbers through their mobile phones—decreasing research and response times.
- Improved workflow. Top Job Asphalt used Lead Center to put both their inbound and outbound interactions in one platform. This allowed their team members to see all customer communications in one place and prevented leads from slipping through the cracks. As a result, they streamlined workflows and doubled their sales.
Unified communications systems simplify, centralize, and streamline customer communications. The right solution can improve employee performance and the customer experience while boosting your bottom line.
Find out how you can capture more leads with Lead Center. Sign up for your free 14-day trial today!
