Why the Home Service Industry NEEDS Call Tracking
Do you know where your customers are coming from? HomeAdvisor, mobile search, the radio? By using call tracking for each of your advertising channels, it’s easy to pinpoint the highest performing campaigns and the lowest performing customer service representatives.
Call tracking allows you to attribute success to a specific marketing effort.
Some industries rely on phone calls more than others. If you have an e-commerce store, the majority of your sales and communication is probably conducted online. If, however, you are in the service industry, such as plumbing, landscaping, electrical or HVAC, phone calls are undoubtedly your most valuable lead, making call tracking an absolute must.
Common Conversion Path for Home Service Customers
Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC problems need to be solved quickly. When a pipe bursts or the heater shuts down, time is of the essence. For the quickest response and scheduling, customers understandably use their phone to contact the business.
Imagine this common scenario: a prospect notices that her air conditioning unit is not working. She double-checks the power and the thermostat, but her home is starting to heat up and the situation is looking a bit desperate.
What does she do? Most likely, she’ll Google something like “air conditioning service/repair.” Maybe she’ll add a qualifier for good measure, such as their city/town, 24/7, or same-day.
When the SERP (search engine results page) loads, she sees several ads at the top of the page. She may click on a few ads to compare, but once she settles on the company she likes and trusts, she’ll almost always call the phone number to schedule a service visit.
That’s also why pay-per-click (PPC) is so important—you are right there at the exact moment they need you.
In fact, “43% of all search-related conversions happen over the phone” (WordStream).
If you are running pay-per-click ads, you want to monitor and measure your results with accuracy. You can’t do that without a call tracking system.
How AdWords/PPC Call Tracking Works
The number displayed on your PPC landing page is not an ordinary number, and it certainly isn’t your main office number. The phone number on your landing page should be a call tracking number that is integrated with your PPC account.
How VitalStorm Call Tracking works:
- We add a simple JavaScript code that dynamically replaces the phone number for each visitor. Instead of seeing your main office number, the user sees a unique phone number.
- When the user chooses to dial or click-to-call, the phone number is instantly redirected to your main business line and number.
- Once the call connects, the backend is working to gather relevant data from that user, including the exact keyword that triggered the call, call duration, and in our case, a full recording and whether or not the user converted into a paying customer.
- When the call is finished, data is instantly logged and organized in our easy-to-read Metrics dashboard. Metrics also provides our clients with a Booking Percentage and Quality Score rating for each customer service representative.
Data that is collected from VitalStorm Call Tracking includes:
- Call Duration
- Call Location and Time of Day
- Call Volume
- First-Time or Repeat Callers
- Landing Page Performance (Keyword Conversions)
- Full Recordings
- Notes
When the customer clicks on your paid search ad and makes the call, you’ll know firsthand which ad and which keywords were used. You can compare your cost-per-lead and cost-per-acquisition with your other marketing efforts to determine which channels make the most financial sense.
All the aforementioned marketing data is made available to our clients via a single login to our Metrics analytics dashboard (now integrated with Service Titan).
While most marketing and PPC agencies count callers as conversions if the call exceeds a certain amount of time, VitalStorm Call Tracking actually listens to the entire phone call from start to finish.
Our human Lead Qualifiers take notes on every phone call to determine a true cost-per-lead and booking percentage. We qualify over 50,000 calls a month.
As a result, we learned what separates a good CSR from a great one. Learn how Vital Feedback (our call center training service) uses tracking data, recordings, and gamification to boost booking percentage and morale.
Other Uses for Call Tracking
Tracking numbers can be used for both online and offline media. You can track, compile, and analyze important data from phone leads for nearly any marketing initiative.
Offline:
- TV and Radio
- Billboards
- Print Campaigns
- Direct Mail
Online:
- Email Marketing
- Paid Search (PPC)
- Remarketing
- Facebook and Social Ads
- Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, Yelp, etc.
Each advertising channel gets its own unique tracking number. This allows you to see the quality and results of your online and offline marketing efforts. Anywhere you advertise a phone number, you should have a tracking number.
Why Call Tracking is So Important
While it can be argued that any company that does business over the phone should have a call tracking system, it is especially important for the home service industry. You can have the best marketing in the world, but the final decision to schedule service is almost always made over the phone.
This is why it is so crucial to monitor and track the phone calls that are (hopefully) turning into new loyal customers.
Despite digital trends, customers still want to speak to a real person when it comes to scheduling a service visit from a technician.
The Benefits of Call Tracking
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Customer Insights
Nearly every marketer and business owner will tell you to create buyer personas in order to inform marketing, sales, and service strategies.
Buy how do you actually learn about your customer?
You may already have a good idea of your customer base from speaking with your customers face-to-face, social media, surveys, and more, but the best way to understand your customers is through real-life phone calls. You will witness firsthand the pain points and goals of your customer, enabling you to identify areas where you could improve.
Buyer personas become much less abstract when you can hear your real-world customers describe their hopes, fears, and frustrations.
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Employee Insights
Home service transactions are typically more complicated than other industries, requiring many questions and answers by humans, not bots. There are case-specific questions that need to be answered before a successful conversion can take place. This is also why it’s especially important to train your call center on how to deal with a variety of questions and objections that may be raised.
Are you simply trusting your customer service representatives to close the deal? VitalStorm Call Tracking allows you to see each team member’s booking percentage. You also have the option to listen to your call center recordings.
By activating the Stop-Loss feature in your Metrics dashboard, you will receive an email alert and phone recording each time your call center fails to convert a qualified lead.
Use the data from call tracking to:
- Determine your call center’s training needs
- Learn who your best and worst performers are
- Evaluate employee performance for raises, promotions, and dismissals
By listening to real-world calls, you can analyze and fine-tune sales strategies with the goal of improving customer satisfaction and conversion rates.
For each PPC campaign, the call data (location, duration, quality, etc.) is made available in your account. This helps you understand exactly where your marketing dollars are going and whether or not your call center is properly handling the leads that are coming in.
By monitoring the calls in addition to tracking them, you are able to see what your call center’s booking percentage is based on the number of qualified leads that come in.
When you track and monitor your calls, you can make wiser decisions when it comes to increasing your bottom line.
If you do need to retrain your call center, our Feedback Program combines the data we collect from actual calls and uses that real world information to train and coach your customer service representatives.
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Marketing Insights
Lastly, call tracking gives you and your marketing team the data necessary to see what’s working and what’s not, down to the keyword.
Call conversion data is used by our PPC managers to adjust bids, keywords, and campaigns for maximum return.
And now you can connect the dots between your marketing, sales, and service efforts. If you aren’t tracking the success of your marketing initiatives with call tracking, you’ll always be left wondering which channels are bringing home the bacon and which are coming back empty-handed.
Learn if your offline conversions are justifying your online efforts and increase marketing ROI with call tracking for home services.
VitalStorm PPC with Call Tracking
- Designed for High Volume
- Dedicated Lead Qualifiers (who listen and make notes on each and every call)
- Dedicated PPC Account Manager (any questions or concerns, just call)
- Tailored Solutions (we create a plan that is tailored to your business’s needs)
- Live Call Monitoring and Call Scoring
- Premium Integrations (now including Service Titan)
- All Data Immediately Available in Your Metrics Account
- Unlimited Calls
- Toll Free Numbers Available
- Quick Setup
- Keyword-Level Tracking
- Form & Email Tracking
- Real-Time Call Statistics
- No Long-Term Contracts
- Transparent, Bottom-Line Reporting
- Easy Data Export
- Call Center Training (Vital Feedback) Available
Not only do we put call tracking codes on all of our PPC campaigns, we also have a team of lead qualifiers that listens to every single phone call made through each PPC campaign.
The benefits are obvious.
Driving qualified leads from paid search ads is our top priority. Our full-service digital marketing team (combine with our new Service Titan integration), is uniquely tailored to the home service industry.
The bottom line is that customers are calling. But without tracking these calls, it will be impossible to tell which campaigns and keywords are performing best and whether or not your call center is letting real qualified leads slip through the cracks.