4 essential call tracking metrics you should be measuring

Matt McGillicuddy

By Matt McGillicuddy
19 Sep 2023


8 min read

Contents

How many calls does your call centre handle on any given day? How many are new or returning customers? How did they find you? If you’re keen to improve the performance of your contact centre, tracking the call metrics that matter most to you will give you a clear vision of where improvements need to be made.

Call tracking enables you to take a closer look at where your calls are coming from. In addition to that, it provides you with data that will enhance your call centre operations, your sales strategy, and the overall customer experience you deliver.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the essential call tracking metrics you need to be measuring, from volume and duration to scoring.

What are the key call tracking metrics?

Call tracking metrics are the most effective way of monitoring and measuring the performance of your contact centres. Here are some of the key ones you need to pay attention to if you want to take your contact centre to the next level:

  • Call volume: This tells you how many calls your call centre is receiving every day and where those calls are coming from. Call volume is also important to track for outbound calls, which helps you unlock the other half of the customer journey. Call tracking software does this for you automatically.
  • First-time callers: If a person has picked up the phone for the first time, you want to be able to track those calls and understand what drove it. A clear understanding of who your first-time callers are and what they need will enable you to tailor your scripts and create a stellar customer experience.
  • Sales calls vs. service calls: It’s likely your call centre receives a mix of both sales calls and service calls from customers old and new. You need to understand what drives these calls and what is being said, to help you optimise the experience. Use this information to tailor scripts, reduce AHT, and improve the online experience if there are common, recurring queries.
  • Conversion rate: This tracks the percentage of people who make a purchase on the call. Tracking conversion rate shows how effective your agents are at converting leads and other actions such as upselling and increasing average order value. Conversation Analytics helps you lift the lid on what happens on every call your agents make and take, so you can easily spot which calls had positive outcomes.

What are the benefits of tracking call metrics?

Tracking key call centre metrics and acting upon what you find will help you stay on track with your business objectives and ultimately, will help your business grow. But there are several other benefits of call tracking that you should consider.

Map the customer journey: Customer journey mapping aims to understand intentions, motivations, and pain points. With call tracking, you can identify common trends in your customer journey, highlight FAQs that delay conversion, and understand what turns a ‘ring-ring’ into ‘kerching’!

Refine your customer-facing communications: Talking to customers about how and why they chose you can provide detailed insights into opportunities and threats. This can be used to improve agent scripts and enhance self-service tools to make your communications more persuasive.

Streamline call centre data collection and analysis: If you’re looking to get started with call tracking, you need to make sure it’ll slot neatly into your existing tech stack. Streamlining data and ensuring it all ends up in the same place makes it easier to extract insights and make data-driven decisions on areas of improvement.

Call-tracking-Cheat Sheet-Thumbnail
Free resource

5 tips for getting started with call tracking - cheat sheet

Get your cheat sheet

What are the essential call tracking metrics you should be measuring?

You can unlock a wealth of insight from your call data that will make your operations more effective than ever. By developing a clear understanding of why your customers are calling, you can highlight which interactions lead to conversions, train your agents to deflect low-value leads, and pinpoint FAQs to improve scripts and increase the number of successful calls.

What if you could take call tracking metrics one step further and collect data that shines a spotlight on what your customers want? With Conversation Analytics, you can enhance the customer experience by monitoring what actually happens on those calls. So, let’s get stuck in and take a look at the metrics you should be measuring.

Call volume

Call volume tells you how many calls your call centre receives every day. More importantly, with call tracking, where those calls are coming from. For example, if you’re able to see the number of calls marketing campaigns generate to accurately track ROI. Call volume is also important to track for outbound calls your sales team make to gain visibility over the entire customer journey.

How do you track call volume?

Tracking call volume as a metric depends on your agents and sales team meticulously logging each and every call. While this is possible, it involves a lot of manual work, and you should factor in a level of human error. Call tracking software automatically logs both inbound and outbound calls for you. Furthermore, it provides high-quality analysis to give you better visibility on how your agents drive successful call outcomes.

First-time callers

First impressions count. If a customer or a lead has picked up the phone for the first time, you want to be able to track those calls and understand what drove it. A clear understanding of who your first-time callers are and what they need will enable you to tailor your scripts and create a stellar customer experience. Also, if you know where they came from thanks to call tracking, you can deep dive into the keywords that brought them, the landing pages they viewed, and which campaigns are delivering those calls.

How to track first-time callers?

Connecting offline interactions with the online customer journey is tricky you’ll need to have call tracking software in place. If you want to gain insight into a first-time caller’s journey, you need to track their journey from end to end. With Infinity, tracking first-time callers is as simple as one-two-three:

A different telephone number is assigned to each unique visitor on the website. When a visitor calls the unique number their user data is recorded, and call tracking links the call to the visitors' digital activity.

This connection gives you a complete view of the caller’s journey, so you can tell what they've been browsing, what products they may be interested in, and which campaigns, channels and keywords drove their call.

Essentially, call tracking merges phone call data with the visitor’s digital activity. As a result, you get the full picture of the customer journey meaning you can make smarter decisions.

Sales calls vs. service calls

It’s likely you receive a mix of sales calls and service calls from new and returning customers. To handle these effectively and provide the best possible customer experiences, you need to understand what drives these calls and what is being said. With this knowledge at your fingertips, you can start to optimise the experience by tailoring scripts and reducing AHT by routing them directly to the right person.

Tracking sales calls vs. service calls

To understand the number of sales calls vs. service calls coming into your contact centre, your agents need to wrap categorising calls into their ACW process. That said, one of the most common issues in call centres is to ensure that your agents are a) completing activity codes and b) assigning the correct activity code. With tools like Conversation Analytics, outcomes are automatically assigned.

Conversion rates

Conversion rate is a metric linked directly to lead generation and revenue. It tracks the percentage of people who make a purchase on the call. Since a purchase may not happen during the first contact, you might prefer to track the number of warm leads that convert. If your business relies on phone calls to make sales, this is an important KPI. Tracking conversion rates shows how effective your agents are at converting leads. It also means you can pinpoint other revenue-driven actions such as upselling and increasing average order value.

Tracking conversion rates

There are a couple of ways you can track conversion rates. The first is a straightforward calculation where you divide the number of phone calls that led to conversions by the total number of phone calls received. If you want more accurate results, you can record initial interactions as warm leads and set a timeframe for conversion, then divide the number of conversions by the number of warm leads over time. Using Conversation Analytics enables you to see how your contact centre is performing without the manual work.

Ready to unlock real audience insight at scale?

Discover how our call intelligence will help you

Book a demo

Related posts

Categories:  All Digital Marketing Interviews Marketing News PPC

Article thumbnail: Acing automotive marketing in 2024

13 Mar 2024 in 

Acing automotive marketing in 2024

Read more

Article thumbnail: Everything you need to know about call tracking

6 Mar 2024 in 

Everything you need to know about call tracking

Read more

Article thumbnail: Why marketers should be using Conversational Analytics in 2024

14 Feb 2024 in 

Why marketers should be using Conversational Analytics in 2024

Read more

Article thumbnail: Insights from the experts on CRO marketing

24 Oct 2023 in 

Insights from the experts on CRO marketing

Read more

Article thumbnail: Optimising your marketing budget: Key factors to consider

19 Jul 2023 in 

Optimising your marketing budget: Key factors to consider

Read more

Article thumbnail: The future of B2B advertising

10 Jul 2023 in 

The future of B2B advertising

Read more

Article thumbnail: How to track and reduce average wait times in your call centre

15 Mar 2023 in 

How to track and reduce average wait times in your call centre

Read more

Article thumbnail: 4 tactics to increase average order value in your call centre

8 Mar 2023 in 

4 tactics to increase average order value in your call centre

Read more

0333 0600 118