Callers Are Ready to Convert, Make Sure You’re Ready to Talk

Do you have an efficient process in place to connect callers with the right agent right away? If the answer is “no,” then it’s about time. But why does speed matter? Leads contacted within the first hour of a query are 60 times more likely to convert than companies that wait 24 hours or longer (HBR). To establish this speed within your business, it’s not only important to make sure mobile callers are qualified and sales-ready (though this does help reduce time wasted by sales), it’s also critical to have a seamless process in place to respond to their calls. Especially when 61% of them are calling because they are ready to convert.

A growing driver of these calls is mobile search. Mobile search is driving quality calls to your business. 3 out of 4 calls that came from mobile search lasted longer than 30 seconds, which means these are engaged callers looking for information and looking to make a purchase. That’s why, in a mobile world, if you want to boost your call conversions it’s more important than ever to make sure these quality callers are quickly vetted and then quickly routed to the most appropriate sales rep to be converted.

Click-to-Call is a Driving Factor

I touched on it above, but mobile search is generating a lot of calls to businesses. In fact, BIA/Kelsey reports that mobile search will drive 75 billion inbound calls to businesses by 2018. And a key factor in driving those calls? Click-to-call. 70% of mobile searchers have reported they click-to-call directly from search results to connect with a business (Google). They make these calls because they want answers­—fast.

So the first step in quickly connecting with callers is simple enough: give them a number at which to call you (especially as more and more access these numbers on their smartphones and are thus already one step closer to calling). As straightforward as this is, some businesses still don’t realize that nearly half of mobile searchers report that they would explore other brands if they couldn’t easily find a phone number to contact a business (Google). That being said, the businesses that do provide mobile searchers with easy access to their phone numbers may still encounter challenges in converting these callers. That’s where step two comes in.

Speed Matters: Tools to Help Drive Business

After the call comes in, there are tools to help marketers quickly understand the intent of the caller. And if they are sales-ready, there are tools to properly route them. Using a hosted IVR (interactive voice response) system gives you the power to qualify phone leads automatically by asking callers questions relevant to specific marketing goals or campaigns. An IVR helps weed out misdials, solicitations, and basic inquiries, as well as helping callers with things such as account information lookup and assisting with call routing. Callers that then score high enough can be passed to a sales rep to engage in conversation. Your sales team will love you: they no longer have to waste time with mundane inquiries or wrong numbers, but rather will spend time converting the callers who are ready.

An IVR can help determine the initial route of an inbound call, but intelligent call routing can help you set parameters for how calls are directed. Whether you want top-performing agents to get the most calls, your calls to be routed based on certain hours of the day, or to be routed based on the marketing source that drove the call, it can all be done with call routing technology. Marketers using call routing help connect their sales team quickly with callers ready to convert.

Align Marketing and Sales for Max Speed

Strong communication between marketing and sales is a third step in making sure marketing quickly connects sales-ready callers and that sales is prepared to take these calls. Communication ensures your sales organization is always aware of current marketing campaigns. On the other side, marketing needs to confer with sales to understand what a quality lead looks like if they’re going to be able to drive more of them, and then qualify and route them appropriately –with speed.

When one of the main reasons mobile searchers call a business from their smartphones is to get an answer fast, you need to be ready to talk to them. And the elements to making this happen are at your doorstep.

Learn more about how marketers are making the most of their inbound calls in our free white paper, “Marketer’s Guide to Qualifying, Routing, and Scoring Inbound Calls to Optimize Sales.”

Callers Are Ready to Convert, Make Sure You’re Ready to Talk