Kipp
Member
Whether you are a O/O or a multi-truck outfit you know how important each and every phone call is. Taking calls, converting calls, and tracking where the calls came from can be very time consuming and sometimes in our hectic days we forget to track and evaluate the very thing that drives our business.
If you choose to use several different advertising sources and don't track the ROI on each one this one mistake can cost you your business or at the very least cost you a good chunk of net.
Tracking how many calls you get, where they came from, what type of customer called, how many converted to a job, etc. etc. is a lot of work. In a larger company it would make sense to have someone in an administrative position tracking this (though a lot of companies still don't), but in a O/O case it does not make financial sense to pay someone to track this...even though it is such vital information.
One good tool I found for tracking my calls from different sources was hostednumbers.com (I am sure there are many others, that' just the one I used) This service allowed me to have custom numbers and assign them to different advertising sources.
Tracking is as easy as logging on and viewing the numbers of calls received on each number for whatever date range you want. The calls are recorded so you can listen to them. There is also a "whisper" function that will notify you before each call what source the callers is calling from.
They also have a "caller insight" option that will give you stats like age, gender, home value, financial status etc. etc. Great tool for tracking the effectiveness of your advertising sources.
Also another great tool is ringcentral.com. This is a cloud based phone system that gives your customer a "big company" feel when the call you. It would take pages to describe what this system does but it is definitely worth looking into. They have a phone app integration, auto receptionist, call transfer, call forwarding, ring me, message to email, the list goes on and on. They have answering rules for what ever hours and days you specify...it gives you the functionality of phone systems the used to cost $10K plus for a little as $40 a month...simply a no brainer.
The coolest thing is you have your office phone no matter where you are...and you have the complete functionality. With the ring options you can set the system up to ring several phones at the same time, or you can have it rings phones in a certain order.
Or let's say you have your wife or answering service taking calls. I would rather take the initial call, close the deal...then transfer them to my wife or service to book the job. This way I can keep working and know that all the customers info is getting recorded correctly each time. (I used to hate having to put down the wand, take my gloves off, and go through getting all their info for the appointment...really slowed me down)
With the auto receptionist you can screen calls and only have the calls you want coming through to your phone. for example if I had someone I used to schedule appointments but didn't trust them to close the deal then I could have "press one for a quote" or "press two if you are ready to schedule"...this way I only get the calls that need to be sold and not bothered with calls that just need data entry.
Anyway check it out...if you have any questions let me know I have played around with both quite a bit...
If you choose to use several different advertising sources and don't track the ROI on each one this one mistake can cost you your business or at the very least cost you a good chunk of net.
Tracking how many calls you get, where they came from, what type of customer called, how many converted to a job, etc. etc. is a lot of work. In a larger company it would make sense to have someone in an administrative position tracking this (though a lot of companies still don't), but in a O/O case it does not make financial sense to pay someone to track this...even though it is such vital information.
One good tool I found for tracking my calls from different sources was hostednumbers.com (I am sure there are many others, that' just the one I used) This service allowed me to have custom numbers and assign them to different advertising sources.
Tracking is as easy as logging on and viewing the numbers of calls received on each number for whatever date range you want. The calls are recorded so you can listen to them. There is also a "whisper" function that will notify you before each call what source the callers is calling from.
They also have a "caller insight" option that will give you stats like age, gender, home value, financial status etc. etc. Great tool for tracking the effectiveness of your advertising sources.
Also another great tool is ringcentral.com. This is a cloud based phone system that gives your customer a "big company" feel when the call you. It would take pages to describe what this system does but it is definitely worth looking into. They have a phone app integration, auto receptionist, call transfer, call forwarding, ring me, message to email, the list goes on and on. They have answering rules for what ever hours and days you specify...it gives you the functionality of phone systems the used to cost $10K plus for a little as $40 a month...simply a no brainer.
The coolest thing is you have your office phone no matter where you are...and you have the complete functionality. With the ring options you can set the system up to ring several phones at the same time, or you can have it rings phones in a certain order.
Or let's say you have your wife or answering service taking calls. I would rather take the initial call, close the deal...then transfer them to my wife or service to book the job. This way I can keep working and know that all the customers info is getting recorded correctly each time. (I used to hate having to put down the wand, take my gloves off, and go through getting all their info for the appointment...really slowed me down)
With the auto receptionist you can screen calls and only have the calls you want coming through to your phone. for example if I had someone I used to schedule appointments but didn't trust them to close the deal then I could have "press one for a quote" or "press two if you are ready to schedule"...this way I only get the calls that need to be sold and not bothered with calls that just need data entry.
Anyway check it out...if you have any questions let me know I have played around with both quite a bit...
