The benefits of adding call analytics and recording to your Customer Journey Map

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Understanding the ‘customer experience’ is increasingly seen as the key to competitive advantage. Creating a good customer experience is all about knowing what the customer wants and how the customer wants to obtain it.

Given the many channels through which customers can engage with a business, organisations are building Customer Journey Maps (CJM) to help them to manage the customer lifecycle experience more effectively. A CJM is often used as a visual tool to highlight areas of focus and improvement, used to plot various ‘touchpoint’ activity against the different stages of the sales cycle.  

The overall marketing strategy is key to the awareness stage of any sales process.  When prospective customers (or ‘suspects’) are researching a product or service, whether at an event, online, through more traditional media (PR, advertising, advertorials), via word of mouth, or indeed through cold calls, the importance of developing clear marketing messages is paramount.  Evidently an obvious call to action captures those that are keen to find out more.

Online enquiries are extremely popular for the initial contact, whatever the original touchpoint method, but typically those suspects that ‘take action’ to improve their understanding, will prefer to pick up the phone.  No matter what level of conversion ratio is achieved (suspect to prospect), at the point of wanting to move to the next stage of the sales process (to engage), the preferred method of communication to discuss further details, request a demo, quote or proposal, or to purchase remains the telephone. For example, after developing an omni‐channel presence one multinational entertainment organisation reported that regardless of the £millions they invested in marketing and sales every month above and below the line, 90% of customers continued to make purchases over the phone.

New sales enquiries can be tracked in various ways using call analytics and recording – for analysis of calls to specific numbers, DDIs or call distribution groups or through call monitoring and evaluation.  The value of adding statistics from call analytics to a CJM should not be underestimated.  Overall call metrics will deliver specific and cumulative call volumes, including statistics that highlight call queuing time, the number of unreturned missed calls and resolution times.  Listening to call recordings provides instant feedback and delivers qualitative research, which helps a business to gauge the clarity of marketing messages at the awareness stage of the sales process. It also reveals how calls are handled, how enquiries are dealt with and any repetitive stumbling blocks that prevent prospects from converting to customers. 

According to The Marketing Donut online marketing resource, 63% of enquiries do not buy for three months, 20% do not buy for over 12 months.  Tracking and monitoring conversations are fundamental to understanding the full customer experience and present a huge opportunity to reduce purchase cycles.

The value of call analytics does not stop there.  Moving to the post-sales elements of the CJM including installation, training, ‘use’, support, upgrading/downgrading and exit, call analytics and recording can make a huge difference when it comes to customer satisfaction and retention.  

​The telephone is a source for significant insight whilst it remains the preferred method for immediate customer interaction. Telephone activity happens in real‐time, providing instant feedback for better and quicker decisions. Incorporating call analytics to any CJM provides business leaders with the assurance that their decisions are based on a more complete picture of their customers’ behaviour.

To read more, download a copy of the white paper ‘Will Your Customer Journey Map Bypass the Call Centre? The Rise of the Customer-Centric Marketplace’ at www.tollring.com/white-papers