How does call scoring work? (Not quite lead scoring)
Call scoring is the practice of comparing call data to a predetermined set of performance requirements and assigning a “score” to the call. Call scoring, which is typically considered a call center tool, is also a highly useful tool for marketing and sales teams. Call centers may be more proactive with leads and customers by using call scoring to assess whether their agents are performing up to pace. Call scoring assists sales and marketing organizations in better understanding their clients, pinpointing which advertisements are effective (and which ones aren’t), and aligning their teams—all of which are essential to continually driving growth and revenue.
How does call scoring actually look in action? Call center agents’ call scores are based on a variety of factors, such as how soon the call was handled, whether the issue was fixed, post-call survey results, the accuracy of the call script, and more. Call scoring can contain behavioral and demographic data for sales and marketing teams, such as geography, company size, job title, persona fit, purchase intent, buyer’s stage, and conversion results. Automation solutions are quite useful because call scores vary by industry and take time to adopt and perfect. The benefits are enormous once the call scoring system is set up and the marketing and sales teams are in sync.
The Revolutionary Power of Call Scoring
A frequently neglected benefit of an effective scoring strategy is the alignment of the sales and marketing teams. The majority of sales and marketing teams don’t even work together, according to study. Only 8% of businesses, according to data from Zoominfo, have linked sales and marketing teams. The advantages for businesses that excel at revenue operations alignment include:
- better sales performance,
- increased sales,
- increased business expansion,
- increased lead generation,
- increased client satisfaction,
- diminished sales cycle.
There is a lot of potential for significant growth across the organization when these two teams are strategically integrated around the same revenue generation targets.
A Lead Score’s Distinctiveness from a Call Score
Is lead scoring and call scoring equivalent? Not exactly!
Call scoring is typically connected to customer experience measurements for support teams, whereas lead scoring is connected to the buyer’s journey for sales and marketing teams. Form submissions, chatbot interactions, and even phone calls generate leads. In that it uses a predetermined set of performance metrics, assesses leads against them, and assigns a “score,” lead scoring is similar to call scoring. This allocated score then dictates the further actions taken to follow up with and guide the prospect through a sales funnel, much like call scoring does. While lead scoring and call scoring have some similarities, it’s vital to remember that these are two distinct techniques. In this post, you can find out more about how to create a score for any team.
With lead scoring, you may evaluate new leads and decide whether to qualify them, advance them in the sales process, or keep nurturing them. This aids sales in deciding which leads to follow up with first and identifies the characteristics of their most promising leads. Naturally, call scoring only applies to phone conversations, but since the caller might already be a customer, the full conversation may be used to determine your score. Sales and marketing will benefit from the information gathered during the conversation in other ways, particularly with regard to tactics, training, and planning.
Marketing and lead scoring techniques frequently concentrate solely on digital activity because so much of our lives take place online. However, 92% of all client interactions, according to Salesforce, take place on the phone. Therefore, you’re losing a major opportunity if you’re not listening to what’s being said over the phone by both your team and your consumers. Getting this crucial insight from call scoring and first-party data is more necessary than ever because third-party data is becoming less readily available.
The following crucial information can be obtained with the aid of call scoring by sales and marketing teams:
- Specific phase of the buying process
- Most effective advertising strategies in terms of calls and conversions
- The most typical complaints, challenges, and inquiries
This first-party data is essential for adjusting ad spend and messaging, creating marketing materials, choosing nurturing campaigns, and producing insightful content that addresses the problems of your prospects and customers. With this knowledge, marketing and sales may coordinate around the same information to create more effective campaigns and generate more money.
Three Uses for Call Scoring in Sales and Marketing
Lead scoring is frequently the “go-to” score for marketers, as was already mentioned. Call scoring, however, can offer a plethora of data about your consumers that you won’t find anyplace else. With this knowledge, you can more confidently and rationally decide where to invest your advertising dollars as well as what kinds of content to produce and for which channels.
Let’s look at three ways call scoring may be used by sales and marketing teams to improve lead quality, boost conversions, and ultimately boost ROI.
1. Determine the client journey stage.
All marketers are aware that you must communicate with your audience at the appropriate time. This heavily depends on the stage of the customer journey that your potential customer is in when they contact. Knowing what stage your prospect is in will help you plan your follow-up strategy and improve your chances of getting in touch with them at the appropriate time and with the appropriate information.
For instance, your team will probably want to email the caller some follow-up materials that assist them learn more about your business and products if your call scoring indicates that the caller is at the beginning of the customer’s journey. Prospects typically just “kick the tires” at this point and take their time studying competition. After the call, offering this person useful information can mean the difference between a potential customer and a lost one.
What stage your buyer is in can be ascertained by considering:
- The caller is only beginning their trip if they called after reading a few blog posts or attending a webinar. They might be considering purchasing and are looking at your pricing page and integration specifications.
- Conversation analysis: The words that your clients and prospects use have impact. They can tell you what they need right away.
- Are they requesting general corporate information or are they requesting details about a specific product?
- Have they made any mention of any articles they’ve read on your website?
- Do they already know about your product or service, or are they just learning about it now?
- What terminology do they employ? Words like “demo,” “prices,” “sale,” “trial,” and similar expressions all denote a lower position in the funnel. Words like “learning,” “researching,” “interested,” and similar expressions show they are at the bottom of the funnel.
Knowing what stage your consumer is in allows you to have more beneficial and meaningful interactions with them. It is crucial to personalize the encounter as much as possible by giving the customer content that is relevant to their stage of the purchasing process. This shows your potential customer that you are interested in them and want to assist them. Maintaining this bond is essential.
In fact, according to research from MarketingDonut, 44% of sales representatives stop up after just one follow-up call, while 80% of transactions required five. Callers’ stage in the customer journey can be identified so that you can follow up with them correctly, develop the relationship, and eventually turn them into satisfied and devoted clients.
It’s crucial to realize that there is never just one path to purchase because the client journey nowadays is different. There is much back and forth movement among the three stages, and not everyone begins at the awareness stage. Call scoring, as opposed to relying on conjecture, helps quantify a caller’s stage.
Without call scoring, any new caller can get follow-up with the erroneous belief that they are at the top of the funnel and merely receive some basic business and broad product information.
But if the same first-time caller inquired about pricing, came from a targeted sponsored advertisement, and wanted to know about technical details, this suggests that they are much lower in the sales funnel and may even be prepared to buy. The organization will know that this prospect is serious if you give them a 4-star call or add scoring tags. Sending a company overview as a follow-up action is radically changed to a link to register for a demo or information on current specials.
HubSpot estimates that 79% of marketing leads never result in sales, frequently as a result of inadequate lead nurturing. The sales and marketing component of nurturing and following up is essential. You’ll be one step closer to completing this correctly if you score calls.
2. Know exactly which advertising strategies are effective (and not).
Many marketers have a gut feeling about which advertising efforts are successful and which ones aren’t, or at the very least, they have one. But being able to identify precisely which efforts are generating calls and conversions and having the data to support it is quite valuable. Marketers can track, monitor, and report on the effectiveness of their campaigns thanks to call scoring. Ad campaigns may need to be modified somewhat or significantly as a result of consistent, real-time monitoring and reporting. The effectiveness of a campaign can be greatly improved with these modifications and alterations.
The sales and marketing departments can better coordinate as a result. They gain understanding and may concentrate their efforts on the campaigns that are yielding results when they both know what is working and what isn’t. By focusing on these indicators, sales and marketing teams can make sure that everyone is on the same page and knows which efforts are actually generating sales and why. Teams are able to spend their marketing budgets wisely as a result of having a deeper understanding of the customer.
Teams learn which marketing tactics are most effective when call scoring reveals which advertising campaigns are most effective. Marketers can learn what inquiries are being made about specific campaigns by using techniques like keyword detection and transcriptions. This enables sales to be ready with responses by giving them advance knowledge of the frequently asked questions regarding each particular campaign. Salespeople who are aware of what to anticipate can provide more detailed examples and case studies to assist customers. Marketing therefore has a deeper insight of the needs and pain points of the consumers and can prioritize material to support that. Marketing also knows how to fine-tune campaign content and what collateral to generate to answer the most commonly asked queries.
For instance, if call scoring reveals that two questions are asked by 70% of callers from Ad A, marketing can examine the ad campaign to see whether it can be changed to address these problems. Or, if they are merely frequent inquiries about the campaign, marketing might create a one-pager that addresses these inquiries. On the other hand, if enough callers from ad campaigns have the same questions, perhaps marketing will think about producing an eBook or infographic to answer these issues for a larger audience.
It’s critical to efficiently use your team’s time in addition to your advertising budget. You waste time and money when material is created that doesn’t speak to the demands of the audience. The Content Marketing Institute claims that this occurs far too frequently. According to CMI, 60–70% of B2B content is never used, frequently because the subject is unrelated to the target audience of buyers. Call scoring aids teams in producing content that consumers desire.
3. Identify the most common queries, problems, and objections
Giving clients the information they require is crucial for sales and marketing teams. Furthermore, nothing is more beneficial than gathering data directly from your clients. With the decline of third-party data, it is more crucial than ever to use call scoring to get first-party data directly from your consumers to learn more about them.
As previously indicated, teams may automatically score calls and identify prospects’ pain areas, typical objections, and most commonly asked questions with the use of conversation intelligence technologies like transcriptions and keyword spotting. This can then result in the creation of marketing materials that address those typical problems and objections and provide more thorough responses to queries.
Understanding customer pain points and addressing them are essential when it comes to content marketing. Marketers have a significantly better chance of turning prospects into customers if they talk directly to their pain spots (and address their concerns). And ultimately, that is what both the marketing and sales teams are working toward.
Additionally, salespeople are better able to be proactive with clients when they are equipped with resources that address customers’ pain spots, common objections, and often asked concerns. Knowing in advance what their clients would inquire about puts them in a far better position to respond, ultimately assisting the prospect in resolving their issue. Teams are one step closer to sealing a deal and gaining a devoted consumer when a firm not only addresses the concerns, but also shows how their good or service can fix those issues.
Successful Sales and Marketing Coordination
For sales and marketers to better understand and communicate with consumers, align their teams, be more productive, and ultimately boost revenue, call scoring adds another layer of data. Call scoring can make things easier and is well worth the effort, even though it may feel like a lot of work to get there if your teams aren’t aligned. According to a HubSpot survey, the main obstacle to integrating the sales and marketing departments is the “lack of accurate/shared data on target customers and prospects,” which was cited by 43% of sales and marketing teams. These teams must be coordinated in the current competitive environment.
