Call analytics and conversation intelligence platforms have the potential to help marketers transform their marketing strategies and improve customer engagement.
As with many applications on the martech stack, the power of call analytics platforms is in the data. These platforms facilitate collecting and analyzing caller data at scale, which is essential for building first-party databases. With access to third-party cookies diminishing, call data becomes more valuable for creating compliant customer databases.
Call analytics and conversation intelligence platforms offer online-to-offline attribution across various media channels, allowing marketers to understand the role of each customer touchpoint. Ideally, this leads to more efficient resource allocation and relevant messaging based on customer preferences.
Call analytics platforms connect calls to their sources, such as search keywords, social display ads or web pages. Marketers can then use this data to identify high-quality calls, optimize ad bids or modify campaign messaging. Unique phone numbers for website visitors help determine which pages and elements drive the best calls.
These platforms can also aid in audience segmentation and targeting. They record and transcribe calls, applying AI to determine the characteristics of high-performing callers. This data can build personas or lookalike audiences for new campaigns.
Call analytics platforms have a range of essential features focused on call tracking, recording, transcription, conversation analysis, lead scoring, call routing and fraud prevention. Vendors often differentiate their platforms by offering more advanced capabilities.
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Critical call analytics features
Call tracking
Dynamic number insertion (DNI) lets marketers assign unique phone numbers to different digital marketing campaigns to track the source of an inbound call. DNI can be implemented by call source, online session, or URL.
Recording, transcription and conversation analysis
Vendors record phone calls or generate real-time transcriptions to analyze conversations for insights into customer sentiment.
Lead scoring and call routing
Platforms generate a lead score to determine the caller’s likelihood of conversion and help route the call to the most appropriate agent. Intelligent lead qualification, scoring and routing systems use machine learning to optimally route calls based on caller source, geography, demographics or intent.
Fraud prevention
Call fraud prevention is another important feature, as automated dialers fax machines, and even computer programmers can hack into carrier networks to fraudulently inflate call volumes and revenue for pay-per-call services/ Vendors have developed proprietary call fraud detection and prevention tools that identify, monitor and block suspicious call patterns and routes.
Multi-touch attribution (MTA)
Call analytics platforms provide call tracking, allowing users to attribute the source of a call to a specific ad, keyword or webpage. Some vendors have more sophisticated attribution tools that identify call sources beyond search, such as QR codes, mobile apps and native social media or display ads that don’t include a click-to-call button.
AI-based conversation intelligence
AI helps extract and predict caller intent and measure caller tone, sentiment, and emotion. Many platforms use natural language processing (NLP) and machine-learning algorithms to automatically qualify calls and score leads.
Native social analytics integration
Some platforms can attribute calls to social media ads and integrate call data directly into Facebook ad campaigns through Facebook Ads Manager.
Chat and messaging integrations and analytics
Some vendors incorporate connections and data gathering from chat applications to give marketers a more holistic view of customer interactions and sentiments.
Third-party software integration
Integrating call analytics platform data into martech and adtech software systems is essential to create a unified view of customers and prospects. Many vendors have native integrations for SEO, performance advertising, DSP, CRM and marketing automation systems. They may also offer connectivity with social media, Google, Bing, analytics tools, affiliate marketers and digital agencies.
Data privacy compliance
Call data privacy is a priority, particularly for vendors selling to healthcare and financial services businesses that must comply with regulations like HIPAA, HITECH and GDPR. Most vendors comply with GDPR and U.S. state laws and have clear policies for consumer consent when using their data.
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