Sophisticated Call Analysis will Help Advance Mobile Local Search – Including Monetizing Pay Per Call Leads

With Google's new third-party AdWords requirements adding transparency to AdWords resellers, there will be exciting differentiation among SEMs and mobile local search agencies. AdWords resellers will rapidly innovate and focus on lead conversion in order to differentiate themselves.

Sophisticated phone call analysis / call transcription is an example of this innovation and will help advance mobile local search – including monetizing pay per call leads.

Over at Screenwerk, Greg Sterling commented on how call transcription is driving pay per call:

“Stepping back, what’s clear is that the world of call measurement and analytics is getting much more sophisticated very quickly. These call analytics and data mining capabilities offer a range of benefits from SEM campaign optimization to operations and customer service. And pure “pay per call” services that are based entirely on call duration aren’t going to be competitive for very much longer.”

I agree with Greg that transcription has a role in the call analytics tool kit. However, despite the current buzz around this topic, call transcription is of limited use as a positive qualifier for a pay per call leads delivered to local merchants. Here's why:

First, let me address dirty calls. If the call measurement vendor does not have sophisticated filtering in place wrong number calls will obviously be bad leads for the merchant. I agree with Greg that call duration alone is not enough. But dirty calls rarely go over 45-60 seconds. Transcription can help identify dirty calls, but in this case its valuable as a method to eliminate the pay per call lead.

Next, let me discuss poor customer service by the merchant. If the advertiser-generated pay per call leads repeatedly result in unanswered calls, busy calls, or IVR or machine answered calls, these leads can be scored using transcription. These are not poor quality leads delivered by the media company, rather potentially good leads delivered to the wrong advertiser. As difficult as it may be to turn away an advertiser, the consumer is not served by an unresponsive merchant. And unresponsive merchants will ultimately churn as they fail to convert many of their leads. Transcription can help identify IVRs and answering machines, but again in this case its valuable as a method to eliminate the pay per call lead.

In the final example, the consumer has dialed correctly and the merchant eagerly answers the call. The parties speak. The caller asks questions: “do you…”. The merchant answers yes or no. Call duration will be an indicator of lead quality.

FastCall411 uses transcription to help identify wrong number calls, answering machines, IVRs and miscategorized merchants (lots of “no” answers). We use transcription to eliminate the lead, but not to positively score the lead. Transcription helps FastCall411 identify merchants who are underperforming (generally not responsive to calling consumers). We equip clients with the analytics to demote underperforming merchants and promote higher performing merchants. Doing so funnels more quality leads to the higher performing merchants. Does the pay per call provider have to transcribe BMW three times in the call to charge for the lead? Pay per call may have great promise, but not if leads are held to this standard.

When the mobile local directory delivers a warm consumer, and the merchant engages that consumer, its up to the merchant to close the sale.

FastCall411 develops the sophisticated tools – including call transcription and other analytics - to identify high performing merchants. These merchants provide the best service to consumers and are the best pay per call prospects.

FastCall411 "Hot Leads" Offers Mobile Local Search Directory Companies a Better Way to Find Merchants Who Will Advertise

Real-time, Call Analytics Enable Mobile Local Directories to Laser-Target Their Local Advertising Sales Efforts


For mobile local search directories, the challenge is two-fold: finding consumers to use it and simultaneously finding merchants to advertise.

“Hot Leads” is a very exciting call tracking program that helps directories laser-target their “hottest” merchants. With the right merchants listed in the mobile local directory, serving customers becomes much better.

Hot Leads, is similar to what management guru Peter Drucker advises:

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

FastCall411 helps directories know merchants that intimately. We track and analyze information about local merchants, help weed-out merchants who don’t answer calls, who keep people on hold, or who generally do not get and give value to consumers calling the business to schedule an appointment or with a other questions.

FastCall411 helps mobile local search directories define which merchants are Hot Leads and conversely which local merchants are cold, or unqualified:

• Hot Leads for the directory’s sales staff, because the merchants know how to turn a consumer call into a sale (a HOT advertising prospect, since they know the value delivered by the publisher)
  
• Cold or unqualified as good prospects to buy advertising in the directory because the merchant doesn’t answer their phone or frequently drops calls (a COLD advertising prospect since these merchants generally feel that 'this stuff doesn't work')”
  

For the first time, FastCall411 brings real-time, phone call analytics to mobile, local search – benefitting users, local merchants and FastCall411’s mobile local directory partners.

FastCall411 uses patent-pending phone call analytics to assign a quality of customer service score to service-oriented local merchants listed in local and vertical search directories. Our quality score enables FastCall411 to predict which local merchants are available to provide the best service to users. The highest scoring local merchants are also the best advertising prospects for FastCall411 clients. These are the hot leads for local search advertising sales. Everybody wins: the users, the merchant and the publisher.”

In a recent case study FastCall411 found that nearly 50% of the merchants were receiving 90% of the consumers’ phone calls. Eliminate the bottom 50% of the merchants who receive almost no calls and you’ve doubled your users’ chances of a positive experience when calling a local service business. You’ve also doubled your sales teams’ chances of finding a hot advertising prospect. FastCall411 data provides clear, actionable insight into our client’s best performers.

Further, FastCall411 applies near-real time analytics – including call transcription – to identify customer service issues for our clients. Businesses with repeat unanswered calls; repeat busy or repeated calls going to answering machines are under-performers. For many reasons, these businesses are not available to service our clients’ users. If the business is identified as miscategorized, out of business, or otherwise not relevant to the directory and user, FastCall411 flags these merchants for removal from the search results.

The top-performing merchants – the Hot Leads – are delivered as a dynamic sales list updated in real-time in Salesforce.com or another CRM application. Nowhere else is this real-time quality of service scoring and targeting available within mobile local search.

Announcing FastCall Networks - Niche mobile local directories powered by innovative voice applications

FastCall411 -- targeting the $200+ billion local search market with innovative and disruptive voice 2.0 applications -- is preparing to launch a groundbreaking network of mobile local directories. Each targeting a specific consumer need, and launched with an industry partner, the niche directories will be populated with dynamic pools of "Verified as Available" local service providers. The FastCall Network directories offer strategic partners a turn-key mobile local search directory.

The first FastCall Network directory is FindATow.

Consumers benefit from the FastCall Network directories with fast and efficient local search connections. For merchants, voice 2.0 applications and real time phone call analytics drive more customers at the point of purchase. And for partners, satisfied consumers and merchants equals higher advertising yield.

With a fresh, bottom-up approach, innovative voice 2.0 applications connect consumers - by phone, email and SMS - to relevant local service providers available to satisfy consumers' mobile local search requests. FastCall411 analyzes phone call answer rates, consumer reviews and other consumer satisfaction criteria. The FastCall Network is also the first and only mobile local search directory to broadly introduce availability into local search. Not only will we find the specific local merchant specialist (i.e. tankless hot water heaters, divorce lawyers, motor scooters) but we will find specialists that are available, ready and willing to serve the consumer.

As consumer demand and merchant supply are matched in near real time using FastCall411's innovative voice applications and phone call analytics, FastCall Network directories will achieve a near 100 percent success rate in knowing which merchants are active and eager for leads.

Hot Leads and Fast Call Back, our automated local advertiser acquisition applications, drive highly targeted and efficient advertiser acquisition. The pitch to advertisers is simple and scalable: Pay a fee to continue to receive “hot,” valuable phone leads from our mobile local search directories and partners.

To date, the deficits in mobile local search have lead to a poor experience for the consumer, inefficient lead generation for the merchant and ineffective advertiser acquisition for the mobile local directory. Taken together, efforts to monetize lead generation to the local merchant have been a disappointment.

The challenges begin with relevance and availability - the missing links in local search. Searching consumers suffer with out-of-date, inaccurate and poorly categorized local merchant listings. Subcategories represent consumers' actual intent but they get lost in the overly broad, yellow page-based local search taxonomy. And availability? Consumers have no indication if local merchants are available – or even still in business. Merchants are poorly served with too few and unfiltered leads and little control over or visibility into the source of their leads.

And while I estimate that hundreds of millions of calls originate monthly from local search queries, as many as half of these local mobile search calls will not connect to the local merchant for many reasons including those stated above. Redirecting or recapturing those lost calls is a huge lead generation opportunity. The hundreds of millions of phone calls originating from mobile local search represent an invaluable source of untapped analytics, a super efficient marketing channel, and lay the groundwork for unsurpassed user reviews.