3 ways to get the most value out of Lead Center

Communication channels are exploding! While phone calls are number one (which is why you're using CallRail Call Tracking), text messaging, online form submissions, and chat are growing in significance every day. With multiple channels, it's become easier than ever for you to stay in touch with your customers, but keeping track of all the interactions from various sources is a difficult challenge (and expensive).

Enter Lead Center. You're already tracking your calls with CallRail, and you've dabbled a bit with your new Lead Center account. But how do you get the most out of Call Tracking and Lead Center to consolidate your tools and track all communications in one place?

Here are three easy ways to optimize your Lead Center experience to make sure you and your customers are getting the most value:

1. Ditch the deskphone for a softphone
2. Grow and manage your team of agents
3. Communicate with customers through texts

3 Ways to get the most value out of Lead Center

1. Ditch your desk phone, start answering inbound and placing outbound calls through Lead Center

Now, with Lead Center and Call Tracking working together, CallRail can be your primary business phone system, too! Lead Center is a cost-effective, computer browser-based phone system that allows you to place and make calls. Meaning that you no longer need to manage and maintain separate tools.

Instead, you can easily manage, navigate, and connect with your customers on one platform. And you don’t even need to be in the office or set up call forwarding to handle all of your calls when working remotely or on the go. You can do that by setting up Call Flows in Lead Center, just like you would with Call Tracking. Not only is it a great way to monitor your team's calls, but you at least want to set up one Call Flow to transfer calls to other teammates.

Call Flow helps you take full advantage of your plan and avoids incurring additional call forwarding usage charges for your inbound calls.

In a matter of clicks, you'll be maximizing all Lead Center has to offer like a pro, just like our customer Top Job Asphalt. Not only has their work-life been simplified, but they doubled their profits in the process. Using Lead Center to replace your phone system offers great flexibility, enables optimal productivity for your internal teams, and provides a seamless customer experience.

"Lead Center helps us build a genuine connection with leads. Instead of having to ask a bunch of repeat questions, we can get straight to the heart of what they need, which has helped us increase our revenue and closing rates, and improve customer satisfaction.

Another exciting benefit of replacing your phone system with Lead Center is the ability to take and place calls using your call tracking numbers. Calling back from the same number your customer used to reach you increases recognition and builds trust and credibility. This increases the likelihood the customer answers, which can increase close rates and shorten your sales life cycle.

🤔 Did you know?

If you're using Conversation Intelligence alongside Call Tracking and Lead Center, you can transcribe all of your recorded calls in Lead Center, seeing all customer transcripts and even further customer details. You heard that right!

Gone are the days of only recording inbound calls. Now with Call Tracking, Lead Center, and Conversation Intelligence, you can close the loop and have detailed, quick to access transcripts of all your inbound and outbound call recordings at your fingertips.

Another perk of combining Lead Center's softphone with your Call Tracking capabilities is that your agents can see the source and tracking number before the call is answered — giving your team a leg up on the conversation.

If the customer is calling about a special promotion or offer, your team will know. You’ll also know what type of customer is calling. Perhaps you've sent a direct mail campaign to local residents and commercial businesses. With Lead Center, your team will know the caller is residential versus commercial, eliminating identifier questions and allowing your team to cut right to the meat of the conversation.

2. Build your team of agents in Lead Center

You've set up Lead Center as your new phone system, and your call flows are successfully routing into Lead Center. Now what?

It's time to get your entire team set up in Lead Center by adding agents and building a team. The benefits of having your whole team in Lead Center are numerous, but to get you started, we'll name a few.

Building a team in Lead Center allows anyone who answers or makes calls at your business to:

• Answer and place calls using your tracking numbers from anywhere using the mobile app or browser-based softphone.
• Have visibility into (and a record of) every interaction anyone at your business has with a customer or prospect. Including the interaction history of every caller and also call recordings for both inbound and outbound calls.
• Route calls seamlessly to specific people or teams and transfer calls between team members as needed to get the customer/prospect to the most qualified member of your staff.
• Send text messages (including pictures and videos when applicable) to your customers/prospects, even while on a live call with them.
• Monitor and coach all staff. You have a high-level view of service metrics for each person/conversation so you can see how long people are talking to customers and prospects on average, how many they speak to in a shift or day, who they talked to, etc. You can also monitor live calls and join or coach for support.
• Ensure no communications are missed or overlooked — the more people available to answer calls, the fewer the missed opportunities. Call queues help ensure that calls go to the next available agent rather than ringing continuously.

🤔 Did you know?

A major benefit of replacing your phone system with Lead Center and ditching that physical desk phone is that you can simplify call routing and call forwarding.

With Lead Center, a virtual phone system, you can see what agents are available and unavailable, making transferring the call to the correct team members seamless.

To enjoy this benefit, you'll need to set up your whole team in Lead Center as you won't be able to transfer to a team member not set up as an agent.

3. Connect with customers through Lead Center text messaging (either in the office or on the go through our Lead Center mobile app)

Sure, you can connect with customers via the phone. But wouldn't it be great to communicate with customers in the ways they prefer? According to Gartner, text message open and response rates are "as high as 98% and 45%, respectively — in contrast to corresponding figures of 20% and 6% for email." And text messaging is only growing in popularity.

Lead Center lets you easily communicate with your customers the way they want by connecting all your calls, text, and chats into a single platform. Our most recent updates include sending text messages with images and an unlimited number of characters.

Keeping your multi-channel customer communications within the same platform keeps your data and conversations organized and easily accessible for all members of your team.

The best part of using Lead Center to connect with your customers via text messages? You get to use your call tracking numbers, so all the data you've collected is all there in one place. No more sifting through multiple platforms or double-checking your notes to see what was said and when during a call. Lead Center connects it all in one place.

And just like calling, with Lead Center, you can return your customer's text messages directly from the call tracking phone number your customer used to first contact you, increasing recognition.

🤔 Did you know?

Suppose a customer calls you, but you cannot take the call because you’re busy with other customers. In that case, you can reply to the call directly through a text message for a faster response time — helping you start the customer relationship off strong while getting a leg up on the competition.

But wait, there's more! CallRail offers the Lead Center mobile app to help you stay on top of all business communications on the go -- with both inbound and outbound calls. Be sure to download the app from the App Store for iPhone or Android Apps on Google Play.

I'm in! So, what's next?

To begin getting the most value out of your Lead Center account, start by routing your calls directly into Lead Center. Once you've completed that step, start building your team by adding agents today.

Have questions or need help? Set up a complimentary account review and start building teams in Lead Center today.