Digital Marketer
Over 40% of transactions are now conducted online. That’s nearly half of all transactions.
But with 80% of consumers only willing to purchase online if their questions could easily be answered, businesses face a new communication challenge posed by the impersonal nature of e-commerce.
A survey by New Voice Media (now acquired by Vonage), 77% of respondents believe that a phone call is the most effective way to get an answer to a query. Yet, a survey of 2,500 respondents showed that 60% of them felt that being left on hold for even 1 minute is too long.
Think about the number of potential customers you missed out on just because of a slow response or missed call.
Click-to-call solutions were invented to solve just that.
To provide you with an in-depth breakdown of what a click-to-call system is, we compiled a list of FAQs and detailed responses to each question. You can click on the following headers to go directly to the specific sections:
Click-to-call is a web-based communication in which a person clicks a button or text to connect with a company rep in real-time.
Click-to-call technology can be embedded into a digital customer touchpoint, and this can come in various forms.
For example, it is most commonly embedded onto a webpage as a widget that shows up at the bottom of your webpages. Leads can then click on it to activate a callback.
Some click-to-call tools can be integrated with social media platforms. For instance, Novocall is integrated with Facebook lead forms which are embedded into a company’s Facebook ads. Upon clicking the ad, a lead form will appear to prompt leads for their details and select a time slot for a callback.
Once a lead enters their contact details, the software will automate a call between the lead and the sales rep at the selected timeslot.
This helps to streamline the communication process between the lead and the business.
Click-to-call software can also be integrated with various calendar apps that your sales reps use (e.g. Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar). This allows leads to select the available timeslots for a call based on your sales reps’ personal schedules.
Not only will an endless thread of back-and-forth emails to arrange calls be a thing of the past, but so will incidents of missed calls and long waits on the line.
Leads activate a call-back by clicking on the embedded software in the form of a site widget or lead form and select a timeslot to have a call with the sales rep.
That settles the ‘Click’ part of Click to call.
Now how does this relate to the ‘Call’ part of the equation?
The software works by directing the customer call via Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) to the company.
Sounds complicated? Don’t worry, we got you. Simply put, VoIP is a type of technology that allows voice communication to be transmitted and received in real-time over the internet.
Think Whatsapp calls, Skype voice calls, or calls made via Facebook Messenger. Your voice is digitized and turned into a signal which is then delivered to the recipient.
Here’s a visual representation to give you a better idea of how click to call works.
As with every problem in life, there is never a one-size-fits-all solution to any business problem.
Click-to-call tools can make a huge difference to the inbound site conversion rates of some companies.
But for others, this may not have the right solution to their business problems.
Before deciding on subscribing for a click-to-call system, do consider these factors:
Consider the scale of your business.
Click to call could be the right software if you are running a larger company.
Your teams and systems need to handle large volumes of sales-related queries. Traditional processes might not be efficient to manage those incoming requests.
For example, the use of traditional communication methods like back-and-forth emails to agree on a time and date to have a call is just too time-consuming. If the volume of emails is too overwhelming, you may end up missing a lot of them.
And with that many queries, the absence of a proper software to store information on all your leads and customers can slow down your business operations.
Let’s not get started on the amount of time you’d waste if you don’t have a solution that automatically creates a lead or customer profile for you.
Businesses have several sources of leads. Some businesses get more leads through offline ads while others get them primarily from online sources.
Your web traffic volume is bound to vary depending on whether or not your target audience is tech-savvy.
Needless to say, if you are a botanist placing ads in newspapers, a click-to-call software is not for you.
But if you run online ads with integrated lead forms, or invest in a strong inbound strategy that drives traffic to your website, click-to-call tools may be the solution for you.
Click-to-call is not necessary if your online traffic can still be reasonably managed without software.
If your business is growing fast and using calls to handle the large volume of customer queries. It would be more efficient and cost-effective to use click-to-call software.
Click-to-call solutions are suited for businesses that sell high-ticket items.
These are highly-priced products or services that cost a lot more than your typical daily necessities.
From a SaaS company’s perspective, we’d say a safe estimate of the price of a high-ticket product or service is about $500.
Think companies such as travel agencies that sell tour packages that can cost as much as $1,412. Or private educational institutions that sell courses that provide certification to those who complete the lessons and tests.
Click-to-call software is more suited for such companies as they require a larger sales team to run through the offered product and service in detail.
From a customer’s perspective, if you are paying that much for something, you’d want to get as much information as possible on whatever you’re buying.
And the results show.
Since implementing a click-to-call solution, tour agency EU Holidays implemented and managed to improve their sales by 20% and received over 100 more calls than before.
Good click to call software usually come with a comprehensive dashboard.
Users can directly monitor and track call statistics and information such as call duration, upcoming and scheduled calls, and the web pages from which most leads interact with the widget.
You can also measure the team’s performance and identify lapses in your operations and processes.
As a click-to-call software company ourselves, we have served a variety of clients from across different industries.
Here are some of the most important metrics that a company using click-to-call tools should track.
This shows you which webpage is the biggest source of your leads.
Your marketing team can use this as an indicator to see why some webpages are performing better than others.
For example, your website manager may look at an underperforming webpage and realize that there is a technical error on the lead form that prevents leads from converting successfully.
Or maybe a comparison of social media and website lead form performance revealed that social media is a better source of leads. You may decide to invest more money into ads to reach out to a larger audience.
Either way, knowing the source of your leads is a great way to remedy any shortcomings your digital touchpoints may have.
If click-to-call solutions were designed to reduce or eliminate incidents of missed calls, why should this even be happening?
Let us share some insights.
Based on our own experience many leads end up keying in the wrong number. The software then ends up dialing the wrong number or a random person who may have a tendency to ignore unknown numbers.
Nonetheless, businesses should still keep track of this metric to see if there are any loopholes in their processes.
For example, perhaps missed calls happen due to a technical error in which your sales rep does not receive the call automated by the software.
This comes as no surprise.
This metric can be used in several ways.
First off, you can use it to track the success of your marketing efforts.
If you are executing an inbound content strategy in which the click to call widget is embedded onto your content pages, this metric, along with the ‘top pages’ metric provide insights as to whether or not your strategy is successful.
If the number of leads generated (and in term number of call backs automated) via these pages are high, then you know your inbound strategy is working.
This metric can also be used as a general success metric to look at your team’s overall performance and see if you have achieved your goals
By successful, we mean closed deals.
While measuring the number of calls is necessary, nothing screams business success quite like a closed deal. Or in this case, successful calls.
You can even break down this metric to look at the individual performance of your sales reps.
If some sales reps are falling behind, this is a good time to step in and understand the reason for poorer performance and provide them with the necessary assistance.
A key feature of more advanced click-to-call software is the ability to provide multiple touch-points for leads to contact your company.
Aside from instant calls, some customers like to schedule a call or drop a message or Whatsapp message to you directly.
For Novocall’s widget, businesses are able to provide different types of methods of lead contact, from Calls to Messenger.
With multiple methods, you want a way to track which channel is driving the most leads to you as well!
This way, you’ll be able to understand your channels better and allocate salespeople to different channels more effectively.
If you receive a lot of instant calls, you might want to dedicate one salesperson to answer inbound calls more frequently. If you are receiving a lot of Messenger messages, you might want to set up a Messenger auto-responder to capture leads first.
Here’s a screenshot of leads captured by “Channels”.
47% of customers feel frustrated when they aren’t able to directly reach out to the business. They’re likely to explore and turn to your competitors.
That’s about half of your potential customers.
Perhaps your sales reps were all on the line when a potential customer was calling. Perhaps there was a smaller number of sales reps working that day. Or perhaps the person who rang your company did not know that it was past your office hours.
Whatever the reason was, there was a missed opportunity. These people then ended up purchasing from someone else.
This problem can easily be solved with click-to-call software.
Now that you’re aware of what a click-to-call tool is and how it works, let’s delve into the benefits it can provide to your business.
A high influx of calls overloads calls representatives.
This overwhelming demand could lead to customers being put on hold for too long or even missed calls. Sometimes, leads may even call after your office hours.
What does this mean for your company? Missed opportunities.
With the improving technological landscape, some click-to-call solutions have implemented a routing function that automatically distributes calls to your team based on availability and priority.
Click-to-call software also come with a feature that enables you to schedule calls at a specified time.
Because many of them are integrated with some form of calendar tool (e.g. Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar), leads get direct access to the schedules of sales reps.
This becomes useful as leads can schedule calls with the salesperson based on their availability.
This ensures that calls only happen when both the lead and the sales rep are available, reducing waiting time and incidents of missed calls, and improving the customer experience.
What if someone asked you for the number of calls you received during your company’s lunch break? Or what about the number of calls you received before or after office hours?
If you are not using a digital solution to record this information, chances are the person who initially expressed interest may have to call you back 24 hours (or more!) later to get a response from you.
This increases your lead response time while making the customer experience less enjoyable.
And what if the initial form of communication was through email and your sales team were slow in responding to them when scheduling a call.
Again, you increase your lead response time.
The calendar integration feature completely eliminates this issue.
Because the lead personally selects the timeslot for the call-back to be automated, you will never run into the issue of calling your company when you have no sales reps available.
What use is a sales automation tool if it doesn’t improve conversion rates right?
Because click-to-call software is embedded into digital touchpoints, you can reach out to more people.
Your inbound content strategy may direct those searching for a solution to your page and they may end up scheduling a call.
Your Facebook ad reaches your intended target audience and they end up scheduling a call via the lead form integrated with it.
Regardless of which digital platform your leads end up coming from, using a click-to-call solution definitely beats simply leaving your company’s number and email address on your ‘contact us’ page.
And many companies have the results to show!
We’d like to share a story from White Jacobs, a credit repair firm that was able to increase conversion rates by 45%.
How did they do it?
White Jacobs found it difficult to convert leads into actual sales because their service is
(i) highly customized – which means people need to talk to a sales rep to clarify their needs
(ii) high ticket – which means difficult to get people to purchase
This was solved by funneling leads to a call with a sales representative, which can then carry out a high engagement conversation with the lead, leading to higher conversion.
This was enough to increase the number of calls they received over time and the conversion rates too.
This worked well for them because their potential leads were initially not as inclined to make a call when they had to look for the contact number or take an additional step of making that call.
Novocall helped them reduce business friction by making it easier for their leads to schedule a call with them. All they had to do was to enter their contact details and select the time which they wanted to receive a call-back from the firm.
This worked well because the customer journey was simplified for their leads.
Some click-to-call systems is integrated with CRM tools such as Salesforce and Hubspot.
In general, CRM systems help your company to automatically record details of your leads and customers, store your call conversations, and generate reports on your contacts.
Here’s a screenshot of Hubspot’s contact information, pulled from an inbound caller from Novocall’s dashboard.
If a click-to-call software is integrated with a CRM tool, you do not have to manually type in the details of your leads or customers.
In fact, the syncing of the two software allows the CRM tool to automatically create a lead or customer profile based on information collected from a lead form of the click-to-call tool.
With this integration, not only are you able to have a holistic understanding of your leads and clients, but you also save time keeping track of their information.
In general, people are much more convinced about the product if they can get into the details by asking a real person in real-time.
As we’ve mentioned, click-to-call systems reduce waiting times, incidents of missed calls, and lead response time.
With 58% of customers prefer calling as their method of communication with a business and 70% find calling the quickest way to solve an issue, it is no surprise that leads and customers prefer interacting with your business over the phone over other forms of communication.
Furthermore, with the in-depth insights of your leads and customers provided by CRM tools, you score another point for being able to create a personalized customer experience.
With click-to-call tools, you will be able to connect your customers with the business efficiently, creating a seamless customer experience.
As with any type of tech solutions out there, there are several brands competing for the biggest market share.
Different brands will put out different pricing plans, each with a set of features that are only available if you pay for that plan.
Meanwhile, some brands have a unique selling point (USP). For example, CloudTalk is a click-to-call software with a unique VIP queue feature. This allows you to the business using CloudTalk to give certain customers priority when reaching out to your sales reps.
That being said, all click-to-call must have some features that are common to most if not all solutions that fall under this category.
Let’s take a look at which features you should look out for in a decent click-to-call software.
The purpose of a click-to-call solution is to streamline the communication process and eliminate the need for cumbersome communication channels such as endless email threads.
If the software is not integrated with a calendar tool, how can it do that?
Integration with calendars (Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar) allows your site visitor to pick an available time slot based on your sales reps’ availability.
This reduces the occurrence of annoying communication hurdles like the ones mentioned above.
The software routing capabilities automatically connect the leads and customers to the salesperson based on the sales rep’s availability.
This reduces the occurrence of leads and customers being made to wait on the phone for too long and completely eliminates the occurrence of missed calls.
This feature gives you access to the contact information of your leads and customers, the call history, and the sales reps who served them.
This allows you to gain a deeper understanding of your interactions with them and hone your customer service skills to cater to specific needs.
Detailed reporting and analytics can help to improve your team and systems performance.
For a business to be successful, you need clearly defined success metrics and a way to measure them.
This feature helps you monitor performance related to call activity such as missed calls and waiting times.
The data can then be used to examine and assess your business operations to look for areas of improvement to improve your service.
Setting up a click-to-call software on your website is actually a lot less complicated than it sounds.
For starters, you only need to locate the widget installation code of the click to call solution you are using. This code will then be used to embed the widget onto your website.
Do note that the way you go about doing it will vary depending on the website platform you are using. For instance, Novocall is integrated with WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify.
You can access Novocall’s installation code by logging in to your Novocall account and clicking ‘Installation’ on the side menu. You can then copy the code directly.
1. On your WordPress dashboard > Click on Plugins tab > Click on “Add New” from the dropdown menu.
2. Search for the name of your Click to Call software. In this case, ‘Novocall’.
3. Install the plugin and activate it.
4. Go to Settings > Click the “Novocall” from the dropdown menu.
5. Paste the code.
1. Navigate to the bottom of the website > Click on “Advanced” at the left sidebar menu.
2. Copy the link from your Novocall account.
3. Navigate back to Squarespace > Paste the code in the “Header” box.
1. Navigate to “Settings” > “Tracking & Analytics” from the dropdown menu.
2. Click “New Tools” > Click “Custom“.
3. Paste the code in the “Code Snippet”. Select “All pages” > Select “Load code on each new page” > Click “Apply”.
1. Login to your Shopify account, go to Online Store, and click Themes in the menu on the left.
2. Click on the Customize theme button.
3. Click Theme options in the top menu and choose the Edit HTML / CSS option from the drop-down menu.
4. After selecting Edit HTML/CSS, find the file called theme liquid inside of your Layout directory. Open the file in Shopify’s editor.
5. Find the tag.
6. Scroll to the very end of this file and paste the code you have copied from Novocall right before the tag.
7. Click save to save the changes.
In general, the prices of click to call tools to range differently depending on the plans.
The price depends on several factors. These include the types of features, the number of features purchased, as well as the brand of the software itself.
When you pick a software, do not simply go for the most cost-effective one.
Look at the features they provide and ask yourself if they can solve your business problems.
Here is a quick breakdown of the price ranges of click to call software based on the specific plan.
Basic Plan
Price range: Free – $50
As this plan offers basic features, such as automatic callback, basic widget customization, and lead generation, it’s suitable for companies that don’t have such a high influx of calls.
Mid-tier Plan
Price range: $35 – $119
The mid-tier plan offers features for the team to create a more customized plan. Some of the more common features under this plan include customizable SMS and email templates, call routing, intelligent Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and access to APIs and integrations.
Enterprise Plan
Price range: Generally from $274-$300
Businesses that receive high volumes of inbound sales calls have a much larger client base and have more than 5 sales reps typically need a more complete set of features.
Some of features in the enterprise plan include customizable call team, custom analytics, CRM integration (Hubspot, Salesforce), customizable call routing, and call center integration
Here is a table containing the prices of 6 different click-to-call software.
We hope that we’ve given you a comprehensive overview of what click-to-call solutions are about.
While they seem to be the key to solving the problem of low site conversion rates, are they really the solution for you? You may want to first find out more about how click-to-call tools have benefitted businesses from across industries.
If you’ve already decided on getting a call-back software to help address your business problem but is not sure which to choose, fret not. We conducted an analysis comparing 22 features of several click-to-call software just to help you make a more informed decision.
Alternatively, get started with us and find out more about how click-to-call software can help improve your business.
Nabilah is a digital marketer at Novocall.
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