INFORM Branded Calling comes with several standard reporting metrics and looking at them wholistically can help you better understand how your programs are performing.
Basic call outcomes include
- The call is ignored
- The call is declined (decline rate)
- The call is answered (answer rate) but then the callee hangs up
- The call is answered and the person talks to your agent for at least 10 seconds (talk rate)
- The call is answered and the person talks to your agent for at least 60 seconds, engaging them for your call purpose and moving to a successful call resolution (engagement rate)
The most important thing to remember is branded calls just tell callees who you are and (potentially) why you are calling. Depending on your reason for calling, the metrics can be a little tricky.
Some challenges might include data problems, platform issues, network connectivity, or even bad lead lists. Often just making sure you are calling the right people, with the right message at the right time can help your branded calling programs be a success.
Core reporting metrics capture data in the call resolution journey to help you understand how your programs are performing.
When branded calling metrics go up or down based compared to unbranded calls (you’ll need to use your own internal data or contact us about our evaluation services), they can give you some insight into how your programs are performing. If you notice a particular metric going up or down dramatically, that can mean a lot of things, but the following are some common observations and understandings.
Decline Rate Increases: If you are branding your calls and decline rates go up, that means people either don’t want to talk to you or don’t want to talk to you at this moment. If you are calling people during the day and they recognize you as their insurance provider, they may want to call you back later. While our systems don’t track callbacks, we have seen many situations where decline rates go up but so do customer callbacks.
Decline Rate Decreases: When decline rates go down, it means fewer people are actively sending your call to voicemail. Typically, when decline rates go down; answer, talk, and engagement rates go up.
Answer Rate Increases: When answer rates go up, people either want your call or think they might want your call when you are calling. This is typically viewed as a good thing, but answering is just the next step.
Answer Rate Decreases: When answer rates go down, people either don’t want your call or sometimes just don’t want it right now. We see this a lot when people’s calling purpose is time consuming (like making a big purchase) and they are calling during busy hours. Shorter duration call purposes (like automated delivery reminders) can be received well even if people know they don’t have long to talk. But just because people aren’t answering your calls, that can be a good thing if the overall success of your program improves.
Talk Rate Increases: When talk rate increases, people aren’t hanging up. They stay on the line for over 10 seconds and at least listen to your agent or message. If they do this there is a good connection between your display name and call purpose. For use cases that only require a short amount of time to complete your call purpose (like one-time delivery notifications), this might be your most important KPI.
Talk Rate Decreases: If your talk rate decreases after you start branding your calls, there is a disconnect between your branding and the message callees first hear when they answer the call. Either they thought you were someone else, didn’t know who you were, or just aren’t interested in what you are trying to contact them about. Maybe they are the wrong person, but if answer rate goes up and talk rate goes down, you should look at your display name compared to your live messaging.
Engagement Rate Increases: Measuring answered calls with talk times over 60 seconds, engagement rate is the percent of calls where your callees engaged with your call. When engagement rate goes up, we typically see call purpose success go up as well. This means your call practices, brand name, and agent messaging are all well aligned and people want your calls but also want them when you are calling them.
Engagement Rate Decreases: Especially if you see answer rate and talk rate go up, but engagement rate go down this is often because either the calling use case does not require 60 seconds to complete (like a message or a short survey), people are not able to complete your calling purpose immediately but they are interested, or people hear your calling purpose then chose to not engage at all. Depending on your own internal success metrics, this can tell you whether your lead lists are sending you uninterested people, or maybe you need to call at times when people are able to engage more, but for some use cases engagement rate decreasing can be a sign of efficiency and be a good thing.
The most important way to measure the impact of branded calling is to see if your branded calls are having more successful resolutions than they did before you were branding them. Did you sell more goods, get more people the information they wanted, or help more customers?
When measuring the impact of branded calling, it’s important to remember that branding calling programs might show seasonal changes, but once they are branded everyone is going to see the branded call. So, if you want to see if programs are improving, you’ll need to compare your results to unbranded calls using your own data, or you can contact us for more information about paid evaluations.