The Marchex Blog

Home improvement brands: Get the most out of the leads to your professional contractor network

Home improvement investments such as air conditioning systems, furnaces, hot water tanks, and heat pumps can be considerable purchases for most homeowners. When the time comes to make a purchase or a major repair, customers want answers from the experts, and often turn to manufacturers for information. Because these are not everyday purchases, consumers typically interact with your brand on two key occasions: The time of initial purchase and when something breaks. As such, it’s imperative that your brand is customer-centric and knowledgeable about your products to build trust and earn their business.

Drive More Calls to your Preferred Contractor Network

As a leading brand, you have worked to build a trusted network of preferred home services contractors to whom you channel leads for selling your products. These providers have likely been thoroughly vetted or even certified to become expert advisors for your products.  If you support your supplier network with extensive marketing campaigns to funnel potential customers their way, you want to maximize and optimize these opportunities. After all, much has been invested to gain the customers’ attention and connect them to the right technicians for the job. It’s important to also invest in the next step: ensure each technician is providing excellent service and value to each customer.

Extend Excellent Brand Experiences for your Customers

Imagine this: It’s a hot summer day and the mercury is rising. A homeowner switches on the air conditioner to cool down their house. But as they turn the dial, they hear strange sounds and no cold air comes out. Uh oh!  The AC is on the fritz! Being a savvy consumer, the homeowner goes straight to your website to troubleshoot the issue and find recommendations. To their delight, you have all the resources they need to get connected to a knowledgeable service technician in their area, so they just pick up the phone and call to book an appointment.

A successful connection, right? The connection between customer and service provider is an essential part of the customer journey. Do you know what happened next? If you’re wondering how you can get the most out of these inbound phone calls, here’s how: Implement Call Analytics. Call Analytics can provide answers on which marketing channels are performing, how to attribute revenue to these leads and whether the customer received an excellent experience on the call.

Measure Performance Through the Sales Channel

Call Analytics allows you to see which of your partners are getting the most calls, and insights as to how these leads are handled.  Learn whether the call was answered and how quickly. Or, whether the caller abandoned the call while on hold or during the interactive voice menu. Conversation analytics provide deep insights into what happened during a call.  Why did the caller call? How did the agent respond? Did the agent stay on script? Did the caller schedule an appointment? Why or why not?

Connecting your customers to your certified partners is just one part of developing your sales channel. With the actionable insights gathered from Call Analytics, home improvement brands can learn what drives a customer to call in the first place, the experience of connecting with a contractor, and what the outcome of the call was. Brands can use these insights to help your network have more conversations that convert to sales.