The Marchex Blog

Identifying your Buyer’s Goal with Customer Intent

Marketing and selling today are about leveraging information. Customers enter their buying journey assuming their preferred vendor will know what they want, where, and why. But, they can also switch vendors in the time it takes for a phone to ring. Sales has sped up; in order to close, sellers need to jump on each opportunity with every tool available, including call tracking and Conversation Intelligence. These solutions offer another actionable benefit: Customer Intent data.

Conversation Intelligence solutions can offer customer intent data by analyzing the context of the customer journey along with what they say to salespeople – over a text or call – to determine exactly what they are looking for. This yields opportunities to market and sell from a more informed standpoint, and it lends key information in the moments that determine whether a sale will be closed or lost – particularly at the beginning and the end of a conversation.

Discover what your customer wants, then fulfill it

With a complete view of the customer journey and customer intent, marketers can know which campaigns and products are driving calls and texts. This means when a lead is passed to salespeople, they can identify the buyer’s goal and ensure a warm start to the conversation, opening the door for an easy sale.

Interest in products and appointments is important, but it’s not the only thing to track. Potential customers will ask about store locations, hours, or general information. They will ask about prices and inventory and often they will express their reservations and pain points. With customer intent analytics software, all of this can be automatically deciphered as it happens. Not only can businesses take action in the moment to fill a consumer’s needs, they can adjust over time. Are customers asking for appointments during hours when a store is understaffed or closed? Is a product receiving interest while it is out of stock?

You can answer these questions automatically with an AI-enabled customer intent tracking tool and then address them. Customer pain points shouldn’t be a mystery, but they shouldn’t require hours of study either. By gauging what buyers want on a micro and macro level, businesses can get ahead of them to optimize marketing campaigns and arm salespeople with detailed data.

Rescue lost opportunities

Not every conversation will end in an appointment or sale. Sometimes consumers will call or text with a product in mind, and something will happen over the course of the interaction that turns them away – maybe to a competitor instead. Conversation Intelligence captures these sentiments as customer intent data in real time.

Conversation Intelligence products can alert salespeople when they have missed an opportunity in the moments after a failed conversation. That moment matters — it is when a salesperson can call back with a better offer, adjusted price point, or appointment time to keep a lead that would have been lost. Lost opportunities make a difference, especially with high intent customers. Just ask Big O Tires, who discovered $100,000 per store in annual revenue potential when they tried Marchex Sales Edge Rescue.

Fundamentally, Conversation Intelligence is about eliminating mysteries within customer conversations so you can identify customer intent, better help your customers and close more sales. Inform your marketing efforts with hard data about what customers want when they contact you. Promote informed engagement by identifying the buyer’s goal in real time. Rescue lost opportunities when the high-intent caller hangs up.

If you want to learn more about Conversation Intelligence and how it can help you discover customer intent, request a demo today.