CallSource

CallSource

Performance Management for Sales and Marketing

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CallSource Launches New Resource Center, “Your Source”

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CallSource’s resource center, named “Your Source,” offers up handy guides, tip sheets, checklists, and more.

CallSource is pleased to announce Your Source.

As a customer-centric organization, CallSource always strives to deliver the best and most valuable content to our clients, and has extended that same approach to any other consumers who could benefit from these assets as well.

Your Source allows anyone to find tips and tricks that can help them better their business.

Your Source offers up handy guides, tip sheets, checklists, and more.

Launched with over 70 valuable resources, Your Source is the source for insights and help with numerous topics, such as:

  • How to score your employees on their phone calls
  • Understanding and using reports in Google Analytics
  • How to improve call management
  • Why and when to respond to online reviews
  • Learning how to combine data for better reporting
  • And so much more

Searchers can filter to find the topics they care about by searching by industry, content type, or both. We hope to deliver a great user experience with this new resource center.

As always, if you have any topics or area of interest that you’d love to learn more about, send them our way! Our content team loves hearing from clients. Send them an email here.

Press Release: Inbound Phone Score Study Provides OEMs and Dealers Insight in Customer Experience

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Toyota & Acura Rank Highest Across Luxury and Mass Market Brands for Inbound Phone Experience Released by CallSource

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA: 5 Nov 2019: CallSource, the leader in automotive call tracking and analytics, released their first annual Inbound Phone Experience Study analyzing OEMs to determine how each brand’s inbound phone calls impact customer experience.

“For years, everyone has known there is a direct correlation between car shoppers’ dealership experience and their likelihood to purchase. The phone is a key element of customer satisfaction within a car buying journey. We wanted to use our data to find the right combination of behaviors that will have the quickest impact on customer experience for dealers and OEMs,” stated Pogo Parr, President of Automotive.

In this study, CallSource focused on three key areas of the inbound phone call: answer rate, connectivity score, and appointment set rate. CallSource identified these key areas as easy opportunities for dealers to immediately improve their customers’ phone experience. According to the study across all brands and categories, both luxury and mass-market, the average answer rate in dealerships is 95%, with only 83% of shoppers being connected to a live person in the correct department. The biggest dealership challenge is getting in-market shoppers to commit to a dealership visit, which only occurs 19% of the time.

“Awareness is key. By listening to and analyzing thousands of calls, it is obvious the phone process is broken in the dealership. With dealership visits declining as more shoppers research online, securing appointments to increase showroom visits is more important than ever. This study sheds light on the process of the phone that is broken within each brand and what OEMs and dealerships need to pay attention to, right now, to improve the overall consumer experience,” says Pogo Parr.

Other key findings from the study:

  • Toyota and VW rank highest in phone experience in mass-market brands.
  • Acura and Audi rank highest in phone experience for the luxury brands. Luxury brands, in general, have the lowest phone experience scores.
  • Kia (90.3%) & GM (88.5%) have the highest connectivity scores in the mass-market while Acura (87.2%) and Audi (86.7%) rank highest in the luxury category.
  • Toyota (27.9%) and Hyundai (24.5%) set the most sales appointments in the mass-market category while Acura (27.3%) and Alfa Romeo (25.2%) rank highest in the luxury category.

Inbound Phone Score Study

How Does Your Brand Rank?

For the full report and findings of this study, contact us at marketing@callsource.info or 888-340-0123.

About CallSource’s Phone Experience Study:

CallSource reviewed over 50,000 dealership phone calls across 23 brands between May and July 2019. The calls were scored by live analysts to determine the overall brands’ answer rate, connectivity score and the average number of hard-appointments set by in-market car shoppers.*

About CallSource

CallSource is fully committed to the quality and value of our data. As the inventor of call tracking and over 25 years’ experience, CallSource is the only company that has listened to and analyzed over a billion phone calls, and delivers targeted solutions for OEMs and dealers to improve customer experience and internal processes. We provide call tracking, call processing, coaching, and data analysis to the largest OEMs and industry providers in the automotive space.

* Hard-appointment defined as an appointment offered including specific time and date.

Spam calls are on the rise… but CallShield® has CallSource® customers covered.

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CallSource blocks unwanted spam calls to your business

During the first half of 2019, spam calls accounted for between 10% and 12% of all calls. This figure is based on approximately 75,000,000 calls to CallSource customers. If this were not bad enough, in July and August, spam calls spiked to approximately 17% of all traffic!

Anyone who owns a telephone knows all too well how many unwanted calls are targeting the public these days. Most are autodialed, prerecorded “spam.” Although these calls are clearly illegal, laws like The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and programs like the “Do Not Call List” can’t stop them. The FCC can’t stop them. The carriers can – but have little or no incentive to do so.

CallSource blocks spam calls to businesses

For many years, CallSource and a small number of call tracking and telephone performance providers have carried the burden of inventing and maintaining technologies to identify and block telephone spam and telephone hackers.

CallSource alone, via its proprietary system, CallShield, has blocked more than one hundred million (100,000,000) calls that would otherwise have plagued our customers or, in some cases, exposed their telephone systems to hackers attempting to hijack their phones in order to remotely place overseas calls while leaving their victims to pay the bill from their telephone carrier.

Increase in spam calls and FCC cracking down on robocalls

The recent increase in spam calls seems ironic, since the FCC very recently announced that they are cracking down on spammers and the carriers say they are working on solutions to address the problem.

The good news is that there are serious efforts underway to identify “spoofed” calls (calls in which the identified number is falsified) and to verify that callers correctly identify the number or the business from which they are calling. Rest assured, CallSource is also a participant in these efforts.

CallSource will protect your calls from spam

All CallSource tracking numbers, or numbers that are ported to the CallSource system, are protected with CallShield.

If you are interested in tracking your marketing attribution and want to protect your business calls from robocalls, spoofed calls, and other types of spam calls, set up a time to talk to a CallSource representative here.

Shield your calls from spammers

Get CallShield

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from spam calls.

Meet the CallSource Team: An Interview With Tabitha Salazar-Paz

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Each month, we sit down with a CallSource employee to get to know them and their role a bit more.

Name: Tabitha Salazar

Title: Client Support Specialist

When did you start working for CS? August 2017

What position did you start in? Client Support

What is your current position? Client Support

How have your priorities and responsibilities changed and shifted from when you first started working with CallSource until now?

Over the past year and a half at CallSource my responsibilities have grown exponentially. When I first started, I was doing a lot of provisioning and basic things in the system. Now, I have a lot more account management responsibilities such as onboarding accounts, following call counts, offering reporting advice, conducting system walk through calls with clients, geo-routing, time of day routing, and more things like that.

I also have obtained additional role as an Admin in our Coaching department.

What would you say is your greatest accomplishment so far with your career at CallSource?

I have become a reliable source of information for my team. My team and other departments will approach me for troubleshooting or problem solving.

What are some of your favorite things to do outside of work?

Outside of work I enjoy camping in the mountains or near a lake or river. I enjoy hiking with my daughters and going on adventures.

Where do you usually enjoy going camping?

All of my camping experience has mostly been at Hungry Valley because I ride dirt bikes, so we would go to Gorman out there and ride and tent camp out there. I ride quads, and grew up riding three wheelers.

How fun! I’ve tried dirt biking at Gorman once.

Yeah, I’m thinking about buying my girls a small dirt bike. They’re 4 and 6. I just got them battery operated quads for their birthdays, and they will go in the back yard and ride them in the grass. But I’m thinking of buying an actual little dirt bike for them.

That will be great for them. What else do you enjoy besides dirt bikes?

Well I also grew up riding horses.

I’ve never ridden horses! Do you still ride?

I don’t anymore, no. I’ve ridden some in the past year but I used to show them. I used to do Barrel Racing and Cattle Herding, things like that. I got into it when I was in, probably third grade.

What kind of horses did you ride?

I rode Quarter Horses. They’re cattle herding horses. They’re good at the Barrel Racing with the tight turns. I did that and Western Racing. My sister did the English Riding, but I liked the racing and less-proper racing. It’s really fun!

Did you do those in competition?

Mmhmm, yeah I got first place a lot, I have a whole bunch of ribbons at one point in time. I’d have to figure out what happened to them. I got out of it around 7th or 8th grade.

That’s great! What a fun hobby to grow up doing. Some interesting tidbits I didn’t know about you! Now, one last question. What is your favorite part about working at CallSource?

My co-workers make my job very enjoyable. The departments and teams work well together to assist our clients with their account.

CallSource Announces Pogo Parr’s Promotion to President, Automotive Division

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WESTLAKE VILLAGE—May 28, 2019. CallSource, the originator of call tracking, is excited to announce the promotion of Pogo Parr to President of its Automotive Division. Pogo has been a staple in Automotive for many years and has recently served as CallSource’s Senior Vice President of Automotive. Pogo has a strong track record in the automotive industry and a reputation of loyalty and dedication to his company, employees, and customers.

“In the past 18 months, Pogo has been realigning the automotive division with talent, structure and new technology, empowering the team to bring the best service and most accurate analytics to the industry. The results Pogo has posted on the retail and OEM side of the business have been impressive. Not only have we seen significant growth over the last two years, but we are also bringing substantially more value to automotive dealers. Our OEM relationships are growing at a rapid rate, and we’re designing specific products to fit their needs. Pogo is a strong leader; both with people and understanding technology needs. We’re delighted to have Pogo in this position, and are confident this move will bring even more value to our company and customers,” said Elliot Leiboff, CallSource CEO.

As the inventor of call tracking and the first call-data company to offer actionable analytics to monetize all inbound opportunities, CallSource understands the needs of the auto industry to drive and measure results. “This is very exciting. It’s been great to be back at CallSource and helping to reestablish the brand and winning our market back. This company has been built on customer service, focusing on bringing the ultimate value to dealers and people. We are going to stay focused on those three principles and stay true to the market place. We’ve recently launched our new EveryLead platform that’s giving dealers insight into key metrics, benchmarks, and conversion trends with both campaigns and appointments. We’re going to be the first company to truly complete the loop and help dealers and OEMs master the phones and increase conversions and appointment rates,” states Pogo.

CallSource is delighted to have Pogo drive his vision for the Automotive Division and provide the best possible experience to our customers.

About CallSource—Own Every Lead

CallSource provides dealers with visibility into what is driving customers to call, text, chat, or click on your website. We provide transparency into which calls are real leads, and which leads booked an appointment. CallSource helps dealerships track call-handler performance and provides individually targeted training and coaching. Dealers are alerted to missed opportunities in time to save deals. Our tracking numbers are text-enabled, and our digital attribution system tracks a customer’s complete online journey. We have a solution for you to track, set, and close every call- click- text and chat.

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If you would like more information, please call Kelli Conley at 888-376-0123 or email kconley@callsource.com

Meet the CallSource Team: An Interview With Debra Thompson

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Each month, we sit down with a CallSource employee to get to know them and their role a bit more.

Name: Debi Thompson

Title: Web and Social Media Manager

When did you start working for CS?

I started at CallSource as a temporary employee – and was hired on permanently in the Marketing Department in June of 2016.

What position did you start in?

I started as a WordPress Developer. I was brought aboard to help CallSource with the completion of a website project that had gotten stalled. As timing would have it, I was available and very happy to be offered the challenge.

What is your current position?

I am the Web and Social Media Manager. When CallSource was putting together their Marketing Team in 2016, I was delighted to become a part of it!

And I am delighted to work with closely with you on the team every day! 🙂 You’ve been responsible for CallSource’s website for a few years now – and most recently were an integral part of our website redesign. What are some of your tips for a smooth and successful website redesign process?

Patience and a sense of humor? (LOL)

OK… here are a couple tips for the website redesign process:

  • A well-thought-out Marketing Strategy – encompassing company brand, organized site structure, and well-optimized content.
  • Be sure there are solid standards in the overall design; from visual esthetics (color, font, etc.), to functionality requirements and well-documented code.
  • If you prefer an agency for your project, be sure they are well vetted and have the experience and expertise to meet and even exceed your expectations of the finished product.

Great tips! What is your favorite part about working with websites and all things digital?

It’s fun!

I feel kind of guilty saying that, but it is. I’ve been in the technical field for as long as I can remember, but my career really got fired up when I was introduced to the web, and how websites worked. I was hooked early on and went back to college to study web design and multi-media. I’ve been having a blast ever since.

And now…what are your least favorite aspects of it?

Oh, that’s easy (LOL)… when something breaks. There’s nothing more important than your own Quality Assurance methods and testing – but even the best will experience a bombshell now and then. For example – how about that video embed code that is suddenly unsupported and no longer works? Or that script library that no longer supports a function your site uses? Gotcha! Looks like dinner’s going to be late…

I know you’ve been learning more about some technical SEO aspects. What’s something new and exciting you’ve learned regarding technical SEO?

One of the most interesting elements of SEO for me is Structured Data – implementing extended markup to provide additional detail around the page’s content. I love seeing the results!

Do you have a special or interesting CallSource story that is one of your favorites?

One that makes me smile… During my very first (and very nervous) visit to CallSource, I was in seeing Suzanne in HR when the company’s founder, Jerry Feldman came in and asked if I was the person that was going to “fix the website.” When I said yes, he smiled and replied, “Ah, well then… Are you good at it?”

Sounds like something Jerry would say! And I’d say you are very good at it. What would you say is your greatest accomplishment so far with your career at CallSource?

I would have to say developing our latest Media Library site. The project was challenging and fun, and it provides our Sales Team with easy access to all our CallSource media.

Now to the fun non-work related stuff! You and your husband are avid outdoor people. Tell us about some of your fun hobbies!

You bet! Bicycling, hiking, camping… but windsurfing has always been ‘the big fav’ for us – that is, until we were introduced to standup paddleboarding. Windsurf season just got a little shorter. 🙂

More about paddleboarding…how long have you been doing it and what got you into it originally?

A neighbor asked me to go paddling with her and a friend – and she kept asking. After months of her kind invitations, my hubby and I finally decided to give it a go – that was six years ago, and we love it. Whether we’re surfing or out on the open ocean or just in the harbor – it’s a great workout and a wonderful way to enjoy the outdoors. We’ve had many amazing encounters with marine life, too!

Oh really? Care to tell us about some of the most memorable ones?

A few years ago, we made a trip to Avila Bay – the best for up-close wildlife sightseeing. Otters, dolphins, seals… but by far the best show was the humpback whales. A humpback breached 12 to 15 feet away from my SUP – as it turns out…. they are VERY large. I was speechless the rest of the day – it was like my brain wouldn’t work. Immediately after, my husband paddled up and said “well, you can take that off your bucket list!”

The next day, he also got a close-up show with a humpback and her baby.

No way! What else?

The best dolphin encounter was surfing at the Dredge (Ventura Harbor). A mother dolphin brought her baby up to my board to take a look. Way cool! The dolphins are curious and surround us on nearly a regular basis outside the breakwater.

I love dolphins; I’m so jealous! Changing topics a bit, what’s the next place on your travel list that you want to visit?

I’d really like to go back to Maui. My husband and I play a crazy game – “Triathlon of fun”. 6am snorkeling – 9am surfing – 1pm-windsurfing. On day three… we sleep all day.

It sounds like you need a vacation after that vacation! That third day is much-needed and deserved. And what else do you enjoy doing besides being active outdoors?

We love listening to music. A fairly new hobby for us and some of our friends is to visit Bogies here in Westlake – a small venue with some truly incredible talent. Our favorite is the Carl Verheyen Band. Not to be missed – just sayin’.

Well I guess I’ll have to check them out! OK, last question. What is your favorite part about working at CallSource?

The people. Knew it the first day I visited – and still true to this day. I’ve had many conversations with other CallSource employees that feel the same way. We’re all a team here.