Do you know why customers call your business? Is that knowledge based on data or just your gut instinct?
If you understand call drivers — the main reasons customers call you — you can address common questions or problems. Call drivers like billing questions, missed appointments, or FAQs are opportunities to change something within your business and keep up customer satisfaction.
Tracking call drivers doesn’t have to be complicated. Below, we’ll walk through common reasons customers call and the best ways to capture those trends — and take action.
8 examples of call drivers you can track
Here’s the thing: you don’t want to track every call driver. If you track too many things, you’ll be buried in information. Instead, you should track the top call drivers — and only ones you can actually address.
Here are common call drivers for SMBs to get you started:
- Appointments and scheduling: Customers call to book, reschedule, or cancel appointments.
- Customer service and support: Customers reach out with an issue or question or need technical support.
- Billing and payment issues: Customers have questions about invoices, payment processing, or overdue balances.
- Sales and lead generation: Potential customers ask about services, request pricing, or follow up on promotional offers.
- Feedback and complaints: Customers let you know how they feel about a product or service experience or express dissatisfaction before it turns into complaints on social media.
- Urgent and high-priority calls: Customers have time-sensitive issues that need immediate attention, such as an emergency service request or a last-minute scheduling change.
- Returns and exchanges: Customers need to process a return, an exchange, or a refund.
- Account management: Customers call to update account information, such as billing information or contact preferences.
If you’re able to address call drivers (like implementing a self-scheduling option for appointments or adding a knowledge base to your website), you can decrease your overall call volume and create a seamless customer experience.
💡 In addition to call drivers, you can also analyze customer sentiment or how they feel about the conversation. Read more about voice call sentiment analysis.
How to identify call drivers in your small business
You want identifying call drivers to be simple for your support team — and the information to be easy to review and act on. Here are a few ways small teams can collect and organize call driver data effectively:
1. Track call drivers in a simple call log
You may already have a call log — some type of spreadsheet where your customer service reps jot down the caller information (like the name and phone number) and the topic of the call. If not, this is easy to set up and share with the team.
In the call log, you can add a few simple categories like “appointments,” “billing,” or “product questions.” Customer service reps can add notes about the call and select one of the categories. After a few weeks, you’ll start to see patterns in the categories.
A call log works really well for small businesses that don’t get many daily calls. You’ll have a running history of your customer interactions, in addition to tracking call drivers. A call log also helps you track your overall team performance, like first call resolution and response times.
However, a manual process will become time-consuming as your business grows. You don’t want your reps spending much time adding data when they need to answer calls from customers. Plus, a manual process leaves a lot of room for error — which is why you might want to automate the process (more on this in a bit).
Related: Want to create better customer experiences? Learn the best strategies for customer interaction management.
2. Ask your team about common topics
Your support team is a great source of information about the calls they receive every day. If you have a team that’s on the go (like out in the field or on call), they may not be able to add information to a call log. But if you ask them, they’ll be able to tell you about the calls they receive (such as requests to reschedule an appointment).
If you do a quick daily check-in and ask, “What did people call about today?” you can refine your list of common call drivers.
Asking your team helps you collect information, but it might not be the most accurate. People tend to remember their most recent calls or the most unusual (or irate) callers. You’re relying on human memory, and it’s easy to forget the mundane or repetitive calls.
If your team fields a lot of calls, you’re not necessarily getting a list of the most common calls. And your goal should be to identify and address the top call drivers.
3. Automatically categorize call drivers
If manual tracking and logging the call disposition is too time-consuming and you want an accurate set of call driver information, you’ll want to categorize calls automatically. With automatic call categorization and call monitoring software, you can easily identify the top call drivers based on every call your business receives.
Automatic call categorization will use AI to analyze phone calls. With a business phone provider like OpenPhone, you can use AI call tags.
With AI call tags, you can set up a few key categories, like “pricing questions,” “customer complaints,” or “urgent calls.” AI call analysis automatically tags your calls based on customer conversations. Then, you can quickly search, filter, and analyze trends in your call data.
💡 Read more about the best automated phone systems for small businesses.
4. Don’t forget about call recordings and voicemails
While automatic call tagging will catch most of your call drivers, some might slip through the cracks. A customer’s issue may not be obvious from the conversation. Or customers leave voicemails and express frustration about not being able to reach someone.
You can listen to call recordings and voicemails to gather additional call data.
In OpenPhone, call views organize calls, recordings, and voicemails in a single list so you can catch anything you may have missed. In addition to call listening, you can read call transcripts automatically generated by OpenPhone to quickly review calls and get more context.
If you’ve set up call tags in OpenPhone, you can filter calls as a manager by tags. This gives you another way to organize and review your calls.
5. Check your call trends regularly
Once you’ve collected call data, you’ll want to look for trends. Set aside time each week to see if you can spot your primary call drivers, whether it’s in categories your team has assigned in a call log or through automatic call tagging.
For example, you might note that most calls are about scheduling. Or you might see changes over time, like an increase in complaints. These call trends are important insights that can help you make better business decisions and help you calibrate calls. You might adjust your hours or hire extra help to better meet customer needs. You might also provide additional training to staff if better customer service is needed for complaint management.
Automatically track your call drivers with OpenPhone
Customers don’t always ask for what they want. They don’t say, “I wish your company made it easier for me to schedule an appointment,” — but that data exists. You can identify what your customers need if you track your call drivers.
OpenPhone does the heavy lifting for you by applying AI call tags to categorize your calls. Your team doesn’t have to add another step to their process or sift through spreadsheets to track call drivers. The data is centrally located in OpenPhone, along with call recordings, transcripts, and AI-generated call summaries to help you review and look for trends.
Plus, with OpenPhone, your team can use shared phone numbers so they can support customers as a unified team. All the information they need, whether it’s call history or customer notes, is in one easy-to-access tool.
To see how OpenPhone can help your business, sign up for a 7-day free trial.
