by Lizzy Murphy

As a shop owner, it’s extremely important to know not only how your new customers are finding you, but also why a potential consumer decided not to come in. The reasons can range from reviews, pricing or even a missed call to your business. This has been a common concern for many of the shops I have worked with over the past few years.

With the new SocialCRM service, LocalSearch, we have created a solution for our customers that will allow us to really drill down and look at the type of information needed to make important business decisions. One of the solutions is call tracking. Let’s take a look at how call tracking works and why it has become a big help to shop owners.

A search for an auto repair shop starts with a need. No one is looking for a new auto repair shop just simply because they like browsing repair shops! The more likely scenario is the person needs an upcoming or immediate repair, and they’re searching for pricing and reviews. Also, most often their search starts with Google, which has over 75% of the market share for search engines.

At first glance, the consumer will notice reviews online. If you’ve been using SocialCRM, your verified SureCritic reviews will appear on your Google Graph – it’s a great thing! From there, the consumer’s next step is probably to look at what vehicles you service and your shop hours. This will most likely lead them to your website.

At that point, a decision is made. Will they call your shop? Having a great website and reliable reviews are going to help persuade that consumer to call you. But what happens after that? Did your employee answer the phone in a professional manner? Were they able to answer the consumer’s questions? Are your customers getting the best first impression (because as we know, you may only get one)?

Call tracking allows you to monitor and address these issues. With LocalSearch call tracking, you will be able to listen to calls as well as see any missed calls. Here are just a few of many ways that listening to tracked calls can help make important business decisions:

• Call volume: When are you receiving the most calls, and do you need to staff more?
• Employment and training: Does the staff need more training to answer important questions? Are they aware and complying with the shop’s customer service standards?
• Requested Services: Are consumers looking for services that you don’t currently have, but could benefit from bringing on?

Once the consumer has made it to your site or clicked on one of your contact links on another platform, their activity can be tracked and linked back to where they first found you. Knowing where your consumers are coming from will help you gain a better understanding of the best areas to focus your marketing attention. For example, do you have a lot of visits on Yelp but not a lot of new customers coming to your website directly from Yelp? Maybe you need a campaign to grow your reviews or incentivize consumers to call.  Your SocialCRM support agent would be happy to help you with this and many other strategies.

When the consumer makes it to the shop, your SocialCRM dashboard reports (see below) will show you where that consumer found you online and how much revenue you have made from them.

Call tracking can be a huge advantage, but it is only one feature of many that LocalSearch offers to help reach and bring in new consumers. For more information on how SocialCRM can assist you and your business, visit LocalSearch from SocialCRM.