Building Technology to Improve Call Quality

At Service Direct, bringing quality calls to our clients has been a top priority from day one and is something that has set us apart from other lead generation service providers. Call quality is the backbone of our business, and we are always looking for more and better ways to ensure that you are only getting calls from new potential customers. 

Our team is dedicated to developing new features and enhancing our technology to continue improving call quality as a means to pave the way in the lead generation space. 

“We’re constantly working as hard as we can to ensure we’re listening to our clients. Call quality is, and has always been, important to them and something we have always focused on as a company. We want to lead the way in the industry and continue to use our experience and technology to deliver high quality calls.” 

Brian Abernethy, Co-Founder and CEO at Service Direct

We have been lucky over the last fifteen years to grow alongside our clients, listening to what they are looking for in a lead generation company and doing our best to provide just that. Our team has already improved call quality by automatically blocking known spam numbers, checking the duration of calls, and adding bot-preventing measures. 

Continuing to Reduce Spam

Anyone who owns a phone knows that spam calls are becoming more and more frequent. In fact, in 2020 Americans received an average of 5.8 billion spam calls a month and we know we’re not alone in feeling as though we received our fair share of those calls. Despite the old expression that says misery loves company, we at Service Direct want to do everything we can to block as many of those spam calls for our customers as possible. 

“We know from listening to our clients that reducing spam and other non-opportunity calls is vital. We are constantly developing technology that keeps out those bad calls without blocking potential opportunities. It’s exciting to see what we’ve been able to do so far and even more exciting to think about what we have coming up in call quality improvements.”

Liam O’Gara, Senior Product Manager at Service Direct

Thanks to those current improvements, Service Direct already blocks hundreds of calls per month from known solicitors and we are adding hundreds of numbers to our Spam Blocker each month. We have built a robust Spam Blocker that greatly reduces the number of spam calls that get through to our Clients., and calls that fail the Spam Blocker will automatically be marked as Non-Billable.

What We're Currently Working On

• • We are currently testing a Spam Blocker enhancement that requires the caller to “press 1” to speak to a company. This will help eliminate bots.

• • Utilize machine learning to improve our spam detection by recognizing patterns in calls and emails that will automatically filter out more spam calls before they reach our clients.

Call Quality Improvements In mySD Lead Manager 

With transparency as a core value of ours, we want you to know exactly what you are paying for, understand your ROI, and help us better understand how you can get the most value from our programs. That’s where the mySD Lead Management platform comes in. 

“Generating the highest quality phone leads is a difficult and moving target. Over the years we’ve had to do many things to improve lead call quality. Our latest efforts are going to the next level. We are confident that we will be able to reduce the amount of manual work it takes to manage leads well, which we know is time spent turning real opportunities into closed business.”

John Turpin, Co-Founder and CTO at Service Direct

As always, we want to ensure that you don’t pay for calls that you shouldn’t be paying for. This includes wrong numbers, calls from solicitors, job seekers, and—of course—spam calls. At the same time, we want to ensure you aren’t paying for leads when you’ve set your campaigns or account to paused. 

Here are a few features to be aware of that will help ensure you are only paying for leads from new potential customers, and that you are receiving those leads at the right time based on your business needs.

New Feature: Calls Automatically Set As Non-Billable For Paused Campaigns

Whether your campaigns are paused because you are overbooked with business and can’t take on new jobs or you’re taking a much needed vacation, we understand that you do not want to pay for leads during that time. As such, we just released a new feature that will automatically set Leads as Non-Billable for any Leads that are delivered while a Campaign is Paused. We will still let any Calls generated from these Campaigns go through, just in case it is a current customer that needs to reschedule your services or ask a question, for example.

It’s important to keep in mind that frequently pausing your campaigns can negatively impact campaign performance and will require time to ramp up once unpaused. Pausing should only be used when absolutely necessary so that you are still able to see the best results from your campaigns. 

Updated Feature: Lead Review Process And Policy

Unlike many other pay per call services, we allow you to submit any lead for review that you believe should be set as Non-Billable. While we are always doing our best to ensure you receive as few Non-Billable leads as possible, naturally some will slip through the cracks. That’s where our lead review feature comes in. 

When you Submit a Lead for Review during the eligible time period, our Quality Assurance team will review the Lead and determine if the Lead should be set as Billable or Non-Billable. Our top priority is making sure you don’t pay for calls that aren’t relevant to your service category or service area, and this lead review process helps us hold up that assurance. 

Upcoming Features: What We're Currently Working On 

• • Build a lead scoring system that can score each Billable Lead delivered to help identify the most important and potentially profitable Leads for your business. and prioritize them accordingly in Lead Manager.
  • Provide an in-app ability to set an "Ad Schedule" that is adjustable in Campaigns Manager, giving you more control over when your Campaigns are running.
  • Leverage machine learning algorithms to automatically set an initial Lead Progress based on the text transcription and metadata of the call.

The Value Of Managing Your Leads

By consistently managing your leads in Lead Manager, you are able to gain valuable insight into your call while also helping us understand the quality of your leads. 

This enables us to better optimize our lead generation efforts to bring you more of the types of calls you want. Our team is constantly working to bring you new, efficient ways to manage your leads so that you see only the opportunities of phone calls and few of the challenges!

In order for us to ensure the highest level of call quality, there are a few best practices that we encourage our customers to take advantage of on a regular basis.

• • Manage Your Leads Regularly. Whether you decide to set aside time every day, a few times a week, or once a week, setting up a regular schedule to ensure you are managing your leads effectively will help make sure you are getting the most of our services. The more we know about what leads work best for you, the better we can hone in on those calls and bring you the types of leads you’re looking for. 

• • Submit Your Leads for Review in a Timely Manner. In order to receive credit for Non-Billable leads, you should submit those leads for review as soon as possible. Making sure to do this sooner rather than later will help ensure that few Non-Billable leads fall through the cracks.

• • Sign Up For Our Lead Listening Program. For our clients that receive a high volume of leads, we have the lead listening program. With this program our team reviews your leads on a daily basis, marking them as Non-Billable when applicable so that you aren’t charged.  

• • Set Lead and Job Progress For Billable Leads. When you accurately and efficiently manage your leads and set job progress it shows our team what types of leads work best for your company. That means we are able to optimize your campaigns to bring you more of those leads and fewer leads that don’t work as well for you. 

Listening to our clients has been the driving force behind our technology and product improvements. By getting your feedback, our team is able to hone in on product improvements that directly improve your pay per call experience and focus on delivering only the highest-quality leads.

For more information about our latest product updates, check out our Product Release Notes.