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In a revealing webinar, AT&T's Marketing Technology Director Ben Downing shared how the telecommunications giant leverages Invoca to optimize marketing, improve sales performance, and drive significant revenue growth. Since implementing Invoca's revenue execution platform in 2018, AT&T has scaled from tracking 2 million calls annually to nearly 10 million – and the insights gained have transformed their approach to customer engagement.
Despite the shift toward digital channels, phone calls remain a critical touchpoint in the customer journey. As Downing notes, "About 10 to 12% of our visitors end up calling in, which is definitely a large volume when you think about all the traffic that's coming to AT&T's digital properties."
However, not all calls are created equal. Industry data shows that 65% of callers don't create leads, 31% never reach a live person, and 67% of phone leads don't convert on the call. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for optimization.
AT&T has developed seven key strategies to maximize the value of their call data and build a connected buyer journey that resulted in greater conversions and profitable revenue:
Rather than focusing solely on basic metrics like call volume, AT&T tracks comprehensive funnel metrics, including lead quality, conversions, revenue, and customer lifetime value. "With all the Invoca tracking and all the signals we’ve developed, we've created a full-funnel view for each marketing source to understand behavior, outcomes, and abandonment points,” explains Downing.
AT&T has evolved beyond basic call metrics to develop a comprehensive measurement framework that encapsulates full-funnel visibility (such as site visitors and conversion rates), diagnostic metrics (such as call center capacity analysis and IVR abandonment rates) and revenue impact metrics (such as sales closure rates and ROAS).
AT&T has created over 45 different Invoca Signals to analyze call content and outcomes. These Signals help identify everything from customer sentiment to specific product interests. "The work on Signals and the refinement of signals is an activity that never ends," says Downing. "You're always improving and thinking about what other signals to layer in and how to validate those signals."
AT&T's Signal types span across phrase-spotting Signals, AI-powered conversation analysis, customer sentiment detection, product interest indicators and promotional offer tracking.
"We go through pretty rigorous validation and confidence levels of those Signals," says Downing. This includes:
Breaking down data silos has been crucial to AT&T's success. By making call analytics available across marketing, sales, and operations teams, they've created alignment around customer experience optimization. The data has become so valuable that "our call center teams often go to Invoca as their first data set to understand call center traffic patterns and outcomes," according to Downing. Data is used by many teams at AT&T, such as Marketing, Call Center Operations, Sales, Digital Experience, and Product Development groups. Ben’s team has worked to ensure platform access across departments, as well as shared dashboards and reporting, integrated data environments, and cross-functional analysis capabilities.
"Having broad access to data enables us to be collaborative because different teams are going to spot different optimization opportunities... teams are joining forces on what’s best for both the business and the customer by saying, 'Okay, is there a way that we can boost answer rates? Or is there a way that we can boost sales opportunities?'" explains Downing.
AT&T's testing has shown that campaigns using Invoca signals for optimization achieve 20-30% higher conversion rates and 20-30% lower cost per conversion compared to campaigns without media integrations.
AT&T's approach to optimization is particularly sophisticated, leveraging call data across multiple marketing channels and technologies. "Several of our direct mail and email campaigns have Invoca tracking as well," Downing explains. "When you think about Google call extensions that are appearing in search ad results, that makes up at least 20% of the inbound call volume that's coming from paid search."
The company's optimization strategy operates on several levels:
"When you really think about working at a large organization, your media team, your call center and your sales team, and your digital and e-commerce teams, they all want to understand what their contributions are driving, and it's often a shared contribution," Downing explains.
In a groundbreaking initiative, AT&T integrated its call tracking system with Neustar Transunion's identity resolution API to enable real-time caller identification and routing optimization. This allows them to identify high-value opportunities, such as fiber-eligible households, and provide specialized handling.
Ben Downing explains the innovative approach: "We kicked off a project early this year to have Invoca send call records to Neustar Transunion's API, and then get back data to enrich caller profiles.” This real-time data exchange enables immediate caller identification and personalization.
This enriched and unified data approach has allowed AT&T to do real-time matching of inbound calls to audiences and route highly qualified callers directly to agents, bypassing the IVR. The implementation delivered impressive metrics:
The success of this implementation demonstrates the power of connecting customer data systems in real time to create personalized experiences. It's not just about knowing who's calling – it's about using that information to create better customer journeys and more efficient sales processes. As AT&T's results show, the impact on both customer experience and business outcomes can be transformative.
AT&T utilizes call analytics to forecast call center staffing needs, optimize IVR flows, and improve website content based on common customer inquiries. This holistic approach ensures resources are allocated efficiently to maximize conversion opportunities.
Analysis of repeat caller patterns revealed declining conversion rates with each subsequent call, leading AT&T to focus on first-call resolution. As Downing explains, "Really putting more emphasis on making sure that we have the right routing and call center capacity to reduce repeat callers in the first place has been a major initiative for this year."
AT&T continues to innovate in its use of call analytics. Future initiatives include implementing screen pops to provide agents with caller journey information and further expanding their signal detection capabilities to identify new optimization opportunities.
As Downing reflects on the career impact of this work: "The skills you gain by using Invoca are highly in demand in terms of understanding digital journeys, customer intent, and optimizing outcomes in a holistic fashion."
For enterprises looking to optimize their own call handling operations, AT&T's success provides a clear roadmap: start with comprehensive measurement, build sophisticated analytics capabilities, break down organizational silos, and continuously iterate based on data-driven insights. The results – more than doubling conversion rates with qualified leads – can be transformative.
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