The Mission
Miracle-Ear is a franchised organization that brings hearing aid technology to those with hearing loss across the United States. It has over 1,500 locations nationwide, the vast majority of which are locally owned and operated, and many of the franchisees have been with the organization for decades.
As a franchise organization with thousands of physical locations, the Miracle-Ear marketing organization is fairly complex. It utilizes many sophisticated and intricate centralized programs for digital CRM and traditional marketing. However, being a franchise organization, a significant portion of its marketing is handled at the local level, either through centralized turnkey solutions or autonomously by the franchisees themselves. “I would call it a rich tapestry of national and local marketing, which makes building a solid infrastructure for this organization fairly complicated,” said Nataly Huff, director of digital marketing at Amplifon Americas.
Digital marketing accounts for a quarter of the total business revenue for Miracle-Ear and about 80% of its digital marketing conversions happen over the phone. This is because it is driving new customers to call and set appointments to visit one of its local franchisees for an in-person consultation.
“The scale is pretty significant and so for us, it was incredibly important to bring a solution that not only allowed us to track our phone call conversions, but also give us user-level data at scale in terms of quality and outcomes of those phone calls driven,” said Huff.
Seeing that true cost per appointment data would allow us to be a whole lot more intelligent in how we spend our money, where, and how much.
Nataly Huff, Director of Digital Marketing at Amplifon Americas
The Challenge
Miracle-Ear had previously used a turnkey solution that grouped paid media together with call tracking. That approach was effective when the company was dipping its toes into digital marketing, but as it headed for full-on digital marketing transformation, it could not provide the granular data needed for optimization and to develop new, innovative marketing strategies.
“Our goal was to be able to understand the true cost per new appointment driven at the user level in real time,” said Huff. “Seeing that true cost per appointment data would allow us to be a whole lot more intelligent in how we spend our money, where, and how much.” In order to achieve this, they needed to move from channel-level attribution to campaign-level attribution in order to understand the quality and context of the calls its digital marketing dollars were driving.
The Resolution
Using Invoca conversation intelligence, Miracle-Ear was able to reduce contact center costs, increase revenue, and achieve a double-digit improvement in digital marketing performance within three months.
Using Invoca Signal AI to Identify Conversions and Nearly Eliminate Spam Calls
“Previously, we assumed that the distribution of the quality of calls was consistent with the distribution of the volume of the calls, and that simply wasn’t true,” said Huff. The data from Invoca showed how different channels, campaigns, and creative were driving high-value appointments, or people calling for directions, or spam calls. “As you can imagine, the value of those calls are very different, and that’s where the power of Signal AI comes in.”
Huff’s team used call center disposition data to train Signal AI to identify calls that were for new appointments, spam, and general customer support. In their first try, they were able to reach nearly 90% accuracy on the appointment signal and 96% accuracy on spam. Once implemented, the ‘appointment set’ signal was immediately put to use for media optimization and to drive efficiency.
They brought nearly 30,000 tracking numbers into Invoca, and the ability to identify spam calls allowed them to immediately implement a tracking line hygiene process to eliminate numbers that were pulling spam calls. “Cleaning it up was no small feat, but we were able to drive a reduction of spam calls by 65% within one month of deployment,” said Huff. “Fewer spam phone calls means our call center agents could spend more of their time talking to real customers and prospects and we were able to drive a 15% increase in call center agent efficiency.”
Integrating Data to Gain Transparency and Measure True Marketing Performance
Amplifon uses offline conversation data to develop signals in Invoca that they integrate into digital marketing tools. This enables them to send user-level call outcome signals directly into Adobe, Google, and Facebook. They then used those algorithms to drive campaign efficiency and effectiveness.
“Invoca is a very powerful tool that can be the linchpin for your entire data structure and digital strategy,” said Huff. “The Invoca motto is, ‘integrated data drives automated results’ and that is exactly what happened to us.”
Miracle-Ear built a structure that allowed them to automatically pull Invoca data into their BI tools, automate reports, and show campaign performance down to net revenue. Through integrations with Google Campaign Manager, Adobe Experience Cloud, and Facebook enabled them to automate processes and better use the algorithms of the BI tools to their advantage.
“Between our new UX and UI, new CMS, new tracking and analytics, new media account structure and new franchisee capabilities, all together we were able to drive double digit improvement in digital marketing performance within three months.”
Conversation Intelligence Allows a Smooth Transition to Serving Customers During COVID
“We were riding high into 2020, and then COVID hit,” said Huff. However, the foundation that was put in place with Invoca allowed them to pivot quickly and better serve customers. When the pandemic hit, they could already see which campaigns, channels, and regions were driving new business versus driving calls to reschedule existing appointments. “We needed an incredibly intentional and intelligent approach to how, when, and where we adjusted our messaging and our dollars,” explains Huff. “This is why having the granular integrated data at scale made all the difference with our digital transformation. We’d built an infrastructure that integrated our call outcomes into our platforms through AI conversational analysis signals.”
During the initial stages of COVID-19, it was incredibly valuable to understand where people were actually showing up for their booked appointments versus just scheduling them. When paired with a COVID signal in Invoca, regulatory requirements across the states, and Google retail mobility data, they achieved a detailed picture of consumer confidence and intent across the entire country.
Invoca is a very powerful tool that can be the linchpin for your entire data structure and digital strategy.
Nataly Huff, Director of Digital Marketing at Amplifon Americas
Results
- 15% Increase in call center efficiency
- 65% Reduction in spam calls
- 16% Improvement in media efficiency
The main reason that we love partnering with Invoca is that it’s an innovation-driven company. You're always doing new things and I don't ever have to worry about falling behind.
Nataly Huff, Director of Digital Marketing at Amplifon Americas
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