The Mission
Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking was founded in 1980 by Rick Stanley. Since that time, it has grown to become one of the largest retailers of fencing and decking in the Pacific Northwest. It now has five locations throughout Oregon and Washington and is a proud sponsor of many local organizations.
Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking’s mission is to maintain high ethical standards, provide maximum satisfaction to customers, provide employees with equitable compensation, and anticipate the future needs of their customers.
The Challenge
About 50% of Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking’s leads come in over the phone. However, the marketing team didn’t have the right tracking in place to understand which campaigns were driving phone leads. This made it difficult for them to optimize media spend.
In addition, the marketing team wanted to ensure the sales team was effectively handling and converting its leads.
The Resolution
Using Invoca call tracking to reduce cost per lead
When Taylor Wick joined Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking as Director of Marketing, they didn’t have the right attribution in place for phone leads. Her team needed granular call tracking, down to the digital ad, website interaction, or search keyword that drove each call. They started looking for a solution and Invoca quickly stood out from the pack.
“It was immediately obvious to us that Invoca was the market leader. Their solution captures far more granular data than the other competitors in the space,” said Wick.
After onboarding Invoca, Wick and her team could see how many phone leads their marketing programs were driving, in addition to the clicks they were already tracking. They used this data to make smarter optimization decisions. As a result, they reduced their cost per lead by 70%. They also doubled the total number of leads their marketing drove.
“Invoca helped us identify which search keywords were a waste of our PPC budget,” said Wick. “We found several search terms that were generating a lot of clicks, but never resulted in an actual sale. Some keywords were driving calls from people who just wanted a better latch on their fence, not a whole custom fencing project. Cutting spend on those underperforming keywords significantly improved lead quality.”
Invoca helped us identify which search keywords were a waste of our PPC budget. Cutting spend on those underperforming keywords significantly improved lead quality.
Taylor Wick, Director of Marketing at Rick's Custom Fencing & Decking
Improving agent coaching with automated quality assurance
Once the marketing team started using Invoca to drive more leads, they wanted to make sure the sales team was providing a good experience to convert them. It was especially important to inform customers that their projects could be delayed due to supply chain shortages. If sales agents didn’t properly set expectations, it could lead to customer churn, poor reviews, and lost revenue.
“Some marketers put all their energy into driving leads and don’t think too much about what happens after that,” said Wick. “But our success also depends on the sales team converting those leads. Invoca helps us connect sales and marketing to ensure we’re creating the best possible experience for our customers.”
Some marketers put all their energy into driving leads and don’t think too much about what happens after that. But our success also depends on the sales team converting those leads. Invoca helps us connect sales and marketing to ensure we’re creating the best possible experience for our customers.
Taylor Wick, Director of Marketing at Rick's Custom Fencing & Decking
Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking has five retail locations where sales agents take calls and schedule appointments. Before using Invoca, the team didn’t have a formalized call QA process in place. Sales managers would occasionally listen to calls and give ad hoc coaching. Coaching based on such a small sample of calls was prone to human error and didn’t give a full picture of agent performance.
Now, with Invoca’s automated QA, the sales managers use AI to score 100% of inbound calls based on their criteria. The company doesn’t use scripts and instead empowers its sales team to have free-flowing conversations with the customer — but there are a few topics that agents need to cover on every call. For example, they need to state the name of the business clearly, mention any upcoming promotions, and ask a list of questions to qualify the lead. If the lead is qualified, they need to ask them to schedule an onsite appointment at their home. Invoca’s AI identifies these moments in each conversation and grades the agents accordingly.
“Our sales managers don’t have time to sit down and listen to a bunch of calls,” said Wick. “Invoca helps them quickly pinpoint each agent’s strengths and weaknesses. It also helps them find coachable moments in the call recordings and transcriptions. This has had a huge impact on agent performance.”
Invoca’s AI is customized to meet the business objectives of the Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking team. The higher the reps score on their Invoca scorecards, the more appointments they book.
Using Agent Voice ID and Call Review Console to pinpoint coachable moments
Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking also uses Agent Voice ID, Invoca’s AI-powered biometric voice recognition technology. Agent Voice ID analyzes calls and creates the equivalent of a vocal fingerprint that identifies the specific agent speaking on the call. Invoca associates the agent who took the call with their call recording, transcript, and call score for reporting and review.
Before using Agent Voice ID, the team had to search call transcripts for names to identify which agent was speaking. This was time-consuming and created inefficiencies in the agent coaching process. Now, with Agent Voice ID, Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking can quickly pinpoint coachable moments for each rep without spending time sifting through unrelated calls. They can also use the feature to send each agent their associated call recordings and transcriptions.
Invoca Agent Voice ID has helped us continue to make our sales coaching process more efficient and automated. We use it to send a monthly report to each agent with highlights from their calls. This gives them the opportunity to review their performance and self-coach between their sessions with a manager. It’s encouraged agents to take their performance into their own hands and make the necessary strides to improve.
Taylor Wick, Director of Marketing at Rick's Custom Fencing & Decking
Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking also uses Invoca’s Call Review Console. The feature has proven to be a crucial time-saver by allowing the team to promptly review calls, read call summaries, and share feedback with agents. It has also encouraged managers to actively participate in call monitoring.
“Invoca Call Review Console has been a huge time-saver for our team,” said Wick. “The ChatGPT call summary feature helps our managers quickly check in and monitor agent progress. It also helps them identify which calls to use during agent coaching sessions so they can give more effective feedback.”
The Results
Marketing Results:
- 70% decrease in cost per lead
- 2x increase in lead volume
Contact Center Results:
- 11% increase in appointments scheduled
- 23% improvement in call etiquette pass rate
- 6x more likely to use scripted phrases
Bottom-line Company Results:
- 25% increase in revenue over three years
Working with the Invoca team has been fantastic. Everyone is invested in the success of the customer, and they’ve really helped us get the most out of the platform.
Taylor Wick, Director of Marketing at Rick's Custom Fencing & Decking
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