What Is Call Tracking? How Dealers Measure Calls

One number per source, so the phone stops being the part of the marketing budget nobody can measure.

It is an ordinary phone number that exists to answer one question: where did this caller come from. A store publishes a different number on each place it advertises, the listing site, the pay per click landing page, the service mailer, the window banner, and forwards all of them to the people who should answer. The caller dials the number they saw, the phone rings the same as always, and the system records which of the store's numbers was dialed. That single fact, the number the call arrived on, is the attribution.

Bigger implementations add pieces around that idea. Websites sometimes swap the displayed number depending on how a visitor arrived, so a visitor from a search ad sees one number and a visitor from a listing site sees another. Some setups match a call back to a specific vehicle page. All of them rest on the same mechanic: one number, one lead source, and a log that says which rang. Related phone terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary.

Say a store spends its marketing money in three places and gives each one a number: the listing site, the search campaign that sends people to a landing page, and the service reminder that goes out by mail. Over a month those three numbers ring 180 times, split 90, 60 and 30, illustrative figures only. Without tracking the store has one number, 180 calls and an argument. With tracking it has three numbers and three conversations: the listing site is doing the volume, the search campaign is producing fewer calls but they are longer, and the mailer produced 30 calls that were almost all service.

The interesting part is what happens next. Because each call is recorded and attached to a customer record, a manager can listen to the ten calls from the search campaign that never became appointments and hear the actual reason. Sometimes the answer is that the campaign is drawing the wrong shopper. More often the answer is that the phone rang eleven times before anybody answered it on a Saturday, which is not a marketing problem at all, and no amount of lead counting would ever have shown it.

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Three things. Which source produced the call, which is the number everyone asks for. How the call was handled, which is the number nobody asks for and the one that changes results, because a missed call is a customer who dialed the competitor next. And whether the call turned into anything, once the call sits on the same customer record as the appointment, the deal and the follow up.

That third one is the reason to keep call tracking inside the CRM rather than in a separate reporting tool. Attribution that lives in its own dashboard tells the store which number rang. Attribution that lives on the customer record tells the store which number rang, who answered, what was said, what was scheduled and whether a car got delivered. The first is a report. The second is a decision about next month's budget, and the what to expect from car sales leads page covers how the calls themselves usually behave.

LeadLocate CRM provisions tracking numbers inside the platform and assigns one to each lead source the store wants measured, described on tracking numbers per lead source. Calls to any of them ring the phones the store chooses through a Forward Calls To list built from its own users, follow the store's business hours, and can pass through a menu or a screening step before anyone picks up.

Every call is recorded and transcribed, so a manager reads a conversation as fast as they read an email and listens only to the ones worth hearing, covered on call recording and transcription. The call, the recording, the transcript and the source all land on the customer's record in one communications log next to the texts, emails and voicemails, and the caller's name is looked up on the way in. The buying side of the same subject, features and what to compare, is on dealership call tracking software. Tracking numbers are part of the platform, so attribution is not a second subscription.

Call tracking answers where the call came from. Call recording keeps the audio of what was said. Call monitoring, sometimes written as call logging, is the management practice of reviewing those calls, scoring how they were handled and coaching the people who took them. They are three different things, and stores buy the first while quietly needing the third.

The reason they get confused is that one number per source is useless on its own. A store that knows the listing site produced 90 calls and nothing else has bought a statistic. A store that knows which 90, who answered them, what was promised and which ones set an appointment has bought a management tool. Recording and transcription are what convert tracking into coaching, and a shared record is what keeps the coaching honest, because the call is on the customer's file where the manager, the rep and the next rep can all read it.

Do call tracking numbers change how a customer reaches the dealership?

No. A tracking number rings the same phones as the main line. The only difference is that the system knows which published number the caller dialed, which is what makes attribution possible.

How many tracking numbers does a store need?

One for every source it wants measured separately. Many stores start with three or four, the website, the main listing site, paid search and service, and add numbers as they add campaigns. Adding one takes a minute inside the CRM.

Is call tracking the same as call recording?

No. Tracking tells you which source produced the call. Recording keeps the audio of the conversation. They are most useful together, which is why LeadLocate records and transcribes calls on the same numbers it tracks.

Where do tracked calls show up?

On the customer record, in one communications log with the texts, emails and voicemails, and in the call list where a manager can see the source, who answered, how long it lasted and what was said.

See a tracking number ring a list of phones, record itself, transcribe and land on the customer record with its source attached, on a live account.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.