Calculating Your Call Answer Rate

Understanding your call answer rate is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of your sales outreach. Read on for some tips on calculating your answer rate using some of the features built into Close.

Utilizing Smart Views

Longer call durations often indicate that a live conversation occurred. To leverage this, you can create Smart Views based on your Call Duration. Navigate to the Leads tab and set up a Smart View to filter for calls created "today."

Then, create another Smart View filtering calls made "today" with a duration exceeding a specific threshold (e.g., 30 or 60 seconds).

Compare these Smart Views in your Activity Overview Report to estimate your answer rate. Examine the "Outbound Calls - Average Duration" metric to gain insights into typical call lengths.

Implement call dispositions via Custom Activities

For a more precise approach, consider using Custom Activities to log call outcomes. Create a Custom Activity named "Call Disposition" with options like "Answered," "Voicemail," etc. Then, instruct your sales reps to log the appropriate disposition after each call.

Make sure your plan allows for Custom Activities.

Be mindful of your Custom Activity limits within Close to ensure this method aligns with your usage.

Use #codes on calls to track outcomes

Familiarize using #codes from our article. Tagging can help categorize call results

After a call, add an "#answered" tag in the call note to indicate a successful connection. Then, create a Smart View filtering calls with the "#answered" tag in call notes. Use this Smart View in your Activity Reports to compare answered calls against total dials.

Caution: If multiple calls are made to the same lead, Smart Views might not filter specific dials accurately, and Activity Reports aggregate all dials for a lead.

Export call data for further analysis

For comprehensive insights, exporting your call data allows for in-depth examination. Export your leads and use spreadsheet software to filter calls by duration, focusing on those exceeding your chosen threshold to estimate answer rates.