matchcraftCALL BASED OPTIMIZATION:GENERATING MORE “GOOD” CALLS

April 20, 2015

Local Search Association

Alex Dionysian, CTO

MatchCraft is a global provider of local search, display,

and social marketing solutions that enable traditional

media companies and digital agencies to efficiently

provision quality local marketing solutions for SMB

advertisers.

Founded in 1998, we operate in more than 26 countries

and our AdVantage platform supports over 16 languages

and dialects.

We have offices in Santa Monica, California; Leiden,

Netherlands; Berlin, Germany; Sao Paolo, Brazil; and

Mumbai, India.

We have 80+ employees worldwide.

ABOUT MATCHCRAFT

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THE CALL TRACKING Challenge

- Which calls are good?

- How do we get more of them?

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CALL QUALITY - METHODOLOGY

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• Listen to actual recorded calls

• 340 calls across 3 verticals

• Usually able to categorize within 60 seconds

• 4 possible call types

• Sale/Info call o relevant to SEM objective

• Irrelevant o repeat of previous call, sale to merchant, etc.

• Answering Mach. / Blank o unable to determine call quality.

• Wrong Number

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HOW MANY “GOOD” CALLS?

Type of Call HVAC Airport Parking Limo Service

Sales/Info 62 44 35

Irrelevant 26 61 20

Ans. Mach. / Blank 26 6 9

Wrong Number 15 32 2

(Sale/Info) / Total 48% 31% 54%

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Irrelevant call: Cancel reservation, continuation of previous call, personal call

Wrong number: Sometimes put on hold and then discover their error, call for flight information,

Language issues

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CALL DURATION: THE MAGIC BULLET…(NOT)

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Den

sity

Call Duration (seconds)

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CALLS OVER 30 SECONDS

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Percent of calls over 30 seconds which are good:

• HVAC - 56% gain of 8%

• Parking - 40% gain of 9%

• Limo - 64% gain of 10%

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Contributing Reasons

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• Good calls can be short

• Nature of business – e.g. limos & taxis can have fast conclusions

• Voicemail & being put on hold

• Takes a while to realize this is not the merchant you

wanted

• “Please leave a message”

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VARIATION AMOUNG VERTICALS

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Den

sity

Call Duration (seconds)

Den

sity

Call Duration (seconds)

Chart #1: HVAC Chart #2: Parking

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CONCLUSIONS

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1. There’s no magic number when it comes to call duration.

2. Much overlap in duration between good and bad calls

3. Good calls can be short and bad calls can be long

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CALL ASSOCIATION

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Which click led to which call?

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COMMON METHODOLOGY

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• Time stamping

• Potentially in combination with number rotation

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30 min. window

CALL ASSOCIATION – WHICH CLICK IS IT?

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30 min. window

Calls

0 Clicks 2 Clicks

Timeframe

Clicks

It can (mostly) work…

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% OF GOOD CALLS THAT DID NOT HAVE

A PRECEDING CLICK

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• What percent of calls have no click in the 30 prior minutes?

• 22% for the Limo Service merchant

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% OF GOOD CALLS THAT DID NOT HAVE A PRECEDING

CLICK

8%

1%

22%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

HVAC Parking Limo Service

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Go

od

ca

lls w

ith

ou

t a

pre

ce

din

g c

lick

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CONCLUSIONS

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• Big variation across the three merchants we looked at

• High click rate = higher chance of accidental association

• Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) with number rotation can help

• 30 minutes may not be long enough

• More complicate algorithms may extract more signal

• DNI with larger pool can help

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LOOKING INTO A THICK FOG

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Call quality

– Eliminate repeat calls

– Acknowledge bad/irrelevant calls – take them into account

Call to click association ambiguity

– Spread the credit for the call potentially on more than one click

Addressing low spend/click/call volume

– Look for like merchants

STATISTICAL OPTIMIZATION METHODS

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HOW DO WE DEAL WITH NOISY DATA?

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Aggregate data in different dimensions to

squeeze the signal out of the data

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Q&A

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THANK

YOU!Contact Information:

Alex Dionysian

CTO, MatchCraft LLC

alex@matchcraft.com

(310) 314-3320

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