The work from home culture developed as a result of the pandemic expected heavy internet traffic, but on the contrary, it has shown a significant increase in the number of voice calls. Verizon, an American telecommunications company that offers wireless products and services has reported the increase in wireless calls twice every day in March 2020.
Kyle Malady, the Chief Technological Officer of Verizon has said that the pandemic has urged people to stay connected over voice. Another American MNC AT&T has also seen the same trend in voice calls increasing day by day compared with the pre COVID period. It is said that post-COVID there is a likelihood of greater consumers and businesses interacting over the phone.
Coming back to the pre-COVID era, consumers always had a greater attachment to voice calls as they found more pleasure in their business information needs. Each interaction with the customers provides some useful insights to the marketers which they can use to increase their business. According to research by Bright Local around 60 percent of customers in the United States preferred to contact a business through phone after they find it online when compared with only about 16 percent who preferred email and 15 percent who preferred to visit the actual location of the business.
Phone calls provide faster and deep responses that the consumers might consider in their purchasing decisions. When we come to the marketers’ perspective, for them these customers who contact them via phone are found to highly engaged with the brands. According to Pick up the Phone: Your Best Customer Is On the Line, by Forrester Consulting the majority of marketers using ads that induce consumers to initiate a phone call saying that those consumers have a 28 percent higher retention rate, and spend on an average of 28 percent more.
Hence most of the digital marketers are in plans to make inbound calls as a channel for marketing. A survey by Forrester Consulting has found that 94% of the marketers who were surveyed are to use this voice and inbound calls as a means for their marketing process as a third way back of email marketing, social media marketing, and websites.
