Any system’s backend logic shapes its user experience. This article provides an example of how the requirements for a particular business domain—lead-generation and routing requirements—determine the workflow of a software solution and, thus, how its backend logic translates into the user experience.
In this business case, whether a company is a lead generator, affiliate network, or advertiser, it is crucial that the distribution of leads is well thought out and personalized, delivering optimal engagement for every user in the marketing funnel.
The software should take care of this job, enabling flexible workflows for consumers in different locations, each having varying quality and conversion potential. For example, when generating solar-installation leads—or leads in any other market where the customer’s location matters—the software should connect consumers to sales representatives who are aware of the peculiarities of the location in question and target consumers only in the locations where the company operates.
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In this article, you’ll learn more about how the backend-operations logic—in particular the lead-routing logic that is shown in Figure 1—affects the customer experience, either moving the customer toward a sale or, if it is configured incorrectly, toward a bounce that signals the need to adjust routing flows.
Figure 1—Lead-distribution flow
Lead-Routing Infrastructure and the User Experience
It is one thing to merely generate a lead and another to connect the consumer to the right buyer—if you’re selling leads—or to a company sales representative while maximizing their conversion potential. To maximize conversion potential, it is crucial to ensure optimal engagement across all touchpoints, whether you’re using an interactive voice response (IVR) system, artificial-intelligence (AI) call agent, or just lead-generation forms.
There are three ways in which you can unlock data-driven lead distribution for a business, as follows:
Use full-fledged lead-tracking and distribution software.
Delegate lead distribution to your affiliate network or another third party. (This is a viable option for publishers, but not so good for advertisers because it deprives them of control over their lead flows).
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Any large-scale lead-reliant or call-reliant business can benefit immensely from a custom lead tracking, routing, and analytics solution. The user experience of such a comprehensive backend system can enable continuous improvement, from better targeting and filtering to nurturing and conversion strategies, and following up on leads and calls that don’t convert on the first try.
Figure 2—Lead-distribution logic—how lead-distribution software works
Likewise, building lead-routing logic into a larger lead-management infrastructure lets a business track consumers at a deeper level, apply individual insights to specific leads, and accumulate data that lets them make data-driven guesses regarding the best distribution logic and sales strategy.
For example, at a minimum, a home-services affiliate network’s lead-distribution strategy should consider which buyers would accept which type of leads based on location and other demographic criteria. Factor in each buyer’s price and, if applicable, conversion rates by lead type, so you can send consumers to buyers who are more likely to convert them into sales.
Figure 3—Types of business leads
The user experience is a by-product of a company’s marketing efforts. To maximize conversions and sales, which is the ultimate goal of all businesses without exception, you must satisfy customers’ wants and needs, while making the whole process convenient and user friendly.
Table 1—How Routing Rules Affect the User Experience
Round-Robin Lead Distribution
Distributing leads evenly among sales representatives leaves to chance whether a representative is well matched with the customer, unless the round-robin distribution includes only relevant representatives.
On the one hand, round-robin lead routing evens out the workload among sales representatives; on the other hand, unless all sales representatives are equally qualified and well trained, different consumers would receive different experiences, depending on whether the distribution happened to be in their favor.
Skill-Based Lead Distribution
From a US perspective, skill-based lead distribution is arguably the best because it guarantees that consumers connect with the best available sales representatives.
For a business, though, this routing model could lead to uneven workloads, with the most skilled agents constantly overloaded and new and aspiring agents receiving fewer leads and calls, slowing their learning curve.
Price-Based Lead Distribution
When selling a lead or phone call, it usually goes to the buyer offering the highest price, not necessarily the best fit. Of course, this potential disadvantage is counterbalanced by the fact that buyers are interested in highly relevant consumers and, therefore, accept or apply only for leads and calls that they expect to convert into sales.
The reality, though, is much more complex, especially for large-scale lead buyers, sellers, and affiliate networks. Not only is the routing logic usually multilayered and combining multiple parameters, which could also have different weights within a specific routing system, but it could be set up at the product, buyer, or ping-tree level, using a completely different setup.
However, such complexity is absolutely justified. Even if a manager has to learn a lot to configure optimal lead-routing logic, once it is done and depending on the company’s scale, it can help the company handle many thousands of leads and phone calls daily, weekly, or monthly, without sacrificing the quality of the user experience and, as a result, conversions and return on investment (ROI).
Another justification for complex lead-routing logic is the complexity of the customer journey itself. More often than not, customers switch marketing channels and touchpoints before they arrive at the doorstep of a business. You must track and analyze these omnichannel journeys to provide the best user experience for every lead or call every step of the way.
Figure 4—Benefits of embracing omnichannel marketing
How to Design Backend Logic That Delivers the Expected Experience
As much as you might like to have a universal recipe for creating the best user experience, this requires trial and error.
The good news: a comprehensive lead-management system integrating consumer tracking, distribution, and analytics can help an organization make the most of every inbound call and lead, thereby shortening the team’s learning process. The more data you can track the better, while staying within legal boundaries by following the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) guidelines in the United States and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe.
You can use this data across the board, with UX optimization resulting naturally from your efforts to maximize conversions and sales. Today’s artificial intelligence–driven lead-management systems have tremendous potential for self-learning, so you don’t even have to do much manual work once you’ve set up the core rules and workflows. Just supervise the system and let it grow on its own.
Last but not least, predictive-modeling software can make data-driven guesses about how to run marketing campaigns, using algorithms that pair historical performance with input data to simulate a campaign’s outcome—for example, where and when to run ads, to whom to display them, and so on.
Depending on your risk tolerance, you can run a winning campaign right away or continue simulations to discover more viable marketing scenarios, then A/B test them to reduce risk even further.
As a content lead at Phonexa, Oleksandr is passionate about distilling complex topics into engrossing stories that educate readers about digital marketing, particularly regarding lead tracking, call tracking, and distribution. Read More
