The Mission
Home Franchise Concepts (HFC) is one of the world’s largest franchising systems in the home improvement goods and services space and among the world’s largest franchise businesses. HFC’s ten brands, including Budget Blinds, The Tailored Closet, PremierGarage, Concrete Craft, AdvantaClean, Kitchen Tune-Up, Bath Tune-Up, Two Maids, Aussie Pet Mobile, and Lightspeed Restoration, are consistently rated at the top of their categories and supported by more than 2,600 franchise territories in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
The Challenge
When home services consumers engage with a digital marketing campaign, their next step is often to call to schedule an appointment. To get attribution for the phone calls its marketing was driving, Home Franchise Concepts needed a call tracking solution. This would allow them to ensure they were effectively allocating their budget and getting the most out of every ad dollar.
In addition, Home Franchise Concepts needed to streamline call routing to quickly and efficiently connect callers to their nearest business location.
The Resolution
Tracking phone call conversions from marketing campaigns
In the past, Home Franchise Concepts relied on tracking leads via form fills on their website. However, they didn’t have a way to track the phone leads that their campaigns drove. This left them unable to calculate their true ROI and effectively allocate their budget.
To solve this problem, they use Invoca to track calls across 10 brands and 2,600 territories. Invoca allows Home Franchise Concepts to see not just how many calls, but how many high-quality phone leads each campaign drives. Invoca integrates with the marketing tools they use every day, including Google Ads and Google Analytics 4, allowing them to take action on the data in real time. This allows them to calculate their true ROI and make smarter decisions about where to spend their budget.
Before Invoca, we didn’t have comprehensive tracking for the calls generated by our local web pages. Now, we’re able to quickly understand which marketing efforts are driving call volume. And the Signals in Invoca help us understand which channels generate high-quality calls and appointments, thus helping us optimize our marketing dollars toward quality leads.
Allie Todisco, Sr. Marketing Analytics Manager at Home Franchise Concepts
Additionally, Home Franchise Concepts uses Invoca to track the efforts of its pay-per-call vendors. Invoca allows the team to see the quality of leads its vendors are driving, and ensure they’re delivering what they promise.
“Invoca has given us better insight into how our pay-per-call vendors are performing,” said John McGill, Business Intelligence Developer at Home Franchise Concepts. “Now, if a vendor promises to send us 100 phone leads, we can verify that they actually deliver all 100 leads. And if they don’t, we have the attribution data we need to hold them accountable.”
Improving collaboration between corporate marketing and franchises
There is often friction between corporate marketers and franchise locations. Corporate marketers may say that franchises aren’t converting the hot leads they send them, whereas franchises may say those leads weren’t so hot to begin with. Without data transparency, there can be a lot of finger-pointing, especially when franchises are contributing their hard-earned funds to the corporate marketing budget.
Invoca solves this age-old problem by helping Home Franchise Concepts track every phone lead they drive to their locations. In addition, Invoca tracks how many of those phone leads converted and flags customer experience issues. It also tracks how many unanswered calls occur at each location. This allows the franchises to verify that they’re being sent high-quality phone leads, and it allows corporate marketers to ensure the leads are being handled correctly.
With Invoca, franchisees have access to all their own phone call data, and can easily see where each call was generated. Invoca’s user-friendly portal gives franchisees the flexibility to build their own reports and understand how their own marketing efforts work alongside national efforts.
Allie Todisco, Sr. Marketing Analytics Manager at Home Franchise Concepts
Enhancing call routing to connect callers with the right location
Before Invoca, the Home Franchise Concepts team had issues with call routing. It was common for consumers to accidentally call the company’s corporate number, which sells franchise territories, not services. These calls then needed to get transferred to the nearest local office, resulting in a poor customer experience.
Home Franchise Concepts resolved this issue with Invoca’s IVRs. The team set up IVRs on their corporate numbers, which allow callers to self-route to their nearest location, so they don’t need to endure any transfers. This gives callers a better experience by quickly connecting them with the right agent. In addition, it cut down unnecessary calls to the corporate office by 50%, allowing the team to focus on relevant callers interested in franchise territories.
Invoca’s IVRs have helped us take control of the phone call experience and create a smoother journey our customers. Now, they can route themselves to a relevant agent and quickly receive the help they need — no more unnecessary transfers.
John McGill, Business Intelligence Developer at Home Franchise Concepts
Invoca IVRs are easy to configure — they can be set up in minutes with no coding or help from IT, which allows the team to quickly make updates and pivots as needed.
Upgrading from DialogTech to Invoca
Home Franchise Concepts was a DialogTech customer prior to the acquisition by Invoca. Recently, they made the upgrade to Invoca. They transitioned phone numbers in batches, starting with their smaller brands before moving to their largest ones. They’re now reaping the benefits of Invoca’s additional features and product innovations.
It was a smooth transition from DialogTech to Invoca. Since we’ve made the switch, we’ve gotten access to lots of new tools the DialogTech platform didn’t offer. For example, Invoca makes it easier for us to access our data, and now people across departments can log in anytime to explore insights and dashboards — they no longer have to rely on a monthly report.
John McGill, Business Intelligence Developer at Home Franchise Concepts
The Results
- Increased returns from digital ad campaigns
- Improved phone call routing to locations
