Compare your performance to DTC ecommerce peers using anonymized insights captured by Invoca's AI. Whether you're a CMO maximizing digital marketing ROI, an ecommerce leader working to convert more callers, or a CX professional focused on the customer experience, these benchmarks give you a baseline to measure against.

Be sure to try the interactive calculator ↓ at the end of this report to see how even small increases in your call conversion performance can move revenue.

At a glance

Research Highlights

Here's a snapshot of the DTC ecommerce benchmarks. See anything that surprises you? Keep reading to see how the numbers break down across channels.

53%

of callers to DTC ecommerce brands speak with a person

34%

of calls from digital marketing are leads

54%

of those leads convert on the call

75%

of DTC ecommerce brands don't ask leads to buy

Section 01

Call Answer Rates

Marketing did its job and got the phone to ring. If that call goes unanswered, the budget that drove it is wasted, and a buyer who was ready to check out abandons the brand or finds the product elsewhere.

53%

of callers to DTC ecommerce brands speak with a person

Across DTC ecommerce, 53% of calls are answered by a person. For calls lasting longer than 15 seconds, which filters out misdials and quick hangups, the answer rate is 58%. For calls over 30 seconds, it's 62%. Those thresholds give a clearer read on how well brands connect with callers who are genuinely trying to reach them.

53%

All Inbound Calls

58%

Calls Over 15 Seconds

62%

Calls Over 30 Seconds

Use these as your baseline. If your answer rates fall significantly below them, that gap points to revenue slipping away through poor routing, processes, or staffing issues in the contact centers fielding the calls.

Tactics to Improve Call Answer Rates

If your answer rates trail the benchmark, these four moves help close the gap.

1
Deploy AI agents to engage callers 24/7
Shoppers buy around the clock, and a question at checkout doesn't wait for business hours. AI-powered voice and SMS agents can engage callers anytime, so a buyer ready to purchase doesn't bounce when the line is closed or the queue is long. When a caller can't reach a person, an AI agent can answer product questions, capture intent, schedule a callback, or help complete the order by text. This is the single biggest lever for improving answer rates and speed-to-lead.
2
Use missed-call data to inform staffing
Pinpoint the days and times when missed calls spike — promotions, launches, peak shopping windows — then compare those windows against call volume to find where you're understaffed. Adjust schedules so people are available when shoppers are calling.
3
Pause ads when you're closed
If you can't help callers during off-hours, consider pausing the paid campaigns driving high call volume into those windows — unless an AI agent is handling them. There's little reason to pay for calls no one can answer.
4
Fix site issues causing unnecessary calls
Some calls happen only because the site didn't answer a basic question — sizing, shipping, returns, product details. When callers repeatedly ask what the site should already tell them, fix the content or checkout experience. Fewer low-value calls mean your team can focus on the shoppers ready to buy.

Section 02

Phone Lead and Conversion Rates

Knowing which calls are real sales opportunities is how you connect marketing spend to revenue. Across DTC ecommerce, 34% of calls answered by a person are leads, and 54% of those leads convert on the call.

34%

of answered calls are leads

54%

of leads convert on the call

For marketing leaders, this is the foundation for calculating true campaign performance and return on ad spend. For eCommerce and CX leaders, it sets the baseline for how effectively your team turns phone leads into sales and where coaching pays off.

Phone lead and conversion rates by marketing channel

Looking at lead and conversion rates by channel shows where your spend is actually producing sales, and whether a channel is better at driving top-of-funnel leads or bottom-of-funnel conversions.

Answered calls that are leads

Leads that convert

A note on volume: percentages alone don't tell the full story

Paid search drives the highest volume of calls, leads, and conversions of any paid channel. Channel efficiency matters, but so does scale.

New data

What the data shows about ChatGPT and generative AI search

This is the first year there was enough data to measure calls driven by generative AI search, and the DTC ecommerce numbers stand out. ChatGPT-referred calls show one of the highest phone lead rates at 41%, tied with TV & Video and about eight points above the channels behind them. And conversion is the strongest of any channel at 59%. That tracks: someone who uses an AI assistant to research a product, then picks up the phone, is usually ready to buy.

The total volume of calls attributable to generative AI is still very low, with no measurable volume from LLMs other than ChatGPT. This is a signal worth watching closely, not a channel to redirect significant budget toward yet. For now, the bulk of your phone leads and conversions still come from proven, high-volume channels like paid search.

Tactics to Improve Phone Lead and Conversion Rates

If your lead rates trail the benchmark, your paid media may not be driving the right calls. If conversion rates trail, your team may not be saying the right things to move callers to a purchase. Here are four ways to close those gaps.

1
Shift ad budget to what's really working
Use phone lead and conversion data to see which channels, campaigns, and keywords actually produce sales — not just calls. Reallocate budget from the underperformers to the investments driving revenue.
2
Pass call data to ad platforms for better auto-bidding
Feed phone lead and conversion outcomes back into your ad platforms so automated bidding and audience targeting can optimize against real sales rather than raw call counts.
3
Use call data to improve targeting
Retarget leads who didn't buy on the call, and suppress callers who already purchased or called for reasons unrelated to a sale. Build lookalike audiences from your highest-value callers. And mine what shoppers actually say — the questions, hesitations, and objections they raise — to sharpen ad copy and product pages.
4
Use AI agents to convert more leads
AI-powered voice and SMS agents can convert leads after hours, during launches and peak demand, and with shoppers who'd rather text than wait on hold. They answer product questions, capture intent, help complete orders, schedule callbacks, and speed high-intent callers to the right person.

Section 03

Google Ads Paid Search Performance

Google Ads remains the most important digital advertising channel for driving phone-based conversions in DTC ecommerce. Even small improvements to your phone lead and conversion rates from search ads can move business results more than any other paid channel.

In DTC ecommerce, 33% of answered calls from Google Ads paid search are leads, and 54% of those leads convert on the call. Because paid search also drives the highest call volume of any paid channel, gains here compound faster than anywhere else in your media mix.

33%

Answered calls that are leads

54%

Leads that convert on the call

Tactics to Improve Phone Lead Rates and ROAS from Google Ads

If your Google Ads paid search results lag your peers, consider these strategies to improve efficiency and increase ROAS.

1
Shift spend to the keywords driving the most valuable calls
Identify the keywords generating qualified phone leads and sales, then move budget off underperforming terms and onto the ones producing revenue.
2
Feed call data into Smart Bidding and Performance Max
Pass call outcomes into Google's automated bidding to optimize for calls that actually result in sales.
3
Retarget phone leads that didn't convert
Build audience segments from callers who were leads but didn't buy. These in-market shoppers are often your most valuable prospects.
4
Suppress non-lead and converted calls
Stop paying to show ads to people who have already purchased or called for reasons unrelated to a sale. This alone can cut a meaningful chunk of wasted spend.
5
Add your most valuable calls to lookalike campaigns
Build lookalike audiences from your highest-value callers to find more shoppers with similar behavior and intent.

Section 04

Call Handling Performance

Answering the call is step one. Whether a lead becomes a sale comes down to how your contact center staff engage the caller, understand their needs, and guide them toward checkout.

Our analysis evaluated how often DTC ecommerce brands correctly handle phone leads across six key call handling metrics.

Tactics to Improve Call Handling Performance

If your metrics trail the benchmark or you don't have this level of insight into how calls are handled, here's where to start.

1
Use AI to score call handling performance
AI-powered call scoring gives you objective analytics on 100% of calls, so you can measure performance against the metrics that matter and catch patterns you'd otherwise miss across a busy contact center.
2
Qualify and route leads with an AI voice agent
An AI voice agent can qualify callers and route them before a person picks up, so shoppers ready to buy reach the right person fast and your team spends less time on calls that aren't sales opportunities.
3
Pass caller context to staff before they say hello
Arm your team with the caller's digital journey — the ad they clicked, the products they viewed, and what's in their cart. When staff know why someone's calling, the conversation is sharper and close rates climb.
4
Refine talk tracks based on what works
Use call scoring data to connect specific behaviors to outcomes. Find what your top closers do differently, update your talk tracks, and coach to it with real call examples.

What's next

Turning These Insights Into Action

This benchmark data shows how DTC ecommerce brands are performing at answering calls, converting leads, and handling conversations. It's a useful starting point for figuring out where you stand and where to focus.

But benchmarking only works if you have the data to compare against, and that's where most brands hit a wall. Without visibility into which calls are leads, which channels drive them, how well your team converts them, and what's actually happening in the conversations, you're optimizing in the dark.

The brands that connect their digital, conversation, and transaction data have a real advantage. They can see the full journey from ad click to phone call to completed sale, and use that picture to make better decisions across marketing, ecommerce, and the contact center.

The good news: small improvements compound fast. If your results align with the benchmarks here, lifting your answer rate, lead rate, and conversion rate by just five percentage points each would drive roughly 37% more conversions from the same call volume.

~37%

more conversions from the same call volume — if you improve your answer rate, lead rate, and conversion rate by just five percentage points each

Want to see what that looks like for your business? Try the calculator below.

Interactive tool

What Would Converting More Calls Mean for Your Revenue?

You're already driving the demand. Use this calculator to see how much additional revenue you could capture by converting more of the leads you're getting today.

Model your own improvement

Plug in your current call volume, answer rate, lead rate, and conversion rate to see the revenue impact of closing the gap to the DTC ecommerce benchmark.

Methodology

How this report was built

This report focuses on the DTC ecommerce industry, drawing on anonymized data from phone calls tracked and analyzed by the Invoca platform, within a broader dataset of over 70 million calls and 600 million minutes of conversation spanning 10 industries and 7 marketing channels. All figures are averages across the Invoca customer base.