RingDNA dials call tracking, IVR and virtual call center into Salesforce

RingDNA dials call tracking, IVR and virtual call center into Salesforce

Years ago (circa 2005) when DemandResults’ founder and CEO, Howard Brown, had to set up a Salesforce-integrated call tracking solution for a behavioral healthcare lead-gen company, he was feeling the pain. To track phone leads from 400 unique telephone numbers, Brown had set up an Avaya hardware switch and tied it to Salesforce. In Brown’s words, “provisioning a new phone number with that setup was a disaster.” Every time he needed a new number, Brown had to make arrangements with his carrier, bring in an Avaya expert to adjust the switch and build a new custom object in Salesforce.

Thanks to Twilio’s dead-simple APIs, Howard Brown is no longer feeling that pain. And to make sure Salesforce users never feel it, either, DemandResults has used Twilio to build RingDNA, which combines call tracking, inbound IVR and virtual call center capabilities into one awesome, Salesforce-integrated application.

In advance of Twilo’s attending Dreamforce, we sat down with Howard to talk about RingDNA and why DemandResults chose to build it on Twilio.

Call Tracking, Inbound IVR and Virtual Call Center in One App

Twilio: What problems does RingDNA solve?

Howard Brown: For marketers, RingDNA’s call tracking bridges the vast analytics gap between online and offline conversions. AdInsight found that 43% percent of all sales conversions that begin with a web search actually happen by phone. Since most companies don’t track call origins, this creates a huge analytics blind spot. When paired with the Salesforce CRM, RingDNA’s call tracking will actually track revenue from any online or offline marketing effort, not just inbound call volume. As the cost of advertising and marketing continues to increase, it’s more important to know exactly which online and offline sources are delivering results.

For sales and customer support, RingDNA’s advanced caller ID will tell you who is calling, how they found you, and what to say during the call. While the phone is still ringing, RingDNA tells the agent the channel where the phone number appeared and any search keywords that were used to get to that call. If the customer is already in the Salesforce CRM, RingDNA will display a complete customer profile – including the last contact, related account contacts and more. Based on the available information, RingDNA will serve up a call script to be used with the caller.

Also, thanks to RingDNA’s integration with Twilio Client, there’s the ability to setup a virtual call center with any web browser or iPad. This virtual call center includes advanced call routing, supervisor monitoring and analytics. Getting prospects or customers to pick up the phone is just the first step. True success will only be achieved when businesses can make certain that all calls are handled in the most efficient and effective way possible, and RingDNA helps them do that.

Twilio: Who is the target market for RingDNA?
HB: The initial release is targeted to any of the 100,000 Salesforce.com customers that use CRM for marketing, sales and customer support. Small businesses will have immediate access to an easy-to-use, affordable cloud-based IVR coupled with advanced marketing and sales analytics. Before RingDNA, only large enterprises could afford to string together marketing spend, web analytics, IVR systems, CRM and business intelligence.

Twilio: What differentiates RingDNA from competing solutions?
HB: Marketing and sales alignment, for one. RingDNA is absolutely the only call analytics solution that offers as much for sales and customer support reps as it does for marketers. Especially for B2B companies, the more you can get sales and marketing departments using the same tools, the better off you are.

Ease of use is another. To use Google AdWords integration as an example: to track revenue down to something really granular like a search keyword, you typically have to append each and every URL you use, which is a cantankerous and time-consuming process. RingDNA automates the entire process. It really is as simple as selecting individual keywords or even entire ad campaigns and letting RingDNA do all the hard work.

Building RingDNA on Twilio

Twilio: Why did DemandResults choose to build RingDNA on Twilio?
HB: We were impressed by two things. The first was the flexibility of the architecture, which the primary RingDNA architect had first-hand experience with on a prior project. The second and perhaps most impressive thing is reliability. The fact that Twilio APIs were unaffected by the infamous April 22nd Amazon Web Services outage really spoke volumes about the stability of the platform.

Twilio: Any interesting details about building on Twilio that you’d like to share?
HB: The Twilio call flow and routing process is the gold standard, and we have used it to make things like RingDNA’s script suggest feature happen. We’ve built things on top of it, such as the ability to associate channel information such as search keyword usage and other call origin features that might influence what people picking up the phone should do or say.

On a more basic level, the ability to instantly provision a local or long-distance number and get instant data when those numbers are used sounds really simple. But we know firsthand that Twilio does this with greater speed and reliability than any other platform.

DemandResults at Dreamforce

Twilio: What can attendees expect to see from DemandResults/RingDNA at Dreamforce?
HB: We’ll be demonstrating RingDNA with Twilio at Dreamforce. Twilio has the latest on the schedule.

Twilio: Where can people engage with the company at the conference?
HB: We’ll be covering quite a bit of ground. If you’d like to sit down and chat, please contact us at pr (at) ringdna.com and on Twitter at @ringdna.

Learn more about how you can build call tracking on Twilio, and see more about IVR on Twilio‘s platform.