Call Verification: Here’s exactly how we do it (for now)

August 6th, 2015 was a really big day at FranchiseHelp. While the rest of y’all were enjoying the dog days of summer, the team over here was working on launching one of our biggest projects to date: re-coding our entire call verification system.

The funny thing about last Thursday was that if everything went exactly right… nothing would change.

In case you’re already scratching your head a bit, I want to speak a little bit about “call verification” as a concept.

FranchiseHelp got into the business of verifying leads via telephone a few years ago. As a response to client feedback that lead quality could be better, we experimented with calling leads to verify their interest.

What started as an isolated test soon developed into a vital part of our business that we love to discuss with just about anyone (as regular readers of the LGRC well know).

However, one of the more interesting facets about call verification is how dynamic it’s been. I’ve been with FranchiseHelp for about 18 months, and we’ve made over 100 changes to our system – more than one change per week!

When we speak to clients and potential clients about how our system actually works, the fact of the matter is that the answer changes weekly! So when I say August 6th was a big change that’s no small statement, it was a BIG change.

So what was the change?

As you can tell, call verification is a complex, living, and breathing system, and it’s far from perfect. I’m constantly pestering our developers with little tweaks and experiments designed to increase lead quality, bit by bit.

But I’m a perfectionist. I want our leads to be perfect. Some leads still slip through the cracks that we want to filter out, and I want to know exactly how they got through.

These “slippery leads” were killing me, so we buckled down and spent the better part of 6 months (I guess that’s what people in the Northeast do in the winter) re-thinking precisely how we wanted the system to work and making sure that it actually functioned that way.

And so, without further ado, here’s what we came up with:

(The diagram above is a 100% accurate representation of how we did call verification at FranchiseHelp as of 8/6/2015. While I had to pull some teeth with my engineering team to allow me to share it with you, they finally agreed. We’ve never been able to do this before, so if you ever run into some good looking developers in FranchiseHelp gear, make sure to thank them.)

Ok. So it’s not the most straightforward system diagram you’ve ever seen. Well, that’s kinda the point.

Call verification is a very complicated concept. What started out as our founders making a few phone calls (and texts)in their free time turned into the system above.

With thousands of potential franchisees now coming through the funnel each week we’re no longer able to look at each lead and follow them through our system. With this new system we’re able to pull any lead and see exactly how they were processed in the path above. If a questionable lead slips through, we can now perfectly trace back its path and immediately plug up the hole – no more guess and check!

This means the system will change even faster and more often. We see an issue and know exactly how to fix it, which means hundreds of new issues for our developers to fix (which I’m sure they’ll love).

So next time you’re about to discuss call verification with someone, think about that diagram above. Call verification isn’t a simple concept. It changes every day, and means something different to everyone.

If you’re interested in more about how we do call verification here at FranchiseHelp, let us know.