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How Dasha.ai Can Improve the Pay Per Call Space

What is Artificial Intelligence?

At its core, artificial intelligence is all about creating machines that can think and learn for themselves. This means giving them the ability to process and make decisions on their own, without human input.

One way to think of AI is as a computer program that can figure things out for itself. The goal of AI research is to create algorithms, or sets of rules, that can teach a machine how to think like a human.

This might sound like science fiction, but there are already many examples of AI in our everyday lives. Your smartphone’s personal assistant, for instance, is a form of conversation AI that uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand and respond to your questions or commands.

How Can Artificial Intelligence Be Applied to Conversations?

Conversational artificial intelligence, or conversational AI, is a subfield of AI that focuses on creating machines that can carry out human-like conversations.

This involves teaching computers how to understand natural language (the way humans speak), and respond in a way that makes sense.

Conversational AI has a wide range of potential applications. It can be used to build chatbots, for instance, which are computer programs that simulate human conversation. Chatbots are often used as customer service representatives or salespeople. They can also be used to create digital assistants, like the ones found on many smartphones and smart devices.

But perhaps the most interesting application for conversational AI is actually having a phone call with a human being. In this article, we'll explore those functionalities within the context of a massive industry that relies entirely on phone calls: pay per call lead generation.

What is pay per call lead generation?

Pay per call lead generation is an online marketing strategy in which advertisers pay publishers (websites or apps) for each phone call they generate. In other words, instead of paying for ad creation, ad placements, etc., the advertiser is only paying for the thing they hope those advertisements will produce: a phone call from someone that needs their product or service.

It's no surprise this industry has grown exponentially over the years. Who wouldn't want inbound phone calls from potential customers?

But with its growth, there have been growing pains.

Enter: Dasha.ai!

How Dasha.ai can help the pay per call industry

While there is no shortage of applications for conversational AI when it comes to an industry wholly devoted to phone calls, we want to explore 2 massive inefficiencies in the space that Dasha can help solve.

Screening phone calls is costly and cumbersome

In the pay per call space, advertisers are looking for precise types of calls. Like all businesses, they aren't out to service every customer. They understand who their ideal customer/job is and they want a pay per call solution that can deliver those types of leads.

With web form leads, you can serve site/app visitors a form to collect the various information that you can then use to determine to whom and for how much to sell the lead. But with phone calls, it isn't as simple. When someone picks up the phone and calls a number, you have no insight into their intention or needs.

To try and better screen calls to understand caller intent, pay per call publishers typically do one of 2 things:

  1. Have a series of IVR prompts the caller must navigate

  2. Send calls to a call center to ask screening questions

Both solutions aren't without their downsides.

When it comes to IVRs, each piece of information you collect leads to greater caller fatigue, such that the drop off rate from callers increases. In other words, what were good calls (people that legitimately have a need and would have been welcomed by the advertiser) simply hang up and decide to call another number where they don't have to jump through hoops. Publishers know this, and thus try to have as little friction as possible in terms of an IVR. The net result is little is known about the caller, and oftentimes calls get through that have no buying intent. This is a nuisance to the advertiser and the publisher.

Given the challenges above, some publishers opt to send calls to a call center. But this solve comes with its own challenges. Call centers are guaranteed to answer the call, and anytime there is a (typically low paid) human involved, errors can happen. Not to mention the very significant costs associated with call centers. Publishers operate in a cut-throat space where every penny counts and margins are slim. Additional costs for a human call center eats into those margins, making it a non-starter for most publishers.

Dasha.ai can screen calls to gather data & ensure quality

Using conversational AI, Dasha.ai can serve as the screening agent. This provides the caller with a call experience with less friction than an IVR, but at a fraction of the cost of having an actual human answer the call.

Let's use an example:

Let's assume Dasha.ai is deployed by a pay per call publisher providing phone call leads for health insurance. When a phone call is generated, Dasha.ai can ask them to describe their health insurance policy needs. If the caller indicates they are trying to get information on an existing policy, Dasha.ai can inform them they have reached the wrong number and provide advice for how to find that information elsewhere. In this instance, Dasha.ai can prevent what would ultimately be a bad lead from being sent to the advertiser.

On the flip side, if Dasha.ai asks them to describe their needs and their response indicates they were shopping for a new policy, Dasha.ai can be trained to ask qualifying questions such as their age, location, etc. This allows the publisher to then route the call to the appropriate buyer based on the types of phone leads they want.

Between 25%-35% of all calls go unanswered

One of the unfortunate realities of the pay per call space is that there are a lot of inefficiencies in terms of actually connecting customers with the right advertiser. While the actual call answer rate varies by industry, the reality is that way too many callers never end up speaking with someone that can actually help them. Oftentimes for publishers, this means they are not paid for their efforts. This negatively impacts their margins, not to mention their morale.

Dasha.ai can reconnect with dropped calls and reroute them to another provider

Through conversational AI, Dasha.ai can predict when calls have been abandoned and perform an immediate outbound call to the original caller in an attempt to reconnect with them. In the instances when they pick up, Dasha.ai can explain to them the reason for their call, and ask if they would like to be connected to another provider to help them with their needs.

By doing this, publishers are able to better monetize existing calls, increasing their margins which in turn allows them to drive even more calls to advertisers. Not only that, the customer isn't left feeling like their time was wasted.

While these are just two scenarios where conversational AI can improve outcomes in the pay per call space, there are countless other ways Dasha.ai can help your pay per call efforts. To learn more, or schedule a demo….

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