How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI}

Score & Analyze Phone Calls with AI - step-by-step

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You’re here, which means you’ve already tackled the first item on my checklist: never treat phone calls like clicks!

Phone calls equals context equals a massive wealth of data ready to be analyzed.

What made your lead call you? What is the outcome of the call? How does your lead believe that your solution will solve their problem? What is the problem they are trying to solve? Are they ready to buy or do they just shop around?

Or even more “systematic” yet valuable data.

Which channel/campaign/page drove the most calls? Which channel/campaign/page drove the most quality calls? How many calls converted to actual sales? What’s the ROI of your phone calls?

Just three minutes on a call can uncover insights into your marketing, sales, business, and competition. The trick? Asking the right questions to unlock the full potential of every call.

That’s why I’m all in on phone calls!

On one side, you have someone genuinely interested in your business—interested enough to actually pick up the phone and reach out. On the other, there’s a skilled agent, ready to respond with grace, insight, and the right questions to guide the conversation toward a sale. Pure magic!

So, let’s dive into it – how to score & analyze phone calls in a very elegant, minimal and easy-to-implement way in order to get all the above questions answered in seconds.

TL;DR on AI to Analyze Phone Calls

  1. Capture Insights: Set up call recordings to ensure you have a valuable resource for analyzing call recording data, conversations and improving future interactions.
  2. Prioritize Effectively: Implement AI scoring to quickly identify high-intent leads, allowing your sales team to focus on the most promising opportunities.
  3. Tag Smartly: Use colored tags to visually categorize leads, making it easy to determine which calls require immediate attention at a glance.
  4. Gain Context: Utilize the Call Activity View to access over 50 data points for each call, offering a comprehensive view of caller interactions and behaviors.
  5. Automate Wisely: Take advantage of the Automation Builder to streamline lead management processes, automatically tagging calls based on caller intent and behaviors.
  6. Analyze in Real-Time: Leverage real-time analytics to continuously refine your sales strategy, adjusting tactics based on actionable insights that drive higher conversion rates.
  7. Leverage AI Insights: Use AI to analyze call patterns and predict lead behavior, enhancing your ability to respond effectively to potential customers.
  8. Improve Customer Engagement: Implement AI-driven insights to tailor conversations based on previous interactions, fostering a more personalized experience for your leads.

First things first…Call Recordings. That’s the only thing you’ll need to have in place!  

Think about it… call recordings are the only real proof that a conversation actually happened. You can listen in, hear how a sales rep handled a lead or a customer, and catch exactly what your customer had to say. But let’s be real—nobody has time to sift through hours of calls every day.

That’s where call recordings unlock two other essentials: AI-powered call summaries—so you can get the gist of a conversation in seconds—and keyword spotting to quickly find the leads who mention high-intent keywords or phrases.

When setting up call recordings, add a quick greeting to let callers know the conversation’s being recorded. It keeps things transparent and builds trust right from the start!

When X criteria are met, Then tag/score leads as Y.. that’s it!

Next up, let’s talk about Call Scoring. With call scoring, you’re taking your understanding to a whole new level, beyond simply knowing if the conversation went well. It’s about understanding what makes a call convert, pinpointing which factors indicate purchase intent, and discovering what leads genuinely want.

Here’s the game-changer: AI doesn’t just “listen”; it understands and scores every call based on various metrics like sentiment, intent, and urgency. It highlights calls that match your ideal customer profile, helping you home in on the conversations with the highest potential.

Imagine AI helping you answer questions like:

  • Did the caller sound urgent? An urgent tone often indicates a higher probability of a quick sale.
  • Did they mention competitors? Comparing solutions shows they’re evaluating you seriously.
  • How did they respond to pricing? Interest paired with a positive response to pricing can indicate readiness to buy.

When it comes to scoring and tagging your calls, you’re essentially transforming your inbound phone leads into strategic assets. Call scoring is crucial because it gives your team the power to identify the hottest leads quickly, equipping them with all they need to engage effectively. But the real magic happens when you add tags into the mix. By categorizing and tagging each call, you create a streamlined system that immediately tells you where to focus your time and energy.

Think of it as adding a visual layer of intelligence. With colored labels, for example, calls can be quickly identified at a glance. Imagine seeing green labels for high-intent calls and red for low-quality leads—your team instantly knows where their time will have the highest return, saving countless hours and honing their focus on leads most likely to convert.

Analyze Phone Calls with colored Call Tags

How Call Scoring Works with AI: AI assess each conversation with a scoring system that weighs keywords, tone, and even pauses in conversation to gauge caller intent and sentiment. Here’s a basic approach using post-call triggers to set it up:

  1. Define Your Scoring Criteria: Start by listing behaviors and phrases that indicate high intent. For instance, questions about pricing, solutions, or urgency could be top indicators of readiness to buy.
  2. Set Up Keyword Spotting: Phrases like “pricing,” “solution,” and “timeline” can be assigned a higher weight, while words like “just exploring” may lower a lead’s score.
  3. Leverage Sentiment Analysis: AI-powered sentiment analysis assesses positive or negative responses, highlighting customers who were genuinely interested versus hesitant.
  4. Auto-Tag High-Quality Leads: Based on the final score, your AI can auto-tag leads as high, medium, or low quality. This way, you can focus on the hottest leads, leaving AI to do the heavy lifting.

Unlocking the “Human” Insights: AI and scoring go hand in hand, but don’t overlook your team’s insights. Combine AI results with sales feedback for a 360-degree view on every call’s effectiveness.

Using the Automation Builder to create powerful call tagging & scoring workflows

Automation takes your call scoring to the next level. Nimbata’s Automation Builder works with an “if-then” logic, allowing you to automate tagging based on specific criteria. This streamlined, “if-this-then-that” logic allows businesses to build customized automations that can track and score calls without manual intervention, thus saving valuable time and ensuring consistency in lead categorization.

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} image 2

For example:

  • If a call lasts over five minutes then tag it as “High Intent.”
  • If the call contains certain keywords like “quote,” “pricing,” or “demo,” then score it higher for purchase intent.
  • If the call came from a Google Ads campaign tagged for a new promotion, then assign it a unique tag that corresponds to that campaign.

This level of automation not only ensures consistency but also allows you to track and adjust your criteria as needed to improve accuracy over time. With each call, your tags evolve, providing deeper insight into what types of interactions are driving the best results.

Let’s say you wish to streamline your lead follow-up process. If a caller expresses interest in a specific product or service, Nimbata’s automation can tag that call as “high-interest” based on the keywords detected during the conversation. This allows your sales team to prioritize these calls, ensuring they engage with leads who have demonstrated genuine interest, rather than getting lost in a sea of low-intent inquiries. This targeted approach maximizes your team’s efficiency and aligns your sales efforts with leads that are most likely to convert.

Insights made easy–Customize your dashboard to get the data you need in the order you want

Once you’ve tagged and scored your calls, Nimbata’s dashboard becomes your command center. Here, you can add as many reports as you want from our report gallery and filter calls based on their score and tags to pinpoint high-quality leads across channels.

 Call Analysis with custom dashboard! - Customize your dashboard to get the data you need in the order you want

Filters let you dig into key data points:

  • Channel and Campaign Success: Filter by channel or campaign to instantly see which sources are bringing in high-quality calls. If a campaign is underperforming, you can spot it early and pivot your strategy to focus on the channels that consistently deliver.
  • Peak Hour Insights: Analyze when most calls come in and see if high-quality calls align with certain times of day. This can inform staffing decisions, ensuring your best salespeople are available when high-value calls are most likely.
  • Geography Reports: Learn where your best leads are calling from, allowing you to target high-value regions in future campaigns.
  • Duration and Lead Quality: Identify patterns in call duration that correlate with conversions, allowing you to optimize call scripts and improve agent training.

Your CRM-style view tailored to phone calls

Call Activity View is designed as a CRM-style interface solely for phone leads, centralizing every aspect of a lead’s journey. With this view, you can monitor the entire engagement path for each lead—from the initial page visited to form submissions, calls, and even voicemail history. Imagine pulling up a lead and instantly seeing:

  • Which pages they viewed before calling
  • Whether they’ve previously engaged with other forms of outreach
  • If they’re a returning lead or engaging for the first time
Analyze Phone Calls with Call Activity View - your CRM for phone leads!

With over 50 data points at your fingertips, including when the caller reached out, how many times they called, who handled the call, and the specific page they were on, this full-funnel view equips your team with contextual insights that ensure every conversation is informed by the lead’s journey. You also get attribution data like campaign and ad group information, enabling personalized, higher-converting interactions. Plus, you can listen to call recordings, manually tag calls, and leave notes, all of which empower your team to make informed decisions and improve lead management.

This 360-degree view makes it easier to customize your approach for each lead based on their prior touchpoints, enhancing your ability to connect and convert with the right message at the right time.

Moving forward to transforming raw call data into enriched lead profiles

Once you’ve organized, scored, and tagged call data, sending it to your CRM becomes a powerful way to convert this data into actionable insights that empower your sales and marketing teams. When Nimbata is integrated with your CRM, you gain an enriched view of each lead’s journey—from the first click to their most recent phone call. Here’s how CRM integration can take your lead management from functional to truly impactful:

1. Create New Contacts When the ID is New
When a call ID is unique, Nimbata can automatically create a new contact in your CRM, ensuring no potential lead slips through. This automated addition of new contacts keeps your database fresh and complete, so each call is tracked and followed up appropriately.

2. Update Existing Lead Profiles When the ID Exists
For returning callers, Nimbata recognizes existing IDs and updates lead profiles, including recent calls, tags, and scores. This lets your team quickly see an ongoing lead’s history and assess where they are in the buyer’s journey, saving time and supporting more personalized follow-ups.

3. Enrich Profiles with Call Recording Links
Embedding call recordings directly into CRM profiles means sales and marketing teams have easy access to past interactions, providing insight into specific pain points, questions, and interests without needing to search. This ongoing access to call details keeps context rich and enables higher-quality conversations.

4. Create Custom CRM Fields and Map Them Using Nimbata Fields
Custom CRM fields allow you to capture and categorize unique insights that matter most to your business, such as “interest level” or “competitor mentioned.” With Nimbata, you can map these custom fields directly, making it easy to segment and analyze leads based on criteria specific to your sales goals.

5. Enrich Lead Profiles with Contextual Data
Automatically add key information—campaign, location, and website behavior—into each lead profile, so your sales reps start conversations equipped with context. Leads feel heard and understood, and conversations are personalized from the first touchpoint.

6. Update Lifecycle Stages Automatically
With preset rules, Nimbata automates lifecycle updates based on lead actions, keeping your CRM up-to-date. For example:

  • High-intent calls update lifecycle stages to “Qualified.”
  • Multiple calls automatically signal “Sales Opportunity.”

Automation like this not only keeps data consistent but ensures reps can prioritize leads more accurately.

7. Empower Sales with Real-Time Notifications
Through CRM integrations or tools like Slack, Nimbata triggers real-time notifications for high-value leads. This ensures that sales teams are alerted to leads who’ve shown strong interest, are comparing competitors, or inquiring about pricing—allowing them to act while interest is highest.

8. Analyze and Adjust in Your CRM
With Nimbata’s data synced, you can dig into patterns to refine both sales and marketing strategies. Analyzing which campaigns drive the highest-quality calls or how certain call tags align with successful conversions gives your teams the insights needed to focus on what works.

Moving call analysis beyond the CRM

Ready to take it a step further? You can push raw or filtered call data to Google Ads, Google Sheets, Google Analytics, Slack, and more. Imagine the benefits of syncing high-intent calls directly with Google Ads to create remarketing lists or logging lead insights in Google Sheets for real-time reporting.

The goal isn’t just to collect data; it’s to build a fully integrated ecosystem where every lead interaction is tracked, analyzed, and enriched across all your marketing and sales platforms.

From intelligent call scoring to CRM enrichment and real-time notifications, you can make it simple to bridge the gap between phone calls and actionable insights. With this approach, you’re no longer merely reacting to leads—you’re proactively managing them, continuously improving how you connect, engage, and convert.

Your To-do list for driving success with ai call scoring & analysis

As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, driving success with call scoring and analysis starts with recognizing the power of phone interactions as a rich data source. Let’s summarize everything covered above in a checklist:

Capture, Analyze, and Act on Insights: Start by setting up call recordings and automated tagging to streamline lead management. This foundational step ensures every call becomes a valuable asset, ready to be analyzed.
Prioritize with AI Call Scoring: Use AI to score calls, identifying high-intent leads and allowing sales teams to focus on the most promising opportunities. With sentiment analysis and keyword weighting, Nimbata helps uncover leads that show real purchase potential.
Enrich Lead Profiles in Your CRM: Integrate call data to your CRM to enrich each lead’s profile with contextual data, such as campaign sources, caller intent, and competitor mentions. This gives your sales team the full story behind each call, making follow-ups more strategic and personalized.
Leverage Real-Time Notifications and Custom CRM Fields: Set up real-time notifications for high-quality leads and use custom CRM fields to segment leads based on criteria specific to your business. This keeps your sales team agile, focusing on high-value calls as they come in.
Automate for Consistency: Automation across tagging and scoring ensures consistency in lead categorization, helping your team prioritize effectively while saving time.
Bridge Gaps in Lead Attribution and Insight: By integrating Nimbata’s call data with your CRM, you enhance marketing attribution, providing a complete picture of what drives conversions. Nimbata fills the gaps left by CRMs alone, making every call an actionable asset.

Here are a few examples to try out yourself:

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example keywords

Update custom field “Quotable” when a high-intent keyword is spotted

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example sales and tag

Assign sales value and tag call with the booked service based on call survey (answered by agent)

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example 2 Ifs

Distinguish repeat customers from new ones

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example call starts

Automatically create a new contact in your CRM when a call starts

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation

Create new contact when a new lead is spotted

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example 1

Update contact in CRM when a lead books an appointment

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example 2

Create new follow-up task in CRM

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example 3

Send alert in Slack when there’s a missed call

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example call flow

Tag leads based on their IVR choice

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example google ads

Send call conversions based on their IVR choice

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example google ads multiple 1

Send Quality conversions in Google Ads based on multiple criteria

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example duration gsheets

Update Google Sheets in real-time based on call duration

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example duration slack

Celebrate your wins in Slack

How to Score, Tag & Analyze your Inbound Phone Calls {With AI} automation example duration slack 1

Fire webhooks when your criteria are met

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