A lead comes in via AutoScout24. A customer wants a test drive in a used car. Name, email address, phone number: 0471 23 45 67. Calldrip is ready to connect the salesperson and the customer right away. But which number are we actually calling? Is this a Dutch person with a typo, or a Belgian who simply entered his mobile number?

A number without a country is half a number

Many websites and portals ask for the phone number without a country code. To the customer that feels logical, because he types his number the way he always does. But for the salesperson, that is where the puzzling begins. Is it a national or an international number? And if it is international: which country is the customer from, and which country code goes with it?

That search takes time. And time is exactly what you do not have with an online lead. Call first, then email. I have been saying that for years. But how do you call if you do not know which number to dial?

Automation becomes impossible

Manually, you can still figure it out with some searching. If you want to follow up the lead via Calldrip, it becomes really difficult. The system wants to call the customer automatically as soon as the lead comes in. After all, a system cannot guess which country a number is from.

A German customer enters his mobile number without +49. If you automatically put +31 in front of it, you call a number that does not exist. Or worse: someone else. So automatic follow-up has to be switched off for these kinds of leads, or the lead is left waiting.

Response time is the most important KPI in lead follow-up. And here, a single form field makes it impossible.

This is how it can be done

Marktplaats gets it right. The phone field has a drop-down list with a little flag, set to +31 by default. A Belgian or German changes it with one click. mobile.de does the same: a separate Ländervorwahl (country code) field, set to +49 by default, with the number next to it.

The result? The dealer receives a complete phone number that he can call from anywhere in the world. No puzzling, no doubt. That is how you really help dealers do business internationally.

This is how it should not be done

AutoScout24, AutoTrack and viaBOVAG only ask for a national number. One text field, no country code. For a Dutch customer that works fine. For a Belgian, German or Luxembourger it does not.

Take viaBOVAG. The phone field shows a Dutch 06 mobile number as an example. A German or Belgian buyer will then type his number in his own format. That lead arrives in your CRM with a number that your calling system or your AI agent cannot simply call.

What strikes me most is AutoScout24 in Luxembourg. The example in the phone field there is “0123 456 789”. But Luxembourg numbers do not start with a 0 at all. So the portal does not even assume a Luxembourg number, let alone a foreign one. While it is precisely in Luxembourg that many buyers come from Belgium, France and Germany. A portal that operates across Europe lets the dealer down in the most international country of all. Does that make sense to you?

Is it really such a big problem?

You could say: the vast majority of leads are simply Dutch. True. But that picture is changing fast. At Calldrip CallRevu we work for more and more international clients: dealers and groups with branches in several countries. And what do you see? Their customers are becoming just as international. A Belgian buys in Breda, a German in Venlo, a Frenchman in Luxembourg.

So for those dealers, a lead without a country code is no longer an exception. It is a daily occurrence. And that is exactly where we want to fully automate follow-up. Also think about who that international customer is. Someone who is willing to drive hundreds of kilometres for a car is not a casual browser. That is exactly the lead you want on the phone within five minutes. Not after a quarter of an hour of searching for the right country code.

What is more, the solution is small. A drop-down list with the country code, set by default to the portal’s country. That is all it takes.

Add that country code

A portal that delivers leads without a usable phone number delivers half a lead. I do not think that is good enough. After all, the dealer pays for a lead he can follow up immediately. So AutoScout24, AutoTrack and viaBOVAG: look at Marktplaats and mobile.de and add that country code. It costs you little development time and it helps thousands of dealers.

And dealers: take a look at the contact form on your own website today. Do you ask for a country code? If not, call your web developer and have it changed this week. Start with yourself.