Marketers (and businesses) are suffering from data (and app) fatigue, according to a new study from CallRail. 

CallRail’s research found that 51% of marketers polled in a survey use four or more marketing platforms and 75% say they spend too much time reporting on marketing performance. The percentage climbs to 85% for those using five or more platforms. 

Multiple, incompatible platforms can create more problems than they solve because often these platforms don’t integrate well with each other or are unable to provide holistic views, per the report. 

It also doesn’t help that many tools are designed to take credit for marketing wins, thus creating platform bias, says CallRail. For example, Facebook might take credit for a lead because its ad was the last click a customer made before converting, when in reality the first organic search by the customer did most of the heavy lifting.  

That emphasizes a key message marketers must remember: Tech platforms won’t audit themselves. Even the most helpful solutions can exaggerate their own success. 

Marketers need a neutral arbiter to make sense of the data coming from multiple sources that might sometimes conflict, recommends CallRail.  

Another key finding is that it pays to personalize. With over 90% of consumers being more likely to trust a business if they can easily reach a person on the phone, it makes sense that 71% of consumers say having the option to speak to a representative would increase the likelihood of them using that product or service. 

Another 71% of consumers revealed they’ve lost interest in a business due to being sent an automated response. Despite this, call tracking is low on a marketer’s list of priorities, with more than half admitting they don’t use phone call tracking tools, causing them to miss out on valuable insights on what consumers want. 

Also, marketers often don’t realize that while timing matters, transaction types do not, the report asserts. While a phone call is the preferred method of communication for both low-value (61%) and high-value (72%) transactions, the majority of customers won’t wait more than three days after contacting a business (84%) before moving on to a competitor — with 29% of those consumers only giving businesses a day to contact them after initiating contact. 

More from the report can be found here.