Are your sales dependent on hearsay and intuition?

Sales reps are using their intuition, rather than data insights, to prioritise leads. As data becomes the driving force behind business decisions, here’s how voice data and AI can help sales teams to succeed.

End not knowing

What is more important to a sales person than a conversation with a customer? The most valuable of these most commonly occur over the phone, when a back-and-forth over email is just not good enough. But as soon as the call ends, the information and insight held within the conversation vanishes. With 67% of salespeople saying that enforcement of activity logging is stricter than in 2019, accurately recording customer interactions is more important than ever.

A sales person could try to capture the substance of a conversation themselves, taking notes either during the call or trying to remember the key takeaways once the conversation has ended. This is a drain on their productivity, and isn’t all that efficient: they will be distracted if they try to take notes while they are talking, and might not remember every detail if they are writing after the conversation is over.

Recording calls is the only way to preserve the value in a conversation, but traditional approaches have been focused on fixed lines within an office environment and things have moved on – even more so in a post-COVID world. At a time where offices are hastily erected at kitchen counters around the world, calls are being taken over the web, on mobile devices, and IP connections. It’s impossible to capture these conversations without a solution that is built in the cloud with the agility to record every call, no matter where it happens.

As businesses adapt to operating in a world with face masks, social distancing, and an increased reliance on technology for communication, customer service and satisfaction is more important than ever before. Sales teams are differentiating themselves from the competition by using AI to improve internal processes and customer experiences, with 57% of high-performing sales organisations using the technology. A true understanding of a customer’s needs and their feelings about a brand or product can give a salesperson the edge, but this takes time. With huge volumes of call data, it’s impossible to drill down to insights at such scale. The solution is voice AI.

How to boost conversion rates by up to 30%

What if every single conversation within a business could be harnessed to power data-driven decision making? Voice AI transforms recorded conversations into data that can be used by businesses to gain insights into everything from the efficiency of business processes, to product development, to the success of marketing campaigns, to customer satisfaction. Not only can companies combine this with other business data for 360º visibility, they can even use conversational content to power automation within the business.

By recording customer conversations and transcribing them from speech to text, voice AI can then be used to make day-to-day decisions more effectively. Using AI in sales has even been shown to boost conversion rates by up to 30% when interacting with sales leads¹. With voice AI, call data can be integrated with a CRM to automatically populate accounts with records of every single voice conversation, including a full transcript. Sales reps can refer to call transcripts to recap customer needs and formulate tailored offerings based on their exact requirements. 69% of the highest performing salespeople had automated logging of customer notes.

Transcripts and recordings also act as evidence, meaning that crucial conversation with a customer will never be lost. Agreements can be referred to, and disputes can be resolved quickly and easily with an exact record of what was said.

The cure for churn

Sentiment analysis can also be used to gauge a customer’s feelings about a brand and even indicate those who might be about to churn. Voice AI analyses the words spoken by a customer to rate each part of a conversation, and the call as a whole, with positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. Using APIs, calls rated with a negative sentiment score can trigger an alert or even automate process, such as creating a task in a CRM such as Salesforce.

With the detailed records of previous interactions, salespeople can make hyper-personalised contact with leads and existing customers to help to nurture a relationship. Where once a customer might churn after a negative conversation, with automated alerts and task creation sales reps can proactively maintain relationships with contact that puts their needs first. Understanding customer needs was the number one reason for AI adoption, as stated by sales teams surveyed by Salesforce.

Not only are calls rated by sentiment, but voice AI can actually identify specific emotions based on what a caller said, allowing for an even more tailored approach to selling. Questions might indicate an analytical or tentative customer who might require more evidence of the benefits of a product or service, whereas someone making more active statements might be more confident in their opinions and be more ready to close the sale.

Case study: Dorsey & Dorsey

Dorsey & Dorsey Inc. is an insurance provider in Oklahoma. We spoke to their call centre manager Drew LeHew about how Dubber has improved sales performance at the company.

Dubber: What was the challenge that brought you to choosing Dubber?

Drew LeHew: We weren’t happy with our old call recording provider as calls had to be manually recorded, which resulted in us missing important conversations. We wanted to protect ourselves against liability and have recorded calls to use as part of staff training.

D: How did Dubber help you solve this problem?

DLH: The simplicity of the solution was the most important thing for us. We have complete peace of mind knowing that every call will be recorded automatically and will be easy to find when we need to. Recording our calls has allowed us to diffuse disputes very quickly and we’ve seen an improvement in the overall performance of our agents due to the enhanced training we can now offer using recorded conversations.

D: What was the process of going live with Dubber like?

DLH: The Dubber solution has given us a great system for monitoring calls and then using them as a training tool for our agents. Not only is every call recorded but we can easily retrieve important conversations and tag them for future use.

As a manager of a high call volume call center, Dubber call recording provides reassurance knowing all of our calls are recorded and easily accessible. Recording our calls with Dubber has allowed us to take our training to new heights as managers can listen to more calls and share them with their agents to find areas for improvement. I’d highly recommend the solution.

If you’d like to learn more about how Dubber Unified Call Recording and voice AI can improve sales performance, speak to a member of the team today.

¹Hansen, I., Hilbert, M., Travis, T. and Zijadic, A. (2019) Predicts 2020: AI for CRM Sales Technology Must be Balanced With Analytics, Training and Change Management Considerations. Stamford, USA: Gartner.