Time and time again, manual and accurate data entry comes up as a top complaint among sales executives globally. And rightfully so, taking notes and inputting information takes energy away from nurturing current relationships and uncovering new leads.
Now, with unified conversational call recording and voice intelligence, sales executives can have the best of both worlds. It’s possible to capture the value held within every meeting and not have to spend time taking notes or inputting data into a customer relationship management (CRM) system. CRMs are the lifeblood of a sales department and other teams relying on these conversations. Having highly accurate transcripts of each meeting that are automatically added into a CRM can provide invaluable insight across an organization.
Simply put, with the right technology, sales teams can now dedicate more time to what they are good at: selling. Plus, they can close more deals when they have access to the most accurate customer information and insights.
Gain Insights Into the Conversations That Matter
No matter how intently you listen to a conversation, it is simply impossible to retain every detail. The Forgetting Curve visually demonstrates just how quickly retention drops off. More than 40% of what you learn is forgotten within 20 minutes. In two days you can only recall about 25% of that content. While there are tricks and techniques to improve the ability to recall information, salespeople have multiple conversations each day. Inevitably, these conversations start to blur and key aspects of a discussion are forgotten.
This is where unified conversational call recording and voice intelligence comes into play. It’s possible to get total visibility into conversations taking place via voice, video or chat. And all this data gets stored in one central location no matter what platform or service a call or meeting is held on.
Call recording traditionally is a cumbersome, inefficient and expensive task. It’s often reserved for conversations that have to be recorded by law, and even then these recordings live on-premise and are difficult to access or find. Cloud technology coupled with voice intelligence has changed all this. It’s taken away much of the cost restrictions that have prevented companies from recording all conversations with their prospects, customers and colleagues. There are now no hardware or storage requirements, and these conversations can be transcribed and transformed into critically important data and instantly mined for intelligence and insights.
Let’s take a look at six key ways sales professionals can unlock the value within voice data:
Ensure input of key information into CRM systems – CRM technology is a $60 billion industry globally, according to Harvard Business Review. Sales teams and business leaders need this technology to keep track of everything from customer touchpoints, sales pipelines and revenue projections. But as with any technology, it’s only as good as the information it’s being fed. If a CRM solution doesn’t have up-to-date information, it can’t do its job.
AI-enabled transcription intelligence not only captures what is said, it also provides immediate access to that call data. Ultimately, companies can get more out of their CRM investment when data is automatically fed into a central repository that all stakeholders can access.
Provide hyper-personalized engagement – With the detailed records of previous interactions, salespeople can make hyper-personalized and more targeted contact with leads and existing customers. Creating this next-level engagement is incredibly important, and top of mind for a lot of companies. In fact, according to the fourth edition of Salesforce’s State of the Sales report, which is based on insights from 6,000 sales professionals, understanding customer needs was the number one reason for AI adoption.
Eliminate the need to take detailed notes – Taking notes during a call can help with memory retention, but it can also take your attention away from the discussion. Having the ability to record meetings and have them be automatically transcribed (with a high accuracy rate) allows sales teams to only write down the most important parts of the call without having to worry about forgetting the details. Meetings and calls immediately become more effective and valuable.
Access information where and when you need – Especially in today’s world where remote working is the norm, having the ability to pull up information coming from any device or location is key. Having a digital copy of the transcribed calls means no more flipping through notebooks to find one key piece of information.
Monitor performance and sentiment – Another AI use case is sentiment analysis. It can be used to gauge a prospect or customer’s feelings about the brand. Calls rated with a negative sentiment score can trigger an alert to a manager or automate a process such as creating a task in a CRM solution. Plus, it can be used as an educational tool – using the recordings to provide real-life feedback that can be used to boost conversation rates.
Prevent disputes – When a sale takes place via written communication it is easy to resolve a dispute. However, what happens when an agreement is made during a call or video meeting? New cloud-based technology overcomes all of those issues with ease – enabling companies of all sizes to effectively resolve disputes by pointing to evidence that is typically lost the moment a conversation ends. Companies can save what would have been lost revenue if there is a dispute around verbally negotiated deals and save time investigating “he said, she said” situations.
Bring AI to Every Call and Meeting
In almost every industry the landscape is getting more competitive. AI-enabled conversational recording is just one example of a technology that every sales team should have at their disposal, but one that can save sales professionals multiple hours a week and be the difference between closing a deal or losing out to a competitor.
As we continue to move into a sales environment that requires more touchpoints and personalized attention, it’s the companies that focus on supporting their staff and embracing technology to supplement their talent that will come out on top.
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