Conversation intelligence has come a long way since its inception, promising to revolutionize the sales process by providing human-level transcription, diarization, and speaker recognition. The first wave of conversation intelligence tools enabled call recording and transcription, but they ultimately fell short of delivering the insights and productivity that were initially promised as the insight generation required a lot more than transcription and keyword tracking. With the advent of Generative pre-training (GPT) AI, the conversation intelligence landscape is rapidly evolving, offering a new era of actionable insights and smarter solutions to offer better customer re-engagement and productivity improvements.
The Promise of Conversation Intelligence
In the beginning, conversation intelligence vendors promised to revolutionize the sales process by providing human-level transcription, diarization (speaker diarization is the technical process of splitting up an audio recording stream that often includes a number of speakers into homogeneous segments), and speaker recognition with some trackers. Sales teams were encouraged to record their calls, listen, and coach, expecting valuable insights to transform their productivity.
The first wave of conversation intelligence bot providers did normalize call recording and transcription. Although the initial transcriptions were not perfect, the ability to listen to recorded calls was a breath of fresh air for the analog world of sales calls. Thanks to the Covid pandemic, the adoption of call recordings accelerated, resulting in a vast library of recorded calls.
However, the promised insights and productivity never fully materialized though there were glimpses of the promise. Transcription services were expensive, and while AI technology improved, the true value of these tools remained elusive. Leading vendors continued to charge exorbitant prices, and sales teams were left with tens of thousands of calls recorded and transcribed, with even less time to listen to them, but little else.
Problems with Legacy Conversation Intelligence
Sales teams found themselves overwhelmed with calls to review and struggled to extract useful information from the massive amount of data. What was supposed to be a helpful tool became a time-consuming burden, leaving users feeling exhausted, confused, and frustrated.
One customer described their experience with legacy conversation intelligence tools:
“We have a small 20-sales member team producing thousands of hours of calls. Who has the time to review the transcripts, let alone listen to the calls? Now I am supposed to analyze the thousands of calls for nuggets and build playlists or find what topics or attributes would lead to better conversion or reduce churn. The tools that we paid tens of thousands of $, for were supposed to provide insights - tell us what to coach for, help us follow up better, or give us precise insights and a summary of what to pay attention to, but the reality is that they are non-existent or inadequate. I am left with a fat monthly bill”
Remote work and economic slowdown have only intensified the need for efficient and insightful tools. The current pricing is unsustainable without the accompanying insights and productivity, and there is a pressing need for an upgrade to the latest AI tools that can provide cost-effective, summarized insights and better-improved sales processes.
The Dawn of GenAI and Next-Gen Conversation Intelligence
Generative AI has accelerated the time to reach the potential of conversation intelligence, taking it beyond simple transcriptions and recordings. Now, we can summarize the conversations without needing to listen to hours of calls, extracting valuable insights and turning them into actionable strategies. Advanced GPT-based AI, can also show you the exact moments of the source of insights from that call that should be shared with the teams.
Recent advancements have also dramatically reduced the cost of recording and transcribing calls at a superhuman level. If you're only using these revenue intelligence or conversation intelligence tools for just listening to calls, there are tools available for $5 - $15 per month per user. Many platforms, such as Zoom, Teams, or your favorite CRM, come with these features bundled in. They will save you $100+ you pay for expensive enterprise tools.
However, if you're looking for those powerful insights and want to leverage generative AI to increase your follow-up productivity, it's time to invest in a modern, next-gen, enterprise-grade conversation intelligence solution. Many tools that provide the benefits are now available for less than $50/month and some even offer for less than $30 for larger installations.
Prospects of legacy conversation intelligence platforms have expressed their desire for a new system that can:
- Provide an automatic summary of salient snippets that a sales exec or leader should be listening to, automatically culled by AI, without needing manual curation.
- Save time and increase productivity for the rep by providing effective follow-up right after a call is over, with clear notes, summaries of key points, takeaways, and next steps
- Provide a daily summary to sales enablement leaders, on key insights from calls for each persona, such as sales enablement teams, RevOps, executive and sales leaders
- Allow sales leaders to listen to just what matters to get a sense of the deals at risk and how that could affect the forecast.
- Enable Rev Ops leaders to synthesize key takeaways and findings, ensuring senior executives understand the voice of the customer.
- Help product marketing leaders create effective product value propositions based on real customer insights.
- Most importantly pass the savings from advanced AI, often at a third of what they are paying with legacy vendors
Embracing the Future of Conversation Intelligence
The advent of GPT AI and the new wave of conversation intelligence solutions that leverage this, offer a fresh start for organizations looking to unlock the true potential of their recorded calls. No longer will sales teams have to spend countless hours sifting through transcripts or listening to calls in search of valuable insights. The next generation of conversation intelligence tools are poised to deliver on the original promise of AI-driven sales productivity and efficiency.
By investing in a modern, next-gen, enterprise-grade conversation intelligence platform, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and transform the way they approach sales calls. With the power of Next Generation AI, sales teams will have access to valuable insights, allowing them to make informed decisions, improve follow-up strategies, and ultimately drive better results.
In summary, the state of conversation intelligence has come a long way, and with the dawn of GPT-based AI and next-gen AI solutions, the future looks brighter than ever. As technology continues to advance, sales teams can expect more powerful tools that will enable them to harness the full potential of their calls, transforming the sales process and delivering on the true promise of conversation intelligence.
