Azuga, a leading provider of connected vehicle and fleet technologies, has successfully implemented Rafiki, an AI-powered conversation analytics tool, to drive sales performance improvements and enhance collaboration with their sister company, WebFleet. By leveraging Rafiki’s cutting-edge AI-based insights and analytics features across all customer-facing calls, Azuga has been able to better understand its sales processes, increase the efficiency and performance of its sales teams such as sales development representatives and customer success , and reduce attrition rates.
Background
Azuga has experienced rapid growth in recent years, with a 40% revenue increase year-over-year for the past five years. Despite their success, the company identified areas for improvement within their sales processes, particularly in managing and coaching new Sales Development Representatives (SDRs). There was a 34% attrition year over year among new hires and with 45% of new SDRs failing to book a demo in the first six months, Azuga sought a solution to better understand and optimize their sales operations.
Azuga has over 100 Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) in the small business domain, making 1000s of calls across all of them in a month. Only two Quality Assurance (QA) agents were responsible for conducting audits manually, which allowed them to review 75-80 calls per month, with each SDR receiving feedback on three calls reviewed through a round-robin process. This left a massive gap in providing call feedback coverage and each SDR had to wait for three months to receive feedback on their next set of calls.
Enter Rafiki.
Why Rafiki Was Chosen
Azuga chose Rafiki for its robust, turnkey, and scalable conversation analytics capabilities that specifically addressed the SDR and Customer Success Management (CSM) workflows, with a very affordable pricing that is at least 75% less expensive when compared to similar enterprise-grade vendors.
Rafiki provides off-the-shelf analytics on calls, scorecards, and trackers. The meeting comparison user interface, the impact of the use of terms or topics that had a direct impact on the success of the calls. Coverage of calls, and conversation metrics across all the reps, provided a consistent way to measure and provide transparent feedback. The tool was turnkey but the implementation process began with a focus on setting clear Key performance indicators (KPIs) and establishing a dedicated team to oversee the deployment of Rafiki across the sales organization.
Sean, Head of Sales Enablement at Azuga, highlighted the importance of this, saying,
“It’s really important that you get a dedicated admin team that is focused on the implementation, and also you’re focusing on the KPIs that you want to get out of it because you’ll only get out of it what you put in.”
Impact on Sales Performance
Rafiki has played a crucial role in transforming Azuga’s sales performance. With a 30-40% reduction in attrition rates and a significant increase in demos booked by SDRs with less than a year of tenure, the impact has been noticeable. With Rafiki, the QA agents can just review the transcript, and summary, and create Scorecards efficiently so that they are able to audit 4X more calls, Reps now get monthly reviews. This efficiency in the process has called for saving on resources as well.
Sean attributes this success to Rafiki’s ability to provide valuable insights into sales calls:
“Rafiki has been a game changer that is affordable. Rafiki is paramount to that, the visibility on what your teams are actually doing. And one of the big things for me is the QA aspect.”
Rafiki has helped us focus on quality over quantity when it comes to SDRs making cold calls. As Sean said,
“Rafiki has played a crucial role in transforming Azuga’s sales performance. With a 30-40% reduction in attrition rates and a significant increase in demos booked by SDRs with less than a year of tenure, the impact has been noticeable. With Rafiki, the QA agents can just review the transcript, and summary, and create Scorecards efficiently so that they are able to audit 4X more calls, Reps now get monthly reviews. This efficiency in the process has called for saving on resources as well.”
Rafiki has helped us focus on quality over quantity when it comes to SDRs making cold calls. As Sean stated,
“Now we’ve got all the trainers and the new hires in Rafiki, and we’re doing QA with Rafiki’s Scorecards, and we’re uncovering coaching opportunities and it has been a game changer for us. The Reps are now accountable, I mean, half the battle for a salesperson is, you can’t rely on your team lead to focus purely on you, you need to self-learn and become a master of your art and look at your own call. We recommended that every rep get at least half an hour to an hour every month to be able to listen to their own calls on Rafiki and self-diagnose. Focus on what they think they’re doing well and what they’re struggling with. And I think that’s a massive step in managing performance themselves. Rafiki is able to help us find what we call a quality Connect, with its search and transcription capabilities so we can get to the good coaching content quickly.”
By leveraging Rafiki’s conversation analytics, Azuga has been able to identify areas for improvement and provide targeted coaching for their sales teams.
Sean explained,
“Now Rafiki is on board, it’s exponentially increasing the ability for individuals to say I can listen to where I went wrong. We are getting more audits done, so that’s already improved our process. We’re not just policing the teams, we’re able to manipulate the data from Rafiki and share a call. It’s great. Hey, I just did this and I just sealed the deal and got a demo. We’ll put that meeting/call in a Rafiki Playlist. I mean it’s a huge coaching tool”
Customer Support and Success
Azuga got Rafiki for its brand new Customer Success and Support Teams. With the success of SDRs, the team rolled out the tool to the CSMs as well. Earlier the team was unable to find the budget due to expensive outlay with comparable enterprise-grade tools. With affordable and advanced AI features, the tool has become indispensable to CSMs as well.
The instant value that the teams find is
- Ability to uncover upsell opportunities and growth
- Infinite memory of the calls during the account lifecycle
- Identify leading indicators of churn with Saved Alerts
- Customer’s true sentiment and feedback gathered through Rafiki calls.
Collaboration with Sister Company WebFleet
Azuga’s implementation of Rafiki has also had a positive impact on their collaboration with Web Fleet, their European counterpart. The two companies, operating under the same parent company, Bridgestone Mobility Solutions, are now able to share best practices and streamline their operations. Sean mentioned that the WebFleet collaboration with Azuga will be key in terms of adopting successful sales techniques and applications.
Challenges and Future Plans
Despite the success of Rafiki’s implementation, Azuga faced few challenges in terms of integrating the tool with its existing systems and ensuring it was being utilized effectively across the organization. Given Rafiki’s vast number of analytics and insights it more than matches with the other enterprise-grade products. Sean admitted that it is common with the big players in this space as well, alluding to the vast set of comparable AI features that both Rafiki and other major enterprise vendors have.
To address these challenges, Azuga plans to continue refining its usage of Rafiki and focusing on the KPIs that matter most to the organization. Additionally, they are looking into incorporating AI-based note-takers in their sales meetings to further streamline their operations.
Conclusion
Azuga’s experience with Rafiki highlights the potential benefits of adopting AI-powered conversation analytics tools for sales organizations. By leveraging Rafiki’s powerful features, across SDRs, and CSMs, and affordable pricing that is 75% less expensive than comparable other leading vendors Azuga has been able to bring the power of AI not just to the AEs but also to the entire sales team and improve performance by auditing calls 4X faster, reducing attrition rates, and enhancing collaboration with their sister company, Web Fleet. As Azuga continues to refine its usage of Rafiki, the company is well-positioned to maintain its rapid growth trajectory and further optimize its sales operations.
In summary, Azuga’s case study demonstrates the power of AI-driven conversation analytics in driving organizational success. The implementation of Rafiki has led to improved sales performance, reduced attrition rates, and better collaboration between Azuga and WebFleet. As Sean said,
“It’s vast what you can get out of it, and you can get a bit lost in it too, but the results speak for themselves.”
As more organizations recognize the potential benefits of tools like Rafiki, the future of sales performance and team collaboration looks increasingly bright.
