Symbl for Startups founder profile: Vocalysd sets the bar for conversation analytics in sales — and boosts customer engagement
This series takes a closer look at companies participating in the Symbl for Startups program. If you have any questions about applying for entry into the program or want to know more about the company featured in this profile, please contact kira.hunter@symbl.ai.
Vocalysd (LinkedIn) is a pioneering startup that enables its clients to both understand and customize customer relationships. This is because knowing the context of a given human-to-human customer interaction and compiling data far beyond whether a call led to a sale or not inevitably leads to a better bottom line, happier employees and customers who feel truly heard.
If that company overview piqued your interest, check out the Symbl for Startups interview below featuring Vocalysd founder Kelly Hoffman, wherein she reveals the piece of advice that prompted her to enter the chaotic world of entrepreneurship as well as several key ideas behind her conversation analytics software.
Tell me about how the idea for Vocalysd came about. What market need does it fulfill?
Kelly Hoffman: The idea for Vocalysd was born at the beginning of lockdown, after we were all working from home and existing in a completely new paradigm. At the time I was working in sales for an American software company and I thought, “Oh my God, how am I going to manage my team, keep morale up and — most importantly — still deliver an exceptional customer experience?”
So I said to the team, we’re not going to do any sales, we are going to purely focus on customer relationships and building trust. Then I started to look at this person I worked with, who is a great guy with a very technical mind, and I thought, “He’s got 17 years of experience in this domain, and I have two, and we have the same customer list and script and opportunities, so why am I closing and being able to communicate better and build rapport?”
That’s when I started to think about what made us different and what we could do to align in an authentic way. I began to study how people communicate, the words they respond to, how they say things, when they say them and so forth. I discovered conversation AI and NLP, and although I don’t have a software background I am a passionate person about disrupting the status quo and making an impact.
In terms of the market need it fulfills, one important use case is for call center agents. This is such a high turnover job, and oftentimes they are judged by static measurements (e.g., you phoned 50 people, you closed 10 deals) rather than by what happened on the call — or what didn’t happen.
Right now there’s really no deeper understanding of how agents differ from each other and how they can get to that point of providing an exceptional customer experience and meaningful training for lower staff turnover.
Vocalysd will lessen team manager manual listening by 50% to 70%* over the medium-to-long-term usage within a human-to-human or text-to-human assisted business.
At what point did you discover Symbl.ai’s API, and how did you know it was the right fit for Vocalysd?
KH: I was about 6 months into understanding the industry and doing a lot of research, and I had a few bumps in the road in terms of connecting with the wrong people who were competitors that tried to adopt and execute my ideas for what would end up becoming Vocalysd.
Following one of those conversations I happened to Google conversation AI, and Symbl.ai came up. I got in touch with CEO Surbhi Rathore, who is so incredible and made me feel truly heard. On a call soon after she gave me a piece of founder advice that I will never forget: No one will deliver your journey the way you do — it is authentic to you.
That advice is what pushed me to tell my ideas to the world without the fear that others would copy and paste them. From there I met Managing Director of Symbl for Startups Anthony Claudia, and he’s super smart and really added a lot of value in terms of being able to bounce business-related ideas off of him.
So I would say that seeing what Symbl.ai does makes me realize it is a 100% trusted product. The team genuinely cares about the business and about us as well.
Can you explain some of the benefits of human-to-human speech analysis as it pertains to customer engagement?
KH: When it comes to customer engagement, people want to be heard in a conversation.
Sometimes FAQs aren’t good enough and chatbots don’t cut it. Understanding speech and knowing how things were said and what was said in a contextual manner is so important for a business that wants to convey that it truly cares about its customers.
The engagement aspect is huge as well. Speech analytics offers a granularity and a contextual understanding that gives a “why” to how a conversation went. You can then link that to business problems and find the root cause and solutions that lead to the business doing better as well as retention of rising talent and developing the talent that needs help.
My favorite part is that you’re able to do this at scale. You’re not just analyzing successful calls, but all of the other conversations as well. With conversation and speech analytics you have the competitive advantage, and customers can see it and feel it and will want more of it.
How does Vocalysd compare to other kinds of conversation analytics software — what is the differentiating factor?
KH: Vocalysd creates a brave space for voice and text insights to be disseminated and developed. We are ensuring that the human voices behind the calls and chatbots are heard with accuracy and autonomy.
We have what we call a “Vocalysd score,” which is a one-dimensional customized health metric of a business that can be as granular as you like and incorporates the metrics that are most important to a business. We also offer clients a really in-depth dashboard of data that gives them the ability to define what “top-performing” means to them.
Lastly, clients appreciate our authenticity in terms of how we position ourselves as a small woman-owned business in South Africa.
Which Vocalysd features have your customers been most excited about?
KH: Customers are really liking our aggregate dashboard. It’s like their playground where they can have a look at what’s going on and dive deeper into the data.
They also love the summarization, which gives them a contextual high-level synopsis of a phone call. Trackers are incredible as well, because you can flag certain keywords as well as measure compliance by checking when things were said and how often they were said.
Basically everything we do with the data in terms of making it meaningful and valuable instead of just showing our clients numbers is what makes them excited, because they haven’t ever seen that level of detail.
How do you see Vocalysd evolving as the company gains users?
KH: Vocalysd at present is a very proudly South African company with great ambition to go beyond South African borders and into the stratosphere; anything is possible. We are officially launching in April 2022, and we have a growing interest in the U.K. and gained recognition in certain areas of the U.S.
In terms of evolving, we will keep building the software around our customers’ pain points and continue using our customers’ successes to guide business decisions.
Consistency and authenticity are not a compromise for us at Vocalysd. We offer thought leadership because it is essential for a sustainable future.
*This is dependent upon the scope of work, size of the organization and stakeholder integration.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
