What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Revolutionizing Contact Centers: Convoso’s Cloud Solutions, ClearCaller ID Pro, and AI’s Transformative Impact
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
Uncover the future of contact center technology in our latest episode as we sit down with Nima Haikimi, the visionary CEO and co-founder of Convoso. Since its inception in 2006, Convoso has been a trailblazer in shifting contact centers from outdated premise-based systems to cutting-edge cloud solutions. Nima sheds light on the modern challenges sales-based contact centers face, from navigating complex compliance landscapes to tackling the rampant issue of calls being flagged as spam. Learn how Convoso’s innovative ClearCaller ID Pro is setting new standards in the industry, ensuring calls reach their intended recipients while maintaining strict compliance.
We'll also delve into the transformative impact of AI on contact centers. Explore how embracing advanced conversational AI not only enhances agent efficiency but also dramatically boosts lead engagement and sales performance. Hear compelling success stories from companies that have reaped the benefits of adopting these technologies. Plus, get insider insights from recent industry events like CCW, as Nima breaks down the competitive pressures driving the need for companies to develop their own CCaaS solutions. If you’re looking to stay ahead in the evolution of contact center technology, this episode is an essential guide.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody, super interesting topic today, where we dive into the world of conversational AI, leveraging that to drive sales, something we can all use a bit more of. Nima, how are you? I'm good. Evan, how are you? I'm well? Thanks for joining. Happy Friday to us all. Really intrigued by your team and the mission at Convoso. You've been at this game for a long time, well before all the Gen AI and AI hype, so maybe introduce yourself and the team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's been. Honestly, sometimes I forget how long it's been. We've been at it for this long and I truly love it. So I'm Nima Aikimi, the CEO and co-founder of Convoso. You know a little bit about myself. I'm very, very passionate about self-development, so anything that helps improve. You know the way I am from reading books, workshops, you know having mentors, and that really translated to Convoso as a business when we launched it in 2006, at the time when, you know, premise-based software for contact centers was still the norm, and we came in with this whole revolution of the cloud and really taking that into the cloud for us for sales-based call centers, and so it's been a long journey since then, and today, really, we look at convoso being AI-powered sales platform that really fuels growth by forging more connections and supercharging prospects, engagements, and the most important part really is that scale. That's really what we specialize in.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a great mission and much needed in this complex landscape. Tell us about the challenges you're facing. You know it's not easy to make and receive phone calls these days, given all the compliance requirements and all of the issues around spam. So you've come up with some solutions there. Maybe set the scene for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so look, it used to be back in the day, right, you would. I mean, things have changed a lot in that period of time where you would just anybody could get a list, call the lead and you were good to go. Now that also caused a lot of problems because people were getting calls they did not want those calls, right. So there were changes made in the TCPA where now you're required to get consent for your leads, which was a great change. To be honest with you, at the end of the day you want to call someone who wants to receive that phone call, and that change was implemented a while back, which was fine until again, bad actors are abusing it right by again just calling anybody and everybody.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, not everybody follows the rules, and that's just life, right. Some people follow the rules, some people choose to ignore the rules, and that's just life, right. Some people follow the rules, some people just choose to ignore the rules. So, as a result of that, carriers decide to take matters into their own hands and decide which calls, when you're making them, will go through and which won't. Like you said, you're going to get scammed, spammed to a marketer, and if you get a call like that you're not going to pick it up. It's plain, simple, right or or another side of it getting blocked, I mean, that's just, you're going to have your whole business is basically on hold and it's not going to perform.
Speaker 2:If that happens which is very unfortunate, because there are many businesses like our customers who do it in a compliant manner. They are getting the consent. They're actually having consumers who are raising their hands saying, hey, I'm looking for information on insurance, and when they fill out that form, if the carrier is putting that flag on it, they're not going to be able to get through to that consumer, even though they've been asked to be reached out to. So that's kind of the challenge that many, many sales-based contact centers have today when it comes to getting the consumer on the phone. And so for us, we're really passionate about making sure our customers are succeeding, but in a compliant manner, so that they can stay in business and be profitable Two very different things that don't always go hand in hand. But if you want to thrive in this space of outbound sales, you need to do it in a compliant manner, and we've really honed in on how we go about doing that over the past. What is it now? 18 years?
Speaker 1:Well done, so let's dive in. One of your solutions to this challenge is called ClearCaller ID Pro. That's quite a mouthful, but maybe dissect that. What does it mean? How does it help call centers in particular?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure thing. So you know the thing about what we talked about the challenge of the calls getting flagged. There are a lot of solutions out there that might do this. Yet the fact that your calls are being placed, you're placing calls in a manner that is going to reduce the chances of the call being flagged right. You don't want to over dial your leads, you don't want to call too much. So there's a prevention component of it on how to do that, and so that's one piece of it is to make sure that not only are your calls being placed in a good way, but making sure it's prevented from being flagged. And if it is, we will let you know that the number is being flagged, and in an automated way, what we call automated remediation, which is taking the number out from being used when the calls are being placed right, so that those calls are not going to get unanswered, which impacts your contact rate, which is essentially the consumer, the percentage of calls that pick up from the calls that are being placed. So there is a way to prevent it making sure that the system is managing the calls in a good way and then, if it does get flagged because no system out there can guarantee even a Wells Fargo.
Speaker 2:You've gotten a call, maybe from a bank, before right and it's a scam or spam. It happens all the time, unfortunately. The same thing happens for our customers. So when it does, we have the ability to automatically take it out of the calling campaign and once it is back and clean, it will put it back in there. So there's a lot of other capabilities out there from automatically taking it out, giving you analytics around it to give you visibility into which numbers or which calling campaigns are getting blocked or flagged, and so this whole system as a whole gives you the ability to maintain the call ID reputation, which will then impact your contact rate in a positive way, so that you can actually get through to the consumer who decided to get more information on your product or services.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic approach. You know, in our industry the call center, contact center industry there's so much legacy technology out there. I guess the idea is if it's not broke, don't fix it. But a lot of this technology seems pretty broken. All of us have had these awful experiences, as you know. Consumers how do you stay on top of the latest technology? How do they work with someone like you? Do you have to come in and do just a pure refresh, or are you integrating with existing contact centers? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so no, I mean, at that point in time you would be replacing whatever platform it is that you are using, which oftentimes there's this fear around. Oh my God right. Point in time you would be replacing whatever platform it is that you are using which you know oftentimes there's this fear around. Oh my god right, making that, that pain of switching. Uh, it can be felt a lot. Like you said, if, like it, you know, if it's not broken, why fix it? Or in those manners.
Speaker 2:And oftentimes you don't know what's what's broken, because with these kind of um operations, with calling campaigns, where you could have a good amount of leads in there, you don't know what calls are going through, which ones are not, which ones are going to flag, unless you have a good system in place. So for us it's really about first understanding what your performance is like. What are you doing today? Where are your contact rates, where are your conversion rates, your success rates, so that we can evaluate is this a good fit for your business? We don't want to just bring on a customer if we feel like we're not the right fit. It just doesn't make sense. So it's understanding their performance. Then we do an assessment of areas of improvement, where it walks the customer through various steps to ensure that, when the switch is made, you're actually going to do better than how you did before, because that's the whole point of making any change in technology.
Speaker 2:Right is that there's an improvement in what you're currently seeing, and that's been something that, personally, for me, I'm very passionate about. At the core of my values is really continuous growth about. At the core of my values is really continuous growth, and I love seeing the fact that when we bring on a customer and we see their performance improve. That's what keeps me going every day to come to work and be there to see that we made a difference for our customers, especially in this day and age where it's become more challenging to do outbound sales or just any sort of sales. In the environment that we're in, with a lot of competition, you have, you know, google Ads, facebook, whatever you name it You're fighting for the consumer's attention, the bottom line so you want to make sure you have technology that can engage the consumer in a responsible yet effective manner.
Speaker 1:Well said. So, as you know better than I, we're in the midst of this AI wave and it's no more impactful like right now, today, than in the conversational AI space with contact centers and customer experience. Just a huge opportunity. How do you see what's happening there firsthand, on the ground and what's the opportunity this year and next for AI?
Speaker 2:the ground- and what's the opportunity this year and next for AI? You know I mean it's endless opportunity. We all know we've just barely scratched the surface of it, right, and technology moves so fast that I'm sure a year from now we're going to look back and be wowed by how much difference it's really made. And so for us you know, the way we looked at it and started it out is again is how do we engage the consumer in a way that does it in a responsible manner? And for us, that's been the ability to really schedule first, to begin with, schedule a conversation with the consumer once they fill out a form, instead of maybe you know reaching out with a phone call. Try to reach out to them with a text message using generative AI, which will understand how to respond to them in order to get a call scheduled, so that the call is made at a time when they're available, when they want to talk to you, versus the other way around.
Speaker 2:That's been the starting piece of it, and what's really gotten us excited about not just the conversational AI component, gotten us excited about just not just the conversational AI component, but how do we implement that into every piece of the puzzle when it comes to, you know you have the agents, you have the admins and supervisors, and then at the core of it, you do have the consumer. So giving the customer insights into the consumers to understand what's working, what's not working, you know the quality of their leads, or maybe which are the best agents and what are the things that you should be telling them. It's the possibilities are endless. So for us, it's supporting the contact center to create what I call these. You know, super. They could be super admins, super agents, right, super supervisors, if you want to look at it. So it's just creating this amplified version of the best version of yourself by showing you what that looks like using AI.
Speaker 1:I love that Really profound Care to share any success stories or customer anecdotes. I know you can't always talk about those kind of things, but any examples where you made a big difference that you're allowed to share.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot, in the sense that you do have a lot of legacy systems out there where they've just been used to using for many years and then it gets to a point where the technology is outdated. So I would say, without picking a very specific one, there have been many customers on our website, as you look at it, that have grown with the overall number of the base of users. So that would be. They came on board with, for example, 50 agents and because we were able to engage their leads in a better way, they had this surplus of leads, which then allowed them to many times double or triple their headcount.
Speaker 2:Why? Because, again, if systems that you have in place are not able to reach out to those leads successfully, they're just stuck in your database and, as we know, nobody ever said don't give me more leads, right? Every sales organization always says give me more, more, more and more. So what happened is, when you have a system in place that doesn't effectively convert them or get them on the phone, you're just building up that base. So when you come on board with us, we do a better job at it. So now you need more agents to handle those leads and therefore it increases. And again, there's been, time and time again, cases of us doubling or tripling the sales force as a result of how we've been able to help them engage their leads in a more effective and efficient manner.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, doing more with less, that's the name of the game these days, and I see you're pretty active out in the marketplace. You just got back from CCW and, by the way, that was hilarious that's your booth. I wasn't there this year, but that looks fun. What were some of the takeaways from CCW or other events where you were recently?
Speaker 2:So for us, really, it's interesting. Right now you have the big one is really every large, you could say either technology company or communication company wants to provide their own CCaaS platform, meaning you have Microsoft getting in the game Zoom. You have many others that want to provide their offering as a platform, even Google, right, which is interesting because this is really a massive market. And so that was one piece of takeaway. And the second is everyone, as we all know, is talking about AI, ai, ai, AI. I think we're all getting numb to the word AI and to me, really, it's about can you actually execute on it versus just talking about it. So those are the two areas.
Speaker 2:And going back to the big takeaway on the CCaaS side of things, a lot of people are talking about customer service from an inbound perspective, right, meaning, usually, when you think about customer service, you're thinking about receiving a, some sort of communication from a consumer and waiting for that, are waiting for that, and what we're seeing is we're seeing this big shift where, yes, that's still the case, but you also have, because of the advancements of AI, the agents are more efficient now. So now they're waiting a lot more and have a lot more time on their hands, like the utilization rate has come down, so there's a lot of availability. And so there is this demand now to proactively engage the customer that you have, versus just sitting there to hear from them, and so that's a shift that we're seeing, and we've been hearing a lot more walking through CCW, which makes sense. Right Again, everybody's fighting for the consumer's attention. So how do we retain the customer, consumer's attention?
Speaker 2:So how do we retain the customer? Because, as we all know, getting a customer and keeping them versus getting a new one is what do they say what? Seven to 10 times more costly to get a new one. So why don't we do a better job at keeping and retaining our customers? And so those are the conversations that we've been hearing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great point. Well, maybe with ClearCaller ID I can answer my phone again, because I've just stopped answering my phone. So, uh, I assume a lot of us are in the same boat. Uh, so, you know, fixing that huge challenge would would make a big difference. Uh, so we're, you know, entering the summer months, any any particular travel or any other events coming up for you and the team, or is it a little bit a chance to regroup for the busy fall season?
Speaker 2:We're always, I would say almost year-round, traveling for some sort of a conference or whatnot. And on a business level, yeah, we have contactio, which is a conference for for call, specifically on calls and marketers around that. That's coming up, I believe, sometime in September, so past summer, and then I got to see what else we have going on. But personally, I am getting married in a month, so my schedule is a bit all over the place, oh, okay, well, congratulations on that of going on.
Speaker 2:But personally, I am getting married in a month, so my schedule is a bit all over the place.
Speaker 1:Congratulations on that Short break Not too short. This is hopefully a big deal. Take a lot of time. Thanks so much for sharing the insights and the update from an insider's perspective. Definitely a lot of overlooked topics that you brought out in the contact center industry. So really helpful insights and thanks everyone for watching, reach out to them and follow their handles on social media. You guys do a good job. You put out a lot of great content and fun stuff. So well done, thank you. Thank you, evan. Thanks so much. Thanks An. So well done. Thank you, thank you, evan. Thanks so much. Thanks, anima. Take care. Take care, bye-bye.