How to Win More Customers with Conversation Intelligence

How to Win More Customers with Conversation Intelligence

Boost customer experience by arming sellers with historical data for more personalized communication.

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Imagine how much time you waste keeping call notes and tracking conversation data. Probably a lot, since sales reps spend 70% of their week on non-selling tasks, according to the Salesforce State of Sales Report.

Computers, on the other hand, can do tasks much more quickly and productively than humans. One of the ways this is evident is in conversation intelligence. This powerful tool involves the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to extract meaningful insights from communications.

Read on to learn how conversation intelligence can help generate customer insights to increase your sales.

What you'll learn:

• What is conversation intelligence?
• The importance of conversation intelligence in sales
• How to find insights with conversation intelligence
• How conversation intelligence enhances customer experience
• Conversation intelligence best practices
• Choosing the right conversation intelligence tool

What is conversation intelligence?

Conversation intelligence uses AI and machine learning to collect and analyze a sales team's interactions with customers. Then, it provides them with insights to help drive sales growth.

After extracting information like pricing or competitor mentions from a sales team's voice (written) or video sources (video calls), conversation intelligence supplies insights like meeting summaries or trend identification. Teams can use this information to better understand their customers and improve their sales techniques, leading to more closed deals.

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The importance of conversation intelligence in sales

AI adoption in sales has become more widespread. According to the Salesforce State of Sales Report, 83% of sales teams with AI saw revenue growth in the past year versus 66% of teams without AI. On top of that, 80% of reps say AI makes it easy to get the customer insights they need to close deals versus 54% without AI. One of the ways teams are leveraging AI is with conversation intelligence, which benefits sales by:

• Providing better attention to customers: Conversation intelligence allows a sales rep to focus on actively listening and interacting with a customer instead of note-taking during a sales call. The technology provides transcripts of conversations and summarizes the call information. With that in hand, the sales rep can reference specific call details for personalized customer follow-up communications.
• Driving productivity: Conversation intelligence speeds up some of the tedious tasks that are part of the sales process. A sales rep can quickly access important moments from a conversation rather than sorting through piles of notes. The information is used for call summaries, which can be automatically entered into a customer relationship management (CRM) system and shared with sales leadership and other teams.
• Improving coaching methods: According to the Salesforce State of Sales Report, nearly half of sales teams use AI for conversational intelligence to support call coaching. This is when the AI points reps to coachable moments in their calls. Sales leaders can review voice and video call recordings and share their feedback with sellers by highlighting and commenting on relevant parts of the conversations. They can identify areas for improvement, such as developing better talk-listen ratios (how much a seller spoke versus the prospect) or objection handling, which can help enhance the seller's performance.

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How to find insights with conversation intelligence

One of the top capabilities of conversational intelligence is its ability to analyze calls for specific keywords and phrases. By defining custom keywords relevant to your business, you can gain a deeper understanding of your customers and prospects. After the conversation, the technology highlights your keywords, and you can analyze the specific parts of the call featuring those words. Above all, this analysis provides valuable insights to help move sales forward by addressing customer needs. Now, you can set triggers in your CRM and assign tasks for action items or next steps mentioned during the call, such as scheduling a meeting or replying to a question.

These are some keywords to consider:

• Competitor companies or competitor names of products and services
• Your product features or capabilities
• Customer sentiments, objections, or concerns
• Customer internal pain points or challenges
• Attitudes about pricing

For example, let's say a seller from a project management software company is having a sales call with a prospect from a technology company. The seller inputs custom keywords associated with its competitor and pricing because based on previous conversations, the seller knows the prospect is considering a lower-priced competitor's software. After the call, the conversation intelligence insights flag the competitor's name and cost. Finally, the seller receives an automated alert in their CRM notifying them to send a follow-up email offering the prospect a discounted price.

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How conversation intelligence enhances customer experience

Conversation intelligence can also help improve the customer experience by onboarding new sellers and getting them up-to-date quickly. Instead of a lengthy handover process with the previous sales rep, conversation intelligence offers essential historical data about previous communications with customers. That saves time and reduces the risk of mistakes.

With that intelligence at their fingertips, the new reps can confidently enter into customer calls, fully informed and positioned to tackle challenges. Consequently, this alleviates customer frustration from having to repeat previously shared information and builds trust between sellers and customers.

Some other ways that conversation intelligence can enhance the customer experience include:

• Personalization: Sales reps can personalize their customer communications based on details shared in past conversations. For example, if a customer mentions a business challenge on a call, the sales rep can address how their product offers a potential solution in their follow-up email.
• Boost customer satisfaction: Conversation intelligence analyzes customer sentiment such as tone and volume and sellers can use this information to pinpoint signs of dissatisfaction, such as a raised voice or negative words, and take steps to rectify them.
• Make product or service improvements: Conversation intelligence gathers customer feedback about a seller's product or service, such as a faulty part or poorly designed interface. As a result, your team can easily share feedback with product development to resolve issues.

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Conversation intelligence best practices

Organizations are prioritizing AI readiness by ensuring their sales teams can properly and effectively use AI. According to the Salesforce State of Sales Report, 44% of sales teams are taking steps to create training programs for employees ahead of AI adoption. Here are some best practices to use when implementing AI like conversation intelligence with your team:

• Align your sales goals with your conversation intelligence: Decide how your sales team can best leverage conversation intelligence to meet your sales goals. Making your sales quota and increasing sales revenue are common goals, but you could also consider shortening sales cycles or surpassing a competitor. Input custom keywords for your objectives and measure how your team is tracking.
• Evaluate how your actions impacted sales: Using insights, you can analyze sales calls to determine what actions led to an uptick in sales. First, use a sales analytics tool built into your CRM for visibility across the sales pipeline. Then, reinforce or re-evaluate those actions as needed. For example, if sellers are constantly offering discounted pricing for a prospect's pricing objection but that isn't closing more deals, then look for other approaches to overcome the objection.
• Improve sales meeting preparation: Train your sales team to review the previous customer call summaries as they prepare for their next meeting with a customer. The goal is to refer to specific points the customer made to show that the seller was actively listening and cared about what the customer was saying. Start the meeting by referring to the points, including quotes from the customer, and ask if the statements still align with where the customer is today.
• Maintain high-quality data: Sales processes can be hindered by poor data quality. Notably, almost one-third of sales professionals cite this for accurate AI outputs, according to the Salesforce State of Sales Report. Keep the customer data in your CRM up to date, centralized, and automatically synced for a unified view of all your customer interactions and insights from conversation intelligence and other areas of the sales process.
• Create a best practices library of call recordings: Gather the call recordings from your top performing sellers and create a library of best practices accessible to the team. Then, organize the library by specific skills and create playlists of calls for each category, such as price negotiation or handling negative feedback. Finally, use the library to onboard and train new hires and for coaching your sales team.

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Choosing the right conversation intelligence tool

A conversation intelligence tool uses natural language processing to understand and process human language and it is powered by AI to extract and organize the data. The conversation intelligence tool is usually built directly into a CRM. However, if your CRM is separate, ensure that it integrates with your conversation intelligence tool to sync with your customer data. You'll also want to look for a tool with scalability to accommodate more users and data as your team grows.

Look for a conversation intelligence tool with these features:

• Call recording, transcripts, and summaries: Automatically record voice and video calls and generate a transcript that includes a call summary, saving you time on note taking and reading over an entire transcript.
• Call analysis and insights: Ensure your conversation intelligence tool can be customized to your unique keywords, so your analysis and insights are tailored to your customers. Call insights should link to transcript fragments so you can easily refer to its context within the call recording if needed.
• Call trend dashboard: The conversation intelligence tool should identify patterns for trending topics or areas of competitive risk across your sales team's conversations. The capability recognizes the frequency of mentions over time and gives sales leaders a summary of insights related to pipeline opportunities.
• Alerts and notifications: 58% of sales professionals use AI for task reminders, according to the Salesforce State of Sales Report. Above all, you can help your team stay on top of action items following a call. Use a tool that lets you set up automated alerts to remind sellers of outstanding follow-up items from their conversations.
• Sales enablement: Consider the advantages of a conversation intelligence tool that helps with coaching and training. The tool sends a personalized call insights email to each sales rep with daily coaching recommendations, including relevant call recordings, a summary of insights, and details from the opportunity the call is related to.

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Make every sales conversation benefit from conversation intelligence

Conversation intelligence helps your organization get more out of your sales team's communications with customers. You'll automatically gain the AI-powered analysis and insights essential to understanding your customers' needs so you can deliver personalized interactions. With conversation intelligence in your back pocket, you can enhance your customers' experience and satisfaction to drive your sales forward.

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Piyusha Pilania is the Salesforce Consulting Manager at Horizontal Digital. With over a decade of experience in B2C and B2B sales, Piyusha transitioned from being a Salesblazer to a Salesforce Consultant. Her extensive sales background gives her a unique perspective in Salesforce consulting,... Read More allowing her to bring valuable insights.