Conversation Intelligence: The key to success in customer conversations

As a manager, do you often find yourself sifting through countless customer conversations your team has daily? It’s important, but it can be incredibly time-consuming. Balancing thorough analysis with avoiding micromanagement isn’t simple.

You want every customer interaction handled with care. They’re the heartbeat of your business, crucial for fostering relationships and driving leads. But with constant calls, messages, and emails, it’s overwhelming.

That’s where conversation intelligence comes in. It’s like a trusted companion, guiding you through complex interactions with confidence. You can really get into each conversation without spending time on manual analysis. Analyzing the tone, sentiment, and key points with precision is done for you!

But most importantly, conversation intelligence liberates you from micromanagement. Instead of constantly monitoring your team, you can trust they have the tools to excel. You can focus on guiding, coaching, and supporting them without hovering.

However, finding an effective conversation intelligence platform that can support you in this quest can be quite challenging. That’s exactly what this guide can help you with.   

In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about conversation intelligence software and how your business can harness the power of conversational AI to enhance buying experiences. 

What is conversation intelligence software?

Conversation intelligence is a category of software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze speech or text with the objective of deriving critical insights from conversations between reps and customers.

The technology works by transcribing conversations and analyzing them, often in real-time, to gain insights into what was said, how it was said, the context of the conversation, and the overall sentiment.

The four key components of conversation intelligence include:

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP enables computers to understand human language and process it in the form of voice or text data matching the writer or speaker’s sentiment and intent.
2. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR): ASR enables computers to comprehend human voice inputs, use speech-to-text to identify the query, filter out background disturbance, and simulate a human-like conversation.  
3. Machine Learning (ML): AI-powered machine learning employs statistical models and algorithms to detect patterns and make predictions. It helps the system learn from the gathered data and optimize its responses based on comprehension of the human language.  
4. Data Mining: Developers use data mining to enhance the functionality of a system by discovering insights and patterns from conversational data. In other words, it is used to extract usable details from large amounts of data.

How conversation intelligence help your agents

Conversational AI technology can simplify and enhance the operations of your management, marketing, and sales teams. It can save you a great deal of labor and time.

With a call center’s conversational AI, 100% of customer interactions are accounted for and recorded, leaving no room for error. It can also help deduct procedural mistakes on time before they open your company up to fines or penalties.

The conversion data can also be integrated with CRMs to enhance buying experiences, augment conversions, and, eventually, drive better returns.

How does Conversation Intelligence Work?

Conversation intelligence technology uses artificial intelligence to analyze and optimize conversations in sales calls, demos, and customer support interactions. AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to convert the words you say into text.

The system then analyzes the text to extract important information about your customers’ needs, wants, and concerns. 

After the software processes all this data, it can generate reports on sales performance metrics like sentiment, buying moments, call conversions, revenue from calls, average deal size, and more.

In some cases, conversation intelligence software can work in real time, meaning it can give you hints and insights about your call while you’re in the middle of it or even suggest what to say! This helps personalize your pitch and say just the right things that land well with customers and prospects.

Best Practices for Improving Conversation Intelligence

From designing corporate-wide objectives to making and monitoring significant improvements, conversation intelligence can greatly impact your business operations.

Here are some best practices to make the most of conversation intelligence:

• With CI tools, agents can prioritize their interactions and ensure that the conversation takes place in context rather than in the dark. As these tools are linked to customer data, the interactions can be directly mapped to the current stage of the customer journey.

• Monitoring agents’ performance becomes so much easier with a conversation intelligence solution. As the leader of the sales team, you can efficiently keep tabs on your agents’ success – their knowledge level, skill gaps, behavior, etc. without burdening them with distracting note-taking or similar tasks for performance measurement.

• With CI tools, you can develop a marketing approach or a growth strategy using the exact phrases or keywords audiences have selected to explain their personal experiences with your brand.

• By gaining key insights into customer behavior, you can understand how customers think, what they want, and feel, and take a proactive approach to fine-tuning each interaction to ensure a positive buyer experience and drive more revenue.     

11 Key Features of Conversation AI

The type of features available largely depends on the type of conversation intelligence platform you have picked. Different vendors may offer different features. 

That said, here are some of the must-have features of real-time conversation intelligence for sales:

1. Real-Time Transcript

This is an important and basic feature of any call intelligence solution. It involves simply recording conversations between sales reps and their prospects, transcribing calls in real time, and analyzing them for key phrases or other indicators of success.

2. AI Scoring

In order to gain insights into their performance, each agent receives a score on how well they followed their call playbook and how well they adhered to best practices. Using natural language understanding, your software should be able to accurately judge if what an agent said was on point, or should be improved (and how they can improve it).

3. AI-powered Chatbots

AI chatbots combine the power of NLP and machine learning to simulate human interaction through text inputs and voice commands. Using this feature, you can easily automate responses to customer inquiries, equip your customers to find the required data in real-time, and perform tasks without any human intervention.   

4. Listening Skills

Great things happen when you pay attention to what your customers say. After all, every amazing conversation begins with active listening. However, listening to millions of users can be difficult.

Here’s when conversational AI technology comes to your rescue. With intent discovery, multilingual conversations, and AI recommendations, it serves as an effective listening tool that can help you enhance the overall customer experience.  

5. Coaching Insights

High-performing salespeople don’t just spend hours reading and implementing the latest tips on how to sell more effectively.

They also receive expert guidance from their sales managers, who analyze recorded calls and identify where reps are doing well and where they can improve. But you can’t always be there for your team, and sometimes you just don’t have enough time to give proper feedback.

Conversational intelligence software does that for you. It automatically analyzes your conversations and generates insights that help you replicate top performers’ behaviors across your entire team.

6. Call Recording and Analytics Software

Call recordings are analyzed for important moments that indicate whether reps are following or deviating from their call plan/script. This lets you easily see which behaviors correlate with success or failure. 

Moments should be tagged by category so you can easily find them later when coaching reps or analyzing trends across your entire sales team.

7. Active Engagement

The ability to amplify customer engagement and offer personalized experiences is another key feature of conversational AI. In addition to providing tailored experiences, conversational AI interacts with customers wherever, whenever, in several languages, and across multiple channels.

However, it’s important to keep your bot’s answers short to prevent customers from getting distracted. And don’t forget that some situations require a human conversation nevertheless.

8. Sentiment Analysis

Sales reps often struggle to determine how their customers feel about them and their company. 

Conversation intelligence tools provide sentiment analysis based on voice tone, word choice, and other cues. This helps reps understand how customers react to what they’re saying during calls so they can adjust accordingly.

9. Dialogue Scripting for a Seamless User Experience and Empathy

Good conversations require so much more than just a simple response. Your AI interface may have all the features in the world, but they’re useless when customers are unwilling or unable to proceed with them.

This can be avoided through smart conversation design and dialogue scripting, which is an integral feature of a good conversational AI.  

While providing a factually correct response is indispensable, an additional touch of empathy and humanity is still something that drives customer satisfaction.

10. Live Agent Assist

This feature integrates AI directly into live customer interactions, providing real-time support to agents. For instance, during a call, the tool can suggest responses or provide relevant information, helping agents think faster and boost their confidence.

Having an AI tool assist your agents’ lives makes them think double as fast and have triple the confidence.

11. Integration with Backend Systems and CRM

Integrating the software with your internal systems, such as knowledge bases and CRM databases, can take its utility to the next level. It allows for automatic sharing of conversation intelligence data between the platforms, ensuring that agents have access to comprehensive customer information and insights during interactions. This streamlines workflows and enhances data accuracy.

How can a business benefit from conversational AI technologies?

• With conversational AI, businesses gain deep insights into customer behavior and preferences. For instance, a retail company can uncover demand for specific product features, guiding targeted development efforts and driving sales. This can help improve your sales and marketing strategy.
• Conversational AI delivers personalized customer experiences across touchpoints. For example, a hospitality company using AI-powered chatbots provides instant responses to inquiries, improving satisfaction and freeing staff for in-person service.
• Automation and streamlining via conversational AI enable businesses to operate more effectively. For instance, a financial services firm reduces wait times and improves response rates by using AI-powered chatbots for customer support, leading to cost savings and increased satisfaction.
• AI equips sales teams with insights to optimize performance. For example, a software company identifies common objections during sales calls, enabling reps to tailor pitches and increase deal closure rates.
• Integrating conversational AI streamlines operations and improves efficiency. For instance, a healthcare provider automates appointment scheduling with virtual assistants, freeing staff for patient care and enhancing satisfaction.
• Conversational AI tools provide actionable insights from analyzing conversational data. For example, a marketing agency identifies trends in customer feedback, enabling more targeted campaigns and higher engagement.
• Conversational AI enables businesses to scale customer service operations without sacrificing quality. For example, an e-commerce retailer deploys chatbots during peak demand, ensuring timely assistance and maintaining satisfaction.
• Leveraging conversational AI sets businesses apart by delivering superior customer experiences. For example, a telecommunications company offers 24/7 support across multiple channels, attracting more customers and increasing market share.

Who Should Use Conversation Intelligence Software?

The advantages of conversation intelligence software extend across various departments within a business. Consider these teams as potential users of conversational artificial intelligence:

1. Sales Teams

As the main source of revenue, sales teams can use conversation intelligence to learn more about how to close deals with prospects.

With this information, they can improve their sales processes, increase their closing ratios, and boost their revenues.

2. Customer Support Teams

Customer support teams can use conversation intelligence to improve their customer service skills and get more done in less time. For example, they can use natural language generation to answer user queries with just a few clicks.

All in all, they can provide better customer service while decreasing the number of support tickets they receive.

3. Business Leaders

Business leaders can’t be present in all essential business meetings — internal or external, but they can use conversation intelligence to stay updated on each of these meetings. And even if they’re present, it’s always good to be able to revisit important conversations, whether it’s for recapping key points, reviewing decisions made, or ensuring everyone is on the same page.

4. Marketing Teams

Marketing teams can use conversation intelligence to better understand the needs and desires of buyers, which helps them create more effective marketing campaigns and content.

5. Human Resource Teams

Human resource teams can leverage software like AI-powered bots to simplify and streamline the entire recruitment process. Certain platforms also enable HR teams to provide accurate and instant responses to common employee queries.

Does the Software Share Insights While You Are on The Call or Once the Call Is Done?

Conversation intelligence and sales acceleration software give us insights after the call.

The AI technology monitors dialer calls and web conferences and transcribes in detail the topics discussed, issues raised, responses provided by your team, call duration, the sentiment tracked by AI, and a general indicator of whether the call went well or not. 

Your teams can then review the reports generated, analyze flagged events/conversations, and address any concerns.

The calls and video conferences are recorded, and the conversational AI reports can be used alongside the recordings to manage performance.

Conversation intelligence software compared

There are several options when it comes to the best conversation intelligence solution. There’s JustCall, Gong, and Wingman — the most popular choices for a wide range of reasons.

Deciding which conversational intelligence platform is right for you largely depends on why exactly you need it. To help you select the best conversational intelligence software, here is a detailed comparison of some of the top-rated CI platforms in the industry.

1. JustCall AI

Best For: Transcript analysis of sales calls, customer sentiment analysis, personalized coaching insights, outbound and inbound call tracking, and sales performance management.

Unique Features: JustCall AI is a CI platform that serves as a natural extension of JustCall.

The software works by capturing a variety of call data, like key moments, customer buying patterns and sentiments, etc., to empower sales teams to sell smarter and close more deals.

Its noteworthy features include:

• Live agent assist that provides reps with a manuscript conversation checklist that helps them shape a winning pitch and convert more leads.
• AI call scoring. It allows you to provide unbiased feedback at scale.
• Embedded intelligence with Helpdesk and CRM integrations.
• A powerful dashboard that provides access to agents’ performance, call scores, and key insights for effective analysis of the team’s performance.

Pros:

• Easy to navigate through the dashboard
• Quick creation and analysis of real-time reports, customer surveys, statistics, and sales
• Robust customer support

Cons:

• Doesn’t support real-time video recording
• Lack of call save logs
• Sudden call drops due to poor internet connection

Price:

The JustCall AI pricing plans start at $49 per month per user (billed annually).

2.SalesLoft

Best for: Contact management of new leads and existing contacts, workflow management, and execution of digital selling tasks.

Unique features: Salesloft is a sales engagement platform that assists sellers in communicating with buyers, getting more leads, and upselling to drive better revenue. Its key features include:

Built-in Google Calendar integration to book appointments with prospects. An integrated CRM system to manage your contracts, customers, leads, and more across platforms like Outlook or Gmail.

Inbound call analysis to track best practices during prospecting calls for improved performance.

Pros:

• Hassle-free and quick setup or installation and maintenance
• Easy-to-use interface
• Completely customizable solutions that work well for both large and small businesses

Cons:

• Poor customer support
• Lack of complete dashboard metrics
• Clunky billing

Price: The basic plan starts at $75 for the group version and goes up to $125 per month per user for the enterprise edition.

3. Clari

Best For: Actionable conversation intelligence, sales coaching, agent performance management, and call analytics.

Unique Features: Clari is a CI tool that assists sales teams with actionable insights, real-time coaching, and pipeline visibility. Its key features include:

• Lead Facilitation – Offers a chatbot to initiate conversations with leads, automatically contacts leads and calculates which leads are more likely to convert, and uses NLP to schedule meetings.
• Performance Analysis – Provides real-time training and coaching to sales reps and analyzes and tracks their performance.
• Sales Analysis – Leverages data to measure ROI and predict the profitability of future projects. Facilitates sales revenue projection based on analysis of trends and market surveys, and historical sales data.
• Real-time battle cards, a call library, game tapes, call recording, and deal central.

Pros:

• Easy-to-use mobile application
• Excellent keyword filtering from transcripts.
• Easy to clip call recordings

Cons:

• Inaccurate transcription of sales calls
• Doesn’t support video recording during online meetings
• Irrelevant sales insights at times

Price: The basic plan starts at $60 per user per month.

4. Gong

Best For: Sales enablement, call recording, sales coaching, and sales acceleration.

Unique Features: The Gong platform captures and analyzes customer interactions to provide valuable insights at scale to enable customer-facing teams to determine the right actions for winning outcomes. Its key features include:

• Sales Management – Gong facilitates sales gamification, live pipeline management, activity tracking, and account-based analytics.
• Coaching and Training – Offers training and content for new hires, organizes knowledge from experienced sales reps, and records pitches for future reference.
• Call Analytics – Analyzes recorded sales calls using machine learning. Utilizes analytics to score and qualify calls in real-time.  

Pros:

• Easy to find specific details or keywords
• Quick transcription of customer conversations
• Robust customer support

Cons:

• Low upload speed
• Limited access to call history
• The call link shared with prospects expires soon

Price: An estimate of the total cost is $5000 (base price) + $1200 per year per user.

People Intelligence vs. Market Intelligence vs. Revenue Intelligence

Conversational intelligence technology, like sales acceleration software, derives three types of intelligence. Let’s discuss what they are.

1. People Intelligence

People intelligence is the process of using AI technology to derive insights about the stakeholders of a company.

This includes customers, employees, third-party personnel, investors, directors, and any other person who plays a role in the operations of the company. Conversational AI can, for example, help recruiters find the best-fitting candidate by listening in on candidate-employer conversations.

The AI technology can monitor calls between customer service agents and customers to identify how agents score on factors like empathy, inclusivity, optimism, knowledge of product/service/process, helpfulness, creativity, and more.

People intelligence can also help determine how well sales personnel is pitching a product/service and how persuasive their skills are in converting leads.

2. Marketing Intelligence

Marketing intelligence is the smart insights about a campaign’s performance in the market.

With conversational AI, chatbot interactions with prospects and customers can be monitored and used to make chatbot engagements more human-like. The actions that customers take when engaging with the bot can also be recorded and analyzed to predict lead or customer behaviors.

Chatbots powered by conversational AI can help companies respond to social media comments, up-sell and cross-sell products, and track audience engagement with retargeting campaigns.

This technology can also monitor brand mentions and the sentiment with which the brand is mentioned on social platforms.

Conversational AI can also help look through large marketing data and find consumer trends. These trends can be harvested to personalize email marketing write-ups which increase CTRs.

3. Revenue Intelligence

Revenue intelligence refers to any insights that can help the company drive revenue.

Call intelligence solutions collect insights by monitoring conversations between various company stakeholders and use artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify any inefficiencies or gaps in any of the company’s revenue functions.

The collective actions of all stakeholders of the company, specifically in a revenue-generating capacity, are analyzed to generate smart and powerful strategies that will help the business meet its goals.

The AI looks at historical data and trends, analyzes buyer sentiment signals and contemporary buying scenarios, and empowers companies to conduct robust data analysis to help them address any problems affecting revenue generation.

Why Do Sales Teams Need Battle Cards?

One of the key roles of conversation intelligence is as a sales acceleration software. One of the ways it helps support sales functions is by producing battle cards that are rich with insights.

Think of a battle card as a lightsaber for the sales team.

Just like the iconic Star Wars weapon could cut through pretty much anything and act as both a defensive and offensive tool for its wielder, a battle card performs a similar role for sales representatives.

Battle cards are created using the people, marketing, and revenue intelligence a company gathers through conversational intelligence. These cards typically contain a variety of information, such as the following:

• Brand details
• Brand USP
• Product name
• Product details
• Product features
• Target audience analysis
• Stage of the buying journey
• Buying sentiment
• Competitor analysis
• Pricing options
• Potential questions by prospects and best answers to provide

These information-rich cards allow the sales representatives to navigate conversations with prospects and returning clients by smartly and seamlessly handling challenging questions or problems during the pitch.

Battle cards are an essential tool for sales reps for the following reasons:

• They allow salespersons to predict the direction in which the conversation is likely to take.
• They coach salespersons on how to manage comparisons to competing brands and products successfully.
• They help sales teams plan for various selling situations and use case scenarios.
• They help sales reps personalize the pitches they make to each customer.
• They forecast the number of conversions/closes and the failure rate.
• They remind sales reps about brand partnerships, upcoming offers, and currently running discount or rewards programs.
• They offer technical information to prevent product demo setup issues.
• They contain value-added information that can help the company provide a better sales and customer service experience.

Best Practices for Using Battle Cards

Here are some best practices to follow for the successful utilization of your battle cards:

• Make the battle card easily accessible by storing where your reps spend the maximum time.
• Your internal knowledge base would be an ideal choice where the reps can update lead files and take notes.
• Update the battle cards regularly to incorporate the changes that occur as your product evolves.
• Track the usage of battle cards using statistics such as the number of clicked cards to determine the most used battle card.    

Modern Solution for Modern Challenges

Modern challenges require modern solutions. Conversation intelligence is one such modern solution that promises to change the game for sales and support agents.

With so many benefits, it’s no surprise that contact centers around the world are aggressively choosing conversation intelligence software. 

Here’s how conversational AI can help your business succeed:

Overcoming Resistance to Change

Historically, the impact on employees was a major challenge for organizations that embraced digital transformations, as they were implemented without proper guidance, leading to a negative experience.

With the advances in NLP and AI, businesses can implement their transformation projects smoothly and holistically.

Data Privacy Concerns

With the AI approach, it’s easier to comply with customer data privacy regulations. As there’s no need to store any sensitive personal information, the risk of fines for data privacy law violations is eliminated.   

Integration with Existing Tools and Systems

Conversational AI can be seamlessly integrated with existing sales automation platforms and tools, including CRM software, to deliver an exceptional experience for both customers and sales teams.

As it can be easily integrated with appointment booking platforms, AI virtual assistants can book appointments and update records automatically.

Ensuring Consistency across Teams

Nothing matters more to a customer than receiving the same level of support every time they contact your team.

Conversational AI reduces many mundane and redundant tasks reps perform daily, which helps improve consistency across your company.   

Wrapping up

Conversation intelligence in sales literally takes operational efficiency to a different level. It offers invaluable insights, streamlines operations, and empowers teams across various departments.

As a manager, you’re familiar with the delicate balance of thorough analysis and avoiding micromanagement. Conversation intelligence acts as a trusted ally, freeing you from manual analysis while empowering your team to excel. With real-time insights and seamless integration, it revolutionizes customer engagement and decision-making.

However, selecting the right platform can be daunting. Options like JustCall AI, SalesLoft, Wingman, and Gong offer unique features, requiring careful consideration to find the best fit.

Ultimately, conversation intelligence software isn’t just a tool; it’s a catalyst for growth. Thanks to AI-driven insights and automation, businesses can enhance customer experiences, drive revenue, and stay competitive.