This post was originally published in July 2023 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
Getting sales managers and account executives to work in perfect harmony is a tough task that impacts their success in closing deals.
Managers juggle many duties, from taking care of current business to training new sales reps. At the same time, account executives must keep up with new product features and customer needs, manage their deals, and meet their sales goals.
Nevertheless, small mistakes or communication delays can still push potential customers to rivals. That’s where conversation intelligence can step in. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are changing the game, using predictions and decisions to automate tasks based on what customers and prospects need. These smart systems keep learning, helping improve the user experience and boost conversion rates and sales pipelines.
In this guide, discover how conversation intelligence becomes a real-time mentor for your sales team. Learn how to use conversational AI assistants to analyze customer interactions, turn data into successful deals, improve onboarding, and pinpoint training opportunities.
- What Is Conversation Intelligence?
- What Is an Example of Conversation Intelligence?
- Why Is Conversation Intelligence Important?
- The Benefits of Conversation Intelligence for Sales Reps
- How Can Different Teams Leverage Conversation Intelligence?
- Call Tracking Software Versus Conversation Intelligence Platforms: What’s the Difference?
- Empower Your Team With Coaching in Highspot
What Is Conversation Intelligence?
Conversation intelligence is like having a smart coach for your sales reps. The technology analyzes speech and text interactions using artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP). It finds places where sellers, even top performers, can improve, suggests replies, and provides guidance.
Generative AI helps sales enablement teams and sales leaders to swiftly collect data, detect successful selling patterns, and guide their sales teams accordingly using automation and insights. This is accomplished while reducing the typical time and resources needed to get the job done.
What is an Example of Conversation Intelligence?
Conversation intelligence uses AI to record, transcribe, and analyze sales calls, emails, and other communications. It suggests real-time responses and relevant content and provides post-call feedback. Automation capabilities can update your customer relationship management (CRM) system, accurately forecast sales, and compile data for ongoing training, enhancing the entire sales team’s effectiveness.
For example, a rep is on a call with a prospect. They express concerns about the product’s cost and compatibility with their current software solutions. Conversation intelligence software will recognize these concerns through analysis. It will provide data and guidance on how to address the objections. This data is based on use cases from past experiences and may include evidence of cost savings from other customers or explaining seamless integrations with external systems. The conversational AI may present content cards that guide sales reps with the appropriate talking points, from discovery questions and objection handling to pricing specifics and competitive advantages.
After the call, the software can automatically update the CRM, highlighting objections and how they were addressed. It also provides performance insights, indicating areas where the seller excelled and where they might need to improve. This data can be used in sales training to improve the team’s performance.
Why is Conversation Intelligence Important?
Conversation intelligence boosts sales team performance by providing real-time assistance during sales calls. It can even offer feedback afterward. Plus, it tracks valuable customer interaction data and keeps your CRM up-to-date. This leads to stronger customer relationships and business outcomes.
A recent Forrester Global Marketing Survey (2022) shows that companies are catching on to the impact of AI on business operations: 27% of B2B organizations plan to invest significant effort in using AI to drive content recommendations as part of their strategies for implementing or advancing content capabilities over the forthcoming 12 months.
The Benefits of Conversation Intelligence for Sales Reps
Conversation Intelligence acts as a real-time coach and a post-call analyst for sales reps. It plays a crucial role in closing more deals and driving business growth by boosting rep confidence and enabling them to be their best.
The six benefits of using conversation intelligence solutions in sales include:
1. Boost sales rep productivity
Conversation intelligence software makes sales conversations more impactful. Unlike traditional call recordings, which don’t provide immediate results, it provides real-time insights, suggests content and context to reps, and automates administrative tasks like updating the CRM. This allows reps to focus more on the most essential part of their job: selling. Furthermore, it lets you refine your sales playbook and dashboards to streamline your processes and maximize efficiency.
2. Personalize customer interactions
Conversational intelligence helps businesses connect better with customers by paying attention to the specific details of conversations. This means more than just using their name – it’s about customizing responses based on preferences and past interactions. The goal is to create a more engaging experience that builds loyalty to the brand.
3. Turn data into successful deals
Conversation intelligence platforms will pinpoint customer challenges and suggest effective sales strategies based on machine learning algorithms. More importantly, they ensure important calls and meetings don’t spring surprises by providing notes, action items, and call summaries. Salespeople can tailor their messaging and approach and proactively address risks, increasing the chances of closing deals.
4. Provide better onboarding support
AI equips new sellers with knowledge from past interactions. Presenting insights from successful calls accelerates their grasp of customer challenges and how to solve them. This allows new reps to work with confidence as they get ramped up, which instills trust in prospects.
5. Identify training and development opportunities
Gone are the days when you manually score sales calls, which can be taxing and prone to error. With conversational AI, you can automatically score and assess 100% of your calls. It highlights areas where a rep might need improvement, providing clear guidance for further training and development.
6. Improve sales performance
Conversation intelligence analyzes customer feedback and sentiments. With objective data about customer experience, sellers will understand what is working and what is not. This allows salespeople and sales managers to make data-driven decisions that enhance performance and customer retention.
7. Improve follow-up
Generative AI can guide reps to the most effective follow-up based on prior conversations. This may include sending relevant content, arranging a demo, or scheduling a subsequent call.
Sales Onboarding Checklist
Besides leveraging conversational AI, our sales onboarding checklist can assist sales managers in devising a comprehensive plan that arms new sellers with knowledge and skills. It offers guidelines to define onboarding milestones, standardize competencies, engage new hires through practical activities, provide ongoing coaching, and assess program success using key metrics. In turn, you can streamline workflows, improve employee engagement, and lower churn.
How Can Different Teams Leverage Conversation Intelligence?
Conversation Intelligence can significantly benefit multiple teams within an organization, helping them perform their roles more effectively and make informed, data-driven decisions.
How Sales Teams Optimize Communication with Conversation Intelligence
Sales reps can use real-time insights from conversation intelligence software as part of their sales strategy to handle customer objections and enhance communications during key moments. Post-call conversation analytics can help tailor follow-ups, negotiate pricing, and identify areas for improvement.
Leveraging Conversation Intelligence for Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
Conversation intelligence software can identify common issues or concerns by analyzing conversations in a contact center or customer support department. This can guide the customer service or call center reps in resolving problems and improving overall customer satisfaction. It can also assist in training new team members with successful interaction examples.
Maximizing Marketing Strategies with Conversation Intelligence
Conversation intelligence can enhance marketing team strategies by identifying target markets and customer preferences, enabling personalized marketing. It aids in customer segmentation and identifying pain points, helping tailor sales processes and improve the customer journey. It measures campaign effectiveness, gauges customer sentiment, and predicts future campaign outcomes, assisting in program optimization.
Fueling Decision-Making with Conversation Intelligence for Business Leaders
By offering valuable, actionable insights, conversation and revenue intelligence helps business leaders steer their organization more effectively toward its goals. It provides insights into staff performance, identifies product and people issues, and highlights gaps and customer needs. All of this helps leaders make sound decisions.
Utilizing Conversation Intelligence for Employee Performance Analysis in HR Management
Conversation data can be valuable for HR professionals. It aids in evaluating agent performance and identifying high (and low) performers, guiding personalized coaching and training. It can also detect disengaged employees and ensure compliance with policies and procedures.
Guide Product Development and Enhancements with Conversation Intelligence
Insights from sales engagement can provide the product team with direct feedback on what customers like or dislike about the product or what features they might need. This can help development teams make data-driven decisions for product enhancements or new product development.
Call Tracking Software vs Conversation Intelligence Platforms: What’s the Difference?
While call tracking software concentrates on call recording data and metrics, conversational AI focuses on customer sentiment and understanding interactions. Both play pivotal roles in analyzing customer communications, yet each offers unique features.
Call tracking software is designed to monitor and record phone calls. It supplies metrics like call duration, caller ID, and caller location. Additionally, it can provide rudimentary analytics such as call volume, missed calls, and conversion rates. The primary function of this software is to generate general call data, record call activity, and deliver transcripts for manual analysis.
Conversation intelligence platforms and integrations offer more extensive insights into customer interactions across various channels – phone calls, emails, chatbots, and more. These platforms leverage AI to transcribe, understand, and interpret the context of customer conversations, leading to actionable data. This broader amount of detail and AI-driven analysis can significantly improve customer experience, seller performance, and overall business outcomes.
Empower Your Team With Coaching in Highspot
Conversation intelligence tools can transform your sales approach, turning customer interaction data into actionable insights. It offers multiple benefits, including improved sales rep guidance, enhanced onboarding, and targeted training opportunities. It expands beyond the sales teams to marketing, leadership, HR, and product development, providing a comprehensive view of customer interactions.
Highspot ensures that your team is always prepared, quick to respond, and can provide a personalized touch to every interaction. Our AI-powered platform helps identify key patterns, so you can quickly analyze and improve sales calls. It also automates transcriptions in different languages, note-taking, and follow-ups, making workflows more efficient.
On top of that, our conversation intelligence software allows for structured sales coaching by integrating meeting reviews into video practice exercises, as well as tailored rubrics and grading criteria. Sales teams can also share top-performing customer calls and resources through Highspot’s sales playbooks and training to help reps replicate effective strategies.
Get the most out of customer interactions with Highspot Copilot to improve sales skills and turbocharge performance. Ready to see it in action? Schedule a demo today!
