To the average Joe, developing technology for call centers or sales teams may seem like a rather dull, overly niche career to pursue. But as almost any retail broker can testify, such technology is vital to both business development and meeting compliance requirements.
One firm that has been in the game for close to twenty years is VoiceSpin. Headed up by CEO Rommy El Ami, the company provides a range of different technological solutions to brokers as well as companies as disparate as Pizza Hut, SodaStream and Bank Leumi.
Though growing regulatory scrutiny may not be a welcome development for many retail brokers, developments in audio technology, such as voice-to-text processors and linguistic analysis, mean that VoiceSpin has been well-placed to cover financial firms' regulatory needs.
On Monday, Finance Magnates spoke to El Ami to get an idea of what exactly his firm does and how its solutions are being used by financial institutions.
Can you give a brief overview of what it is that VoiceSpin does?
VoiceSpin provides Call Center solutions including full telephony termination DIDs and a host of AI based systems including smart predictive dialers, call monitoring and recording, dashboards and reports, advanced automated speech analyzer and emotional analysis, plus solutions to suit all outbound and inbound call centers
Can you tell us what regulations you are helping companies to meet?
The technology helps with a host of compliance procedures. With GDPR, MIFID II and other local regulations - there is more pressure than ever on call centers. The solutions include manual and automatic call monitoring, call recording, and automated conversation analysis, all seamlessly integrated with any CRM.
How does your technology enable firms to better meet compliance requirements?
Each system tackles different issues. For example, the AI Auto Dialer not only ensures that Leads are distributed via algorithm to ensure the best chance of conversion, as it is connected directly to the CRM, there is no need to expose personal details to agents.
Rommy El Ami - VoiceSpin CEO (Source: VoiceSpin)
One of the key areas for outbound is making sure that sales and conversations fall within guidelines of local regulations. Financial regulators require that calls are not aggressive, or contain false promises or predictions on markets. They also require that calls and chats are recorded.
This is not an easy task, as traditionally this is a manual process that involves physically listening to a cross section of calls. This also limits the percentage of calls that can be screened.
By applying technology, this process can be more automated, offer a wider percentage of calls screened and limit human error. Each call can be screened automatically looking for both certain keywords that are problematic and also the emotional content of the call - was the agent aggressive, or if the potential client was agitated, or angry.
All of this is logged and alerts are sent to Compliance Officers as a flag to check that particular conversation. The conversation is transcribed and problematic areas are highlighted. This increases the efficiency of compliance and reduces the potential report by the public by being able to cover far more calls than manually trawling through hours of recordings.
What data points do you see firms taking from your technology and using to boost their marketing efforts?
Our systems pull information from the CRM and web site understanding a range of data points including: country, language, campaign, landing page, traffic source, plus information on cold leads. From the agent side, the systems can understand performance and suitability to the leads. The system combines both sides by lead and agent scoring based on the particular lead in order to automatically connect the right lead with the right agent and at the right time.
With regard to either sales or compliance efforts are there any weaknesses to an AI system as opposed to a human doing the same? How can you mitigate any potential risks that exist in an AI system?
An AI system is only as good as the parameters that are entered and the learning algorithm programmed. AI systems generally do not replace humans but enhance their capabilities to the a factor of “x.”
Our systems are visual, making it easy for each person in the organization to see what they need to see. The systems are flexible, not only does the technology learn, people learn too. We made it simple to edit terms. It means adding more phrases or keywords is simple and effective immediately.
Are there any interesting data points that you pick up on when analysing conversations? For instance, could you examine the language a salesperson is using to make them more convincing?
Our speech analysis system was designed to cover regulatory compliance but also as a learning tool to help sales teams better understand and therefore improve. The key factor in the system is that it not only analyzes the words but the emotion - therefore there is a complete context to the conversation.
The system can spot positive keywords and phrases, plus positive emotional response. Alerts can also be set up for these parameters as well and sent to sales managers. Not only can teams learn from conversations, but follow up calls can also be identified that have a high chance of closure.
Why should a broker use your service? If I look at two brokers, one that has used your services and one that hasn’t, what differences will I see between them?
Our clients tell us they chose VoiceSpin because of three factors: our systems are extremely stable, our service is excellent and our prices. These are good enough reasons for anyone from CEOs, VP Sales and IT Managers. Above these reasons is the increase in efficiency and results. Running a call center is a challenge. Smart technologies ensure that everyone in an organization is concentrating on what they do best and not managing technology.
