What Is Conversation Intelligence and How Does It Help You Create Personalized, Scalable Coaching Programs?

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What Is Conversation Intelligence?

​​Enhancing your sales team’s customer connection and conversation skills is the most effective way to drive revenue. In practice, however, you are limited in your ability to watch to live calls to assess how your team is doing objectively. Instead, when asking what is conversation intelligence, you can automatically identify individual and team skill gaps within the flow of work using a science-based, Artificial intelligence (AI) -driven conversation intelligence platform.

According to g2: “Conversation intelligence is software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze speech or text in order to derive data-driven insights from conversations between sales agents and customers.”

In other words, conversation intelligence solutions are intelligent software applications you can use to capture and evaluate sales calls. The right tool can help you identify high-performing content and behaviors to close more deals, accelerate the sales cycle, and generate more revenue, among other benefits.

Many organizations use conversation intelligence platforms to find insights and metrics to improve client interactions and quickly close deals. Platforms from the first generation exposed significant amounts of data about sales processes, including:

  • Customer concerns
  • Topics of interest
  • Complaints about products or services
  • Opportunity areas
  • Answers to frequently asked questions
  • A list of top competitors
  • Phases of the buying process
  • Obstacles

More advanced platforms are able to create automated practice, coaching, and evaluation scenarios based on detecting subtle but important verbal and non-verbal signals.

Related: The Secret to Sales Success: Enable Every Rep to Meet Quota, Every Time

An Introduction to Conversation Intelligence Platforms

Now that you know the answer to what is conversation intelligence, it’s time to explore how these platforms work. An ideal conversation intelligence system records and analyzes video, voice, and language information during live or simulated sales calls. As a result, leaders can retrieve holistic, data-based assessments and insights they can use to improve their sales strategies. 

With the AI algorithms, the software can identify details that otherwise would not be picked up by a human salesperson or coach, such as face and body expressions and clues in speech. 

The most advanced conversation intelligence platforms for sales track crucial metrics, including sentiment analysis, keywords, and more in real-time through automated listening, audio-to-text conversion, performance insights, and recommending actions that will ensure success. 

Conversational AI vs. Conversation Intelligence

The best conversation intelligence platform does not require you to know how the magic works. Still, you must understand how this technology differs from the earlier, conversational AI.

Deloitte says this technology, which is best represented by chatbots and similar approaches, can contain one or more of the following elements:

Natural Language Processing (NLP) 

By parsing human-language text, conversation intelligence platforms can identify natural sentence structure instead of simple keywords.

Intent Recognition

The software can use this capability to understand what the user is asking for. This feature allows for natural conversational flow.

Entity Recognition

The platform can determine the relationship between a text and informative abstract categories. Using this capability, it can make some analyses and comprehend complex commands.

Voice Optimized Responses

In an effort to deliver a better user experience, it involves speaking in a human-like manner and showing emotion.

Dynamic Text to Speech

A natural-sounding voice can be rendered from written text in multiple languages, dialects, and accents.

Machine Learning

A machine-learning algorithm improves recognition and improves the user’s experience by assessing how humans respond.

Voice Analytics

The system analyzes more than just words to find out which vocal patterns lead to positive outcomes. 

Non-Verbals

Top-performers often stand out through their eye contact, presence, and facial expressions that can connect with people, which the platform can detect.

Contextual Awareness

A conversation history tracking program can carry out translation, memory, and recollection of information during an interaction.

Suppose you could not only pick but combine the most sophisticated items among all these capabilities in one solution but that you can use it to take human conversation improvement and coaching to the next level. That’s what conversation intelligence is.

This enhanced solution will go way beyond what chatbots can do and will help you comprehensively improve the communication skills of different groups in your company through automated, scalable, and personalized coaching, simulated scenarios, and real-life conversation analysis. 

Their diverse professional skills will make them more effective, and above all, they will build stronger relationships with their counterparts. While simultaneously achieving the benefits, you can scale it across the organization. Discover how this tool can help you by reading the following section.

Related: Two Tips for Post-COVID Coaching for Sales Performance

Conversation Intelligence Benefits for Coaching Programs

Investing in a state-of-the-art conversation intelligence platform has many advantages for your business. These benefits will most definitely impact how you coach your sales reps. 

Automatically identify communication and connection skill gaps

When you go beyond asking what is conversation intelligence and start using the best solution, you will automatically uncover the current sales tactics and behaviors of your top sales reps without investing your time listening to dozens of sales calls or watching pitch videos. 

Identifying these strengths and turning them into measurable data makes them more easily accessible to less productive salespeople. Using this data, you can eliminate inconsistencies between team members’ productivity upskilling poorer performing reps.

Since there aren’t a lot of AI providers on the market, look for one that uses a large human-scored database to develop its algorithms and ensure real-world impact. Their model will be able to determine the most critical efficiency of communication with the help of behavioral and social sciences in human communication.

Enhance sales behaviors

The following are the two primary ways sales leaders can close their team’s skills gaps through coaching:

  1. Using granular, data-driven communications analysis, pinpoint specific changes that will enhance overall performance. Through feedback, reps would have the opportunity to practice micro-skills repeatedly until they become instinctive for them. 
  2. Secondly, sales representatives are allowed to learn through experiential learning while performing their day-to-day duties. Training in the real world, in real-time, is more beneficial than long-winded workshops. Your reps can learn from their mistakes and make intelligent decisions by using real-time feedback.

A leading conversation intelligence platform can help you implement these two strategies.

Develop performance excellence 

Repeated exposure to information or incentives helps them stick in your mind. Workshops, which are often brief, one-time encounters, rarely result in sustained, long-term gains. 

In addition to providing constant feedback every week, a great conversation intelligence platform will offer ongoing observations based on data. The tool can be used as a virtual coach or mentor, providing them with constant feedback relevant to their skills development. In addition to utilizing systematic practice features, your sales reps will be able to improve communication and connection.

What to Look for in a Reputable Conversation Intelligence Platform

The way your sales team communicates impacts your revenue. You can use a conversation intelligence platform to discover that how your reps come across to the buyer is just as important as their words. Through the use of AI, you can accurately determine soft skills, such as their authority, persuasiveness, precision, and credibility.

However, how do you determine which platform to use? Take a look at these features and characteristics to make an informed decision.

Providing automated conversation scoring 

With a modern tool, you will gain insights and intelligence and optimize team performance without watching endless recordings or accompanying your team in person. Your primary objective is to save time, and you want the highest level of automation. 

You should make sure your conversation intelligence platform can automatically assess, score, and benchmark selling behaviors against existing coaching methodologies and sales competency models. Objective, data-backed feedback is much more powerful than subjective observation.

Performance and design suitable for sales

You’ll want to select a solution that provides personal analytics, feedback, and development plans to improve your sales representatives’ communication and enable them to succeed.

As well as personalized feedback, guided learning journeys, step-by-step progress tracking, and milestone motivation, your talent can benefit from tips and best practices for continuous development and performance improvement.

In contrast to online courses, experiential learning allows team members to practice and improve their skills on their own schedule. To ensure your team’s training is successful, look for a tool that includes behavioral assessments, role-based scenarios, and video and transcript libraries.

Detailed reports for managers

The conversational intelligence platform should provide your sales managers with reporting tools and analytics to help them become more effective in how they assess and train up their reps. Check if the tools you are considering offer metrics on behaviors and skills, ranking and scores, strengths assessment, and improvement advice.

What insights would a leading conversation intelligence platform be able to provide? You should search for advanced reporting, and analytics features such as individual and team reports, progress reports, industry, role, and team benchmarks.

There’s a Reliable Conversation Intelligence Solution Available

Any agent who cannot communicate a product or service’s value will fail to sell it, regardless of how groundbreaking it may be. In contrast, companies will have long-term success if they hire, train, and coach reps to be strong communicators. They can generate increased revenue through closing more sales.

By utilizing Quantified’s AI technology, sales reps can close more deals by improving their ability to establish strong human connections. By using our exclusive QC Score, you will be able to measure communication effectiveness objectively. The assessment allows you to compare your skill level with that of your peers, industry peers, and aspirational benchmarks. 

Quantified looks at customer interactions, measures performance using key behavioral dimensions and helps your salesforce become high-performing individuals through automated feedback, coaching, and measurement. Request a demo now.