In 2007 Ben Brigham saw a problem and had a brainstorm about how to fix it. Brigham had some experience on automotive sales teams and understood the downfall of human sales agents. To put it simply, they give up too soon. A typical sales agent sends two, maybe three emails to a prospective car buyer. If the customer blows them off, the sales agent stops following up. The reasons are largely psychological. Rejection is painful and no one likes to feel like they’re pestering people. But data shows a significant number of sales are made after five, six, or even more contacts. And top sales people aggressively follow up on all leads, not just the ones they cherry pick as the top prospects.

Brigham had a key insight. Combining his sales background with the computer science knowledge he’d gained at the University of Washington, Brigham postulated that artificial intelligence could fill the gap left by human sales teams. In 2013 his company, called AVA.ai at the time, had succeeded in the automotive industry and attracted $16 million in venture capital from Kennet Partners.

Since that infusion of cash, the company has brought in a new, seasoned management team, rebranded itself as Conversica, and expanded broadly outside of the automotive industry into finance, insurance, the technology sector, and beyond. All the while, the underlying technology has remained essentially the same.

Conversica offers sales teams a virtual sales assistant whose sole function is to follow up on every single lead, persistently communicating via email to separate the wheat from the chaff and present the genuine leads to the human sales staff. At that point, the virtual assistant also makes sure that the human doesn’t fall down on the job.

The virtual sales assistant operates using a set of complex, but well-structured algorithms that guide its email communications. The assistant leverages an interpretation engine that enables it to read an incoming email, understand its intent, and formulate a response. The goal is always to determine if the prospect is interested in the company’s product and, if so, get them connected to a human sales agent. The virtual assistant can also use integrations to the company’s backend systems to automatically update the CRM with changes in the prospects contact information and other related data.

The people who get emails from a virtual sales assistant essentially never realize they’re talking to a bot. While this brings up the “creepy” factor, Conversica Senior Vice President and CMO Carl Landers says people actually gush about how much they enjoy interacting with the virtual assistant, whom they perceive to be a friendly, helpful human. Most companies configure the software with a female name, such as Rachel. Prospects thank Rachel for being so gracious and so persistent. Some say they weren’t ready to buy at first, but that they needed the consistent follow up to get them to the point where they were ready to commit. Companies that deploy a “Rachel” find she helps them mine the gold in the “long tail” of leads that generally go untouched, sometimes unearthing real gems that a human sales agent never would have found.

While Conversica’s product doesn’t necessarily fit into the box of intelligent assistance as we generally think of it, the technology and goals most certainly do. The virtual sales assistant uses natural language understanding, intent analysis, and dialogue generation algorithms to interact effectively with prospective customers and give them the help they need. Nobody likes it when a salesperson drops off the radar. With Coversica’s always cheerful and persistent sales assistant, customers aren’t left in the lurch, the human sales team gets handed the true prospects, the marketing team knows their leads are being followed up on, and everybody wins.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Virtual Assistants, intelligent Assistants, Conversica