This interview with McKay Allen of Convirza is part of our Webinar Series.To view the transcript of McKay’s entire presentation visit our webinar library. A transcript of the Q&A portion is available below.
David: I love the idea of the WebHooks, being in internet and search marketing, and paid, the Google AdWords search, it’s actually a really cool concept there to base what you do on previous leads and conversion rates. I think that’s really cool. So, let’s go. Let’s breeze through some of these. Okay.
Carlos would like to know, does this system work with current phone number, or does it need to change?
McKay: Both, is the answer to that. It can work with a current number, we just would simply need to port that number over to our system. You still own the number. I want to be clear, that’s federal law in the U.S. and in Canada. So you actually still own the phone number, it just simply- we just simply, in that case, act as your phone company, and the number runs through our system. So, but it’s just like your . . . yeah, you still own the number so it could work with a current number. Or, if you wanted to use multiple numbers to track multiple campaigns, you could get many call tracking numbers, local or toll-free, and have those dynamically appear, so you can track not only what happened on the call, but which sources produced phone calls. So, any of those. Both, is the answer to that question, David.
David: Got you. Okay, and going off of what you said about law and . . . we have a question here. Someone would like to know, do any states have regulations regarding call recording that you know of?
McKay: Yes, good question. So in the U.S., 38 states are what are called single-party consent states. One party consent states for call recording, meaning only one of the two people on the phone call needs to know it’s being recorded, and that can be your employee. And so you don’t even need that little, “This call may be recorded,” in those states. In 12 states, however, and the District of Columbia, you do need, “This call may be recorded,” which we provide through our system. All you’ve got to do is click a little box, and that recording will play, so you can actually have that without any work on your part. And then in Canada . . . I’m trying to remember Canadian law, but it’s similar. I think there’s a couple areas where you need the recording, and where you don’t. But anyway, in either case it’s totally legal. It’s just, do you need to have that little recording play? And in most states and most provinces, you don’t.
David: Got you. Yeah, that . . . I think that was a very . . . that was a great question, actually, to ask. So, another one, great question that we have here is, are you able to do the same thing, or maybe you guys are developing something, that uses the same algorithms for a live chat?
McKay: Good question. No, at this point it is . . . we’re strictly focused on the phone because that’s the real power. That’s really the thing that’s not being analyzed. There’s actually a fair number of tools that analyze chats and provide really good chat data. Our tool, however, is focused on the phone exclusively.
David: Yeah, that makes sense. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the background for sure, I can imagine. Now, let me see. We have one. Can you give an example of maybe things that your algorithm looks for to measure sales skills? Maybe some of the phrasing, or the tonality of the sales person, is it something that it picks up on?
McKay: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So, sales skills is one of the indicators that we call a “composite indicator”, and what that means is we look at about 15 different things to determine an aggregate composite sales skill number. So those things include, did they ask for the business? Was the caller poli- or excuse me, was the agent polite? Did at any point they get agitated with the caller? And we can tell that by tone of voice, rate of speech, as well as volume, whether or not the person got agitated. And then conversely, did the caller get agitated with the agent, or person answering the phone? How confused was the caller? So, based on the number of questions they ask, and the type of questions they ask, we can determine how confused the caller is about what’s going on. And then finally, and most importantly, the most important sales skill is, did they convert the caller or not?
And so, all of those things we roll up pretty sophisticated into the actual sales skill number. So there is some subjectivity related to that, there’s no question. However, across all of our client base, it’s extremely accurate. You can see there, with those data I showed you just a moment ago . . . I’ll go back here. Sorry. You can see with this, it’s pretty obvious based on the blue chart there, that the higher the sales skills, the more likely they are to close. Which means, ultimately, that sales skill works in the way we track it. So, yeah, I hope that helps.
David: Exactly, and it is subjective, but . . . and is it reliable? That’s the key thing, and yes. And you can see by the numbers, and how they correlate, that yes, it is something that is reliable. And you guys are analyzing a huge sample size, so that the greater the sample size, and the more correlation that you can do, that works in the favor, is showing everybody that it is something that is extremely reliable, which I find incredibly interesting. So . . .
McKay: Right, right.
David: A couple more questions, let’s see. Integration with a CRM like Salesforce?
McKay: Yes. So we integrate . . . excuse me . . . we integrate with a lot of different tools. We have an open API, and a WebHooks generator. So the API, or excuse me, the WebHooks generator basically allows you to proactively send information to a SaaS platform in the way that you want to see the information. So, yes. We’ve built integrations with a lot of different tools, and, yeah. The thing we found with integrations is that most people want pretty specific data. When they hear . . . when they say the phrase Salesforce integration, everybody means something a little bit different. Do they want to see lead scores in their CRM? Do they want to see call recordings themselves actually appear within their CRM? So, yeah, that’s . . . yes, is the answer to that question, but everybody means something a little different when they say that phrase.
David: Right, right. Okay, so I hope that answers the question, and let’s see. Let’s do two more and then we’ll close it out. So, they’d like to know, do you keep track of these call conversations, and for how long? Is it something that maybe you can transfer the audio files from your server to theirs, and they can retain those, or how long do you retain them, I guess, that kind of information?
McKay: Yes, so there’s three ways that we store them. The first is, they’re available, you can just long into our tool and listen to the calls and see the data for, I believe, a year. And then we store them on our servers for seven years, and you can access those. And then you, at any time, can download any phone call onto your machine, the audio of that phone call, so you can have that on your machine until your machine dies, or until you put it on your Dropbox, or whatever you want to do. So, yeah. So you can [inaudible 00:50:18] calls all day long, you can do mass uploads of call recordings. So, yeah, it can be easily done.
David: Awesome, actually. Okay, so let’s see. One more, and I guess if there’s any left over, McKay, are you able to reach out to these people via email, or something along those lines, once you extract the data from GoTo?
McKay: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So there’s a lot of other good questions there, but yeah, I’ll reach out to you guys individually and we can answer those, take it offline, absolutely.
David: Great, so here’s one from Bill. I wanted to ask this one specifically, because I found this interesting as well. So he wants to know, can you extract keywords from the conversation to use in future AdWords campaigns? So, a little bit different than the WebHooks, but I find it interesting because we’re constantly striving to get that lingo down, to get the jargon and everything down, that people are using to search for us and to find our business. So, is there a way to extract that, and port it over to your AdWords campaign?
McKay: Yeah, there is. So it’s not going to be . . . the best way to explain how that would work is, you’re going to have to make that decision and use that data based on standard optimization procedures. And here’s what I mean by that. You’re going to be able to tell which keyword groups, or whatever system you use to make decisions about AdWords, you’re going to be able to tell which segment is producing more conversions, and higher quality leads, that sort of thing. You’re going to be able to tell that very easily. And so then based on that, you can make decisions about spend. But in terms of people saying specific keywords on phone calls, and then somehow using that data to buy better? No, that’s not the way the system’s designed. But it is designed to help you optimize by telling you which keyword groups, and specific types of spend, and landing pages, etc. is producing converted phone calls. Does that make sense?
David: Yeah, it makes sense to me. It’s still incredibly interesting, and of course, they always have the option to download those and review them manually too, right? I’m sure there’s some sort of text-to-speech pr- or I’m sorry, speech-to-text program that can be analyzed and parsed, something along those lines, so . . . but, yeah. Okay, so that about wraps it up, and I guess if there’s any more questions, McKay will be happy to help. And guys, if you’re interested in SEMrush that we showed today, of course stop back and you can always get to me on LinkedIn. I saw some of you guys already . . . usually after the webinars, I have some LinkedIn messages, or some tweets, or people following me on Twitter, so that’s always great.
McKay, any final parting words?
McKay: No, just thank you very much, David. And everybody, thank you for all the questions and engagement with the polls, and things like that. It helps when you’re doing a presentation to have breaks to take polls and things like that, so I appreciate it.
David: Absolutely, yes. Thank you guys very much for attending today. Have a great Thursday, a great Friday, a great weekend. McKay, we make a great team, so I look forward to maybe doing something in the future as well, and hopefully we’ll see you guys again. Thank you very much.
McKay: Yep, thanks everybody. We appreciate it. Bye-bye.
