MarTech Interview with Howard Brown, Founder and CEO at ringDNA

Could you tell us about your role and the team/technology you handle at ringDNA?

I am the CEO and Founder of ringDNA, where I lead our incredible team of leaders and we deliver on our vision of transforming the Sales experience. Our AI-powered platform helps businesses scale revenue growth by providing tools to make teams more efficient and effective. Our insights help businesses understand which Marketing campaigns drive revenue while also helping reps have better conversations with customers.

What is the data engine driving your Conversational AI platform?

The data driving ringDNA’s ConversationAI solution comes from more than 130 million calls, including the Marketing data that leads to a call and the full scope of actions that happened during and after a call. Customers using ringDNA can analyze individual rep performance against campaigns and route calls based on their performance metrics. ringDNA pulls information about the prospect or customer from Salesforce and combines it with data collected during the call. It then uses this to make updates to customer records in CRM, call dispositions, tasks, and manager or rep feedback. Patented AI and Machine Learning models further analyze sentiment, talk etiquette and other conversational patterns, layering each data point together to provide managers with a clear picture of what drives success for their team.

We have heard about the extensive applications of Conversation AI in Marketing and Collaboration tools. How did you design this AI platform for Sales Coaching?

From the very outset, ringDNA designed our AI-powered platform for Sales coaching with the understanding that data is only truly effective when it leads to action. At its core, ConversationAI enables Sales coaching at scale – giving Managers visibility into which reps need help and why, without having to listen to every single call. ringDNA builds best practices libraries from knowledge gained across the entire platform. Managers have always had difficulties managing teams while attempting to provide personalized guidance, and now, with AI, we are providing them with the tools to quickly onboard new reps and ensure they are performing at their best.

There are many Call Analytics, and Conference Intelligence companies that are providing Sales Conversation insights. What differentiates ConversationAI from the league?

ringDNA is fundamentally different from our peers. Unlike the rest, ConversationAI enables businesses to tie the art of conversation to the science of Sales outcomes. Insights derived from ConversationAI help managers understand what conversation techniques are most effective so they can coach each rep to increase meetings booked, opportunities created, and revenue won. Furthermore, customers that use ringDNA’s ConversationAI solution can benefit from the proprietary data insights of the entire ringDNA platform, which has analyzed more than 130 million calls. This treasure-trove of conversational data is unrivaled in the market and helps some of the most forward-thinking enterprises understand best-practices that drive the best Sales results. Finally, seamless Salesforce integration means that ConversationAI enables businesses to continue to leverage their existing CRM investment.

What kind of training and technology skills are needed to learn, deploy and adapt to this tool? Would you be providing support and training to new customers?

ringDNA’s ConversationAI solution is easy to implement and onboard, for even the largest enterprise customers. Although, we provide extensive support and training for all customers, ConversationAI is a solution that anyone can use right out of the gate. Thanks to pre-built reports and dashboards that deliver powerful insights when and where they are needed, our customers are constantly telling us how ConversationAI has become a seamless part of their daily work flow.

Could you tell us about the future of Sales Calls, and how Virtual Assistants, AI Sales Reps and similar automated platforms would shape the Sales industry in 2020-2024?

While Virtual Assistants and AI Bots will certainly have their place in the Sales landscape, we believe the future of Sales is one in which AI drives better human experiences. Powerful AI solutions will certainly drive better conversations between businesses and their customers, but, more importantly, those conversations will no longer live in a silo. Context has always been crucial in Sales, and by bringing together important customer data from across teams we are empowering businesses to deliver a holistic customer experience that empowers revenue growth at scale.

What would be the most powerful technology development of the decade for you?      

Sales and Marketing tech certainly has some very exciting developments on the horizon, but one thing I am especially excited about, as a former Clinical Psychologist, is the advancement of AI in Healthcare. With the wide-spread use of AI to interpret the huge amounts of unstructured clinical data and the growing use of connected devices, I am excited at the potential to see tremendous improvements in clinical outcomes throughout the next decade and hopefully more groundbreaking cures to some of life’s most threatening diseases.

Thank you, Howard! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.