Conversica Indispensable to your ROIs
October 13, 2017
Conversica Indispensable to your ROIs
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Conversica
We use Conversica across the whole organization, on what the vendor calls an outbound campaign (as opposed to an inbound campaign, another option they offer). Their SaaS helps us on the deal origination side, to identify those business owners interested in our value proposition (debt-side advisory & placement services for US SMEs with $1M-$20M annual revenues). The software does this efficiently, at a fraction of the cost of using personnel (internal or outsourced) to perform the same function.
- Conversica's set-up team and client relationship managers (Jen Amundgaard on the sales side and Caleb Clapp on the IT side) are 12's on my scale of 10. By comparison, most vendors I have dealt with historically (i.e. RingCentral, to pick on one, different service) are 3's or 4's at best. So apart from Conversica's best-in-class tech, the human touch is there and helps us maximize our user experience. Jen and Caleb took time to understand our business model, mission-critical goals, metrics to evaluate their software performance and implied ROIs, and post-launch have maintained regular contact with us to improve campaigns and optimize our use of their service. Their care for their clients sets Conversica apart. We are not a faceless number to them.
- Conversica's service allows its users to run inbound or outbound email-based conversations with clients, past clients, prospects, stakeholders of varying types, partners, upstream or downstream relationships, or other parties, depending what type of campaign and parameters are chosen by the user working in concert with Conversica to customize the service. When optimized, the service delivers tremendous ROIs which can be quantified for different time buckets. The ROI invariably comes down to the significant cost savings Conversica delivers its clients, when compared to the client engaging personnel to perform similar functions. Or the ROI can be measured in terms of incremental revenues generated through a campaign in combination with headcount savings.
- Conversica we believe is the only player in the marketplace offering its specific AI-based value proposition. Normally we would expect this first (and only) mover advantage to translate into opportunistic (read: high, excessive) vendor pricing due to lack of competition. Instead, they have gone the opposite direction. Their various service levels are priced very competitively, despite the obvious lack of competitors out there, so we are very grateful for that because it allows smaller companies to afford their service. Their pricing strategy we believe emphasizes the long game, and will help them capture whichever market share they go after across verticals, over time. Our greatest fear is that a Google, Salesforce or other large deep-pockets firm acquires them in the future, and if that's inevitable, we hope it's a long way off. These prospective acquirers would change some of the things we like most about Conversica.
- Conversica's service can help smaller companies compete in some arenas with much larger firms, by doing more with less resources or operational spend. This is a good thing, to the extent it opposes the drift in some verticals toward oligopolistic competition and market share concentration going to only a few firms. Whether an intended or unintended consequence of its tech, Conversica solutions in our view are "for the people" and not "against the people". Contrast that with the opportunistic pricing of some nasty pharma companies that sell patent-protected drugs at exhorbitant cost to patients, exercising their monopoly on the drug.
- A minor area for improvement would be appointment-setting (for calls or meetings) that synchs live with the user's calendar, to reduce the user's time coordinating the timing. However, I believe Conversica is already working on this or will get there soon.
- Larger picture, we hope that Conversica develops within 3-5 years a similar voice-based service as a complement to their email-based tech. Non-robotic speech ideally, with IBM Watson-like deep AI fueling the conversations. That's the next evolution, with a much larger user market, and we hope Conversica leads that charge because we will be first in line to buy from them.
- Conversica has had a uniformly positive impact on our overall business objectives. We are a very young user of the Conversica service, thus it's too early to measure our medium- and long-term ROIs. We do not have that data yet; the passage of time will solve that. Nonetheless, short-term ROI is excellent, in terms of incremental revenues generated in combination with cost savings. Using Conversica has helped us run a flat headcount structure. As we experiment with different campaigns over time, we will find ways to drive the tranched time bucket ROIs even higher, with the help of our account reps, Conversica's top-notch Jen Amundgaard and Caleb Clapp.
We do not see any competitors to Conversica, that offer the same or similar value proposition. We selected Conversica after experiencing disappointing ROIs over 7+ years at predecessor companies, with 90% of the vendors or solution providers out there, none of whom offer anything remotely close to Conversica's services.
Conversica Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
We had a self-imposed short runway to launch our firm, Lendrix Platform, and our assigned Conversica relationship managers Jen Amundgaard and Caleb Clapp helped us set up and customize the service to our mission-critical goals at light speed. They took the time to quickly learn our business model, origination campaign goals and KPIs and nailed the service customization on the first go, in a short timespan.