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Transcript
- Gina Gibson: Good afternoon, everybody. Tiffany O'Malley with Soundness is here with us today. And Tiffany, I'm so excited to have you here. You, as we were doing the research, such a fascinating career background, aside from software sales, founded a woman's clothing line and worked in film in LA. How did you end up in software? Welcome to the Tech Matchmaker, the show where contact center challenges meet their perfect tech match. I'm your host, Gina Gibson, and in just 15 minutes, we serve up the smartest, coolest innovation shaking up the contact center industry. Whether you're searching for your next solution or just love staying ahead of the curve, we've got the insights to keep you in the know. Let's dive in and discover what's next. I promise you it's going to be fun. Thanks for hanging out with us on the Tech Matchmaker. I hope today's spotlight sparked some fresh ideas and real solutions for your contact center. Want to dive deeper into the tech we featured? Hit up the show notes for all the links and extras and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if there's a challenge you want us to tackle, don't be shy, reach out. I'll catch you soon with more innovation, more use cases and more ways to keep your business moving forward. Tiffany O'Malley: Well, that's a long story, but I am โ excited that I ended up at Sanas because this place is so special. And Gina, thank you so much for having us on. โ really glad to be able to connect your network today and share the magic of Sanas. Gina Gibson: Stay curious, stay bold, and keep exploring what's next. Awesome. And I see you brought some of your local rock stars with you. Do you want to introduce your team to us today? โ Tiffany O'Malley: Sure, they are definitely the stars of Sanis. โ the least important person here. And let them introduce themselves in a little bit when we actually do a live demo, but have from all over the world with us. Nafid is in India right now. Louise is in Guatemala. And Luziel is the Gina Gibson: Welcome to the podcast, you guys. Thank you for joining us. so Tiffany and team here is where I would typically say, give us your elevator pitch, but why don't you give us a little overview of Sonnus and then take us into a lot of pitch. Tiffany O'Malley: Awesome. Yeah. like to say hearing is believing, right? let's just get right into it. But let me tell you a little bit about us. Sanas is speech understanding platform. What does that Our goal is really to allow people to communicate clearly, regardless of where in the world they are and how they sound, right? So everything we do at our is just to create a more understanding world. Gina Gibson: So. Tiffany O'Malley: Today, we're primarily doing that through a tool we call Accent Translation also our noise cancellation. So those are the two products we have in market right now. And you said, Gina, let's just hop right into it. I think it's the best way to show what we do. So what everyone going to hear today โ is Naveed. Lucile, Louise, they're going to come on, they're going to introduce themselves their natural voice and accent, how they sound every day. And they will turn sonnus on and repeat that. โ And where you'll hear the magic. So Nafi, take it away. Nafeed: Tiffany. Hello everybody, โ am Naveed Najeeb and am based here in Coimbatore. It is small industrial town in the south of India and I have in sales and services for all my career. And I am with for the past few months now. In my free time, โ do like to play cricket or badminton. So what you're hearing is my original voice and accent and one of the benefits of solution is also the background noise elimination feature. So let me just play some background noise let me know if you can hear this. Now the magic to happen, I just have to press this toggle switch. So there you go. I have enabled Sanis. On my end, I still have those noises playing. I've got my original voice and accent, but I'm sure you hear a difference in my voice. So for the sake of comparison or a reference, let me redo that intro. I'm Nafid Najib. I'm from Kaimator. I have been in sales for a little over 15 years now, and I'm associated with Sanis for the past few months. In my free time, I do like to play some cricket or backminton. And in the recent times, I'm really fascinated with horology as well. So that was a little comparison. I hope you like listening to it. Thank you. Gina Gibson: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Nafid. Nafid, what's the weather like over there where you are today? Nafeed: Well, during the day it is really hot these days. The temperature goes up to 40 degrees Celsius but it's a little pleasant towards the evening. But yeah, it's hot these days. Gina Gibson: Excellent. Thank you so much, Nafid. Nafeed: Thank you, my pleasure. Tiffany O'Malley: Yeah, thanks for being here. Okay, let's go somewhere else in the world. Let's go to the Philippines with Luziel. Thank you for being here, Luziel. Why don't you introduce yourself to the team? Luzziel Garcia (Sanas): Okay, thank you, Tiffany. So yes, hello everyone. My name is Luziel and I'm from the Philippines. And just to share a little bit about myself, well, during my free time, I enjoy baking and cooking. I worked in a BPO for the past few years as a customer service representative. And of course, I am always proud of my accent. But with the help of Sanus, I can deliver clear communication that makes it easier for listeners to understand. now, same with NAPID, for you to hear the difference for comparison, โ will be turning on the Sanus app, and I will repeat myself. So there, I just turned on the Sanus app. again, what my name is Luziel and I'm from the Philippines. And during my free time, I enjoy baking and cooking. I have worked in a BPO for the past few years as a customer service representative, and I am always proud of my Filipino accent. But with the help of Sanus, I can deliver clear communication that makes it easier for listeners to understand. So I hope you like it. Thank you. Gina Gibson: Thank you. Luzi, thank you so much. You got to tell us what's your favorite thing to cook or bake. Luzziel Garcia (Sanas): Yes, my favorite thing to bake is what we call the banana cake, when made with ripe bananas. It's a good source of fiber and contains natural sweeteners. So that's what I usually bake. Gina Gibson: Just in We will meet. you so much. Tiffany O'Malley: Sounds delicious. Wish you live closer. All right, to Guatemala we go. Louise, thank you for being here. Luis Chajon: Sure, thank you so much, Tiffany. hello, everyone. My name is Luis. I am from Guatemala. I live in Guatemala City. I have been working in the call center industry for around seven years. I experience in customer service, tech support, quality assurance, and customer experience. Some of things that I like to do during my spare time are going out for a walk, have some exercise, and I recently joined a swimming class well. So this is my voice โ ascent. without Sanas. All I need to do is press a button to show you the magic of Sanas, same as Nafir and Lucile, just for you to compare. Okay, so I have already turned on Samus. pretty sure you can hear the difference. I'll just repeat myself. So hello everyone. My name is Luis. I am from Guatemala. I live in Guatemala City. I have been working in the cool Sinta industry for around seven years. I have experience in customer service, tech support, quality assurance and customer experience. Some of the things that I like to do during my spare time are going out for a walk, have some exercise. And so weeks ago I started to do swimming. So there's now my voice in accent with Senna, so you're hearing the magical Senna. Thank you. Gina Gibson: Thank you so much, Louise. That's fantastic. Seven years in a contact center space is a long time. That's, must really enjoy it. Do you? Luis Chajon: Yeah, I actually enjoy it. I spend most of the time with a tech support So it is really nice to work as a tech support representative, actually. Gina Gibson: Thank you guys so much. That's what a great walkthrough. That's absolutely really impressive stuff. Tiffany, me what do you think sets your product apart from the competitors in the market? Tiffany O'Malley: Yeah. Well, think one of the just the things about Sonus is really what sets it apart from most the AI companies in the market, right? โ We to add people to the workforce. We are not an AI company that really wants to take away anyone's job. We want to make them easier to be understood in the job they're doing, right? So really the and the goal of Sanis is to preserve everyone's natural identity. โ company was founded by actually because one of our coworkers who was a contact center. He's a brilliant guy. He's on a full ride to Stanford. He was working actually next to Louise in a contact center and โ he's able to do job. but he was continually getting low marks on his surveys because people had a hard time understanding him. So that affected his take-home pay. So he came to the US, he's telling his friends about this and they're like, hey, we're taking some AI classes, maybe we can solve this, So Sanus founded โ to preserve people's natural identity and let technology of remove those that an accent can cause. There's a few other things really separate us from... from other people attempting to do this. And really the main thing is we invented this. No one in the world doing this, came out of a white paper out of Stanford. So we're first ones to tackle this. And it actually took us about three and a half years to build that first model because no one's ever done this before. But as you see, this is really a very special technology. I feel really honored to represent it because it is not just tech. It's something โ that changes people's If you can think and I have talked about this, when in the contact center are taking 100, 200 calls a day from people here in the US, the amount of abuse that, and we don't even mean to, we don't think about it. They have to deal with a lot. So being a part of a company where โ they just be who they are, they can speak how they speak and let technology kind of that gap. Gina Gibson: Right. โ Tiffany O'Malley: I just, I I love that. On top of it, obviously there's real value to be found, but that's really what sets us apart. Gina Gibson: I love it. I love it. And I think, you know, we've been talking with a lot of people in the industry, the employee experience is becoming more and more the focus as we go on. And you alluded to it a little bit there, Tiffany. One of the stories that you told me when we first met was to me, I think the best use case I've ever heard you guys, you know, from you, have a lot of great ones, but it's definitely wonderful one. And I'm hoping you can share that as one of your success stories with us today. Tiffany O'Malley: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like you said, Gina, every customer has a different success story because every customer tracks different metrics, right? If you're working with a hotel chain, they want to track their sales conversions. If you're working with a company, they want to track different metrics that are important to them. โ So one you're talking about is a food delivery service, which I'm sure we all know. I'll keep it anonymous for right now. but. have, we got both sides of this. have the agent side, the, we'll call the EX and the CX. On CX side, โ you we were able to, โ through with them, track CSAT and AHD. And the and we'll attach this to this podcast. know, we had, were tracking at a, at a three, around a three, seven in their, CSAT. And we got that boosted to a four and a half within just a few weeks. Which if you. If you're, Gina, you're involved in this, you know, you know, like a 1 % or a one point boost is important. Gina Gibson: Founding. Tiffany O'Malley: Also on the handle time, right? As you can imagine, like people aren't having to say, hey, can you repeat that? did you say? I don't understand. Can you give me someone who speaks English? You know, all of these derogatory comments. โ if you're just able to be understood, your handle time goes down. โ what we were able to track with โ particular company was three and a half, no, 350 average handle time down to 258. So again, that percentage in these companies, they know exactly what that means to the bottom line. So that's pretty significant. But as Gina was alluding to, our favorite part of the story was that their agents took to this in their call center, they had a whiteboard and they started tracking their days without being abused by a US customer. And they got to 46 days without being abused. Like to me, you know, is just so valuable. Obviously you have โ business value, but being able to allow someone to go into their job, love they do, โ you obviously attrition rates are super high. โ So you go to our website, we actually have a lot of these videos of agents just about what Sonus has meant to them. And I think... this is just something that sets us apart as a tech company. We want to make like people's lives โ better I love that that's able to do that. Gina Gibson: Absolutely. And there any emerging trends or anything new that's happening that you guys see influencing the direction of the product coming up? Like, you see any, mean, AI is everywhere, you are AI, but you see any of the other emerging trends coming out? mean, mean, EX is already a focus of yours that will impact what your product looks like in three years? Tiffany O'Malley: Yeah, I think you'll see a lot of new regions coming up. started, today we're in market in India, Philippines, and Latin America. We are seeing shifts in different areas of the world, in Africa in particular. I think you'll see โ regions come up. Also just one of these. One of the business value or the metrics that we're seeing among customers being able to shift labor to markets, right? So a lot companies pay more to have a near shore. experience with someone like a Louise, which is a little more expensive. Now you may be able to shift to an Indian market, which is, you there's, there's plenty of capable people, but the accent was always a barrier, right? So we were seeing a lot of that with our customers, just like the labor shift. You'll also hear in another month or two, you know, let's, maybe we should talk again soon because you'll see really cool products released from selling us. can't say too much yet, but โ there's some cool stuff. Gina Gibson: Well, then we'll definitely have you back for that. to wrap, Diffny, I've always been a fan of Jane's Lipton. And so to end the podcast, what we do is we do some โ three rapid fire questions. So what is your favorite word? Tiffany O'Malley: of probably my dog's name, Wilson. Wilson. โ I don't even know if I can say that. Can I say that? There's like some of these words that like, it's not a bad word, but it's like my least favorite word. I'm not gonna say it, but I'll tell you later, Deena. Gina Gibson: Perfect, perfect. what's your least favorite word? Okay. โ perfect and what excites you most about life? Tiffany O'Malley: I the sun. I'm like a plant. I just I love being in the sun. I love beautiful blue sky days and being out in nature. Gina Gibson: Love it. Perfect and Tiffany just as we wrap if anybody wants more information on saunas and getting in touch with you guys How can they go about doing that? Tiffany O'Malley: Well, first go through Gina. right? She is a dear partner of ours and we trust her implicitly. So if you want to learn more about this, just go directly to Gina, but I'll also put my information in this follow up. Find me on LinkedIn. You can text call me anytime. My heart just beats for Sana. So I love to tell anyone about it and our team of demoers are a resource for you too. So they're awesome. Even though it's the middle of the night where they are, they'll always hop on and help. they are, they are truly the Gina Gibson: Thanks. Tiffany O'Malley: stars of sonnets. Gina Gibson: Excellent. And so with that, a big thank you to you, Tiffany, to Nafid, to Luis Villal, and Luis. Thank you guys so much for joining us today. Appreciate you very much. And I know we'll see you soon. Thank you.