The award for 'Quote of Property Portal Watch 2023' went to Ryan Gallagher, CEO at Iovox, who used his time on stage to share a warning for companies jumping on the AI bandwagon.

We caught up with Ryan after he took to the stage at Property Portal Watch. Here's what he had to say on topics including charlatans, hiring, and why Iovox continues to sponsor the conference.

Is leveraging AI dependent on the right hires—or partnering with the right providers?

You have to partner with the right providers. But you have to be very, very careful because there are so many risks involved.

And there are so many charlatans out there, we know this ourselves, even with dealing with basics like getting companies to transcribe calls—you can't do it. They say "Yes, we're a European company," and then you find out that all the people who are working on these calls are in some other country, so you're immediately breaching regulations.

It's a common problem and it's why we just started building everything in-house.

Meanwhile, many of the models are very mystical—do you understand what models this person using? Is it trained in-house? Is it a shared learning model?

My advice? The best thing for businesses to do is to hire at least one person who fully understands AI and can guide you to the right partners to use—because if you go in blind and trust providers, you're going to end up in trouble.

If you can get the right hires, good luck, but it's really hard!

How does an "average Joe" differentiate the charlatans and the snake oil salesmen from the real experts?

Hire somebody who can who knows what to look for. When it comes to AI, you have to be able to understand what you're looking for. You don't need to understand everything, but you do need to know how to ask the right questions.

What are some of the use cases for AI via Iovox?

Iovox helps people mine calls and communications for gold.

We transcribe calls and pick out details that would otherwise go unnoticed—does this person need to sell a house? Do they need a mortgage? Have they already bought a house? Have they already spoken to one of your competitors?

Then we go one step further. Did we handle this call correctly? Did we follow up fast enough?

We had this one company with 1,000 different locations. Some of them had a variable close rate of 40%-90%. Our solution allowed us to analyse why one location was able to close transactions at more than twice the rate of their peers.

What kind of findings were you able to establish from this example?

It was a combination of a lot of factors. Some people were handling calls lazily, some were accidentally referring business elsewhere, or the employees handling calls were too busy to follow through on promises to pass on the caller's details to another facility in the same company.

With Iovox, we were able to significantly increase the capacity of the quality assurance team, of just eight people, from spot-checking 1% of calls to 100% of calls and therefore allow them to make proper, sensible decisions without manually transcribing calls.

Last question. You're a repeat sponsor at Property Portal Watch. Why come back and do it again?

Honestly, this place is great. We don't sponsor much, but this is the conference where we really get to see what's going on in the industry.

We're big on relationship building, and the conference provides us with the opportunity to spend more time with our clients in spite of them being so international.

Meanwhile, we gain access to the other 50% of attendees who are new companies, and new leads.

But ultimately this is a great conference—we wouldn't sponsor it if it weren't. There's high-quality people here, there's high-quality learning every time we come here, we meet new people every time we come here—and we get to meet the old people who are so important to us and what we do.

Any marketplace site that makes its money by selling premium slots and greater visibility on its results pages will eventually run out of space for those listings. A whole page of 'premium' listings just looks odd, right?

So what's the solution here? How do real estate portals that run business models where agents pay progressively more for packages with higher degrees of visibility rise above their visibility ceilings?

One solution is to partner with Flow, a South African company that specialises in amplifying the reach of property listings off-site. We spoke to the company's Co-CEO and Co-Founder Gil Sperling about how portals can gain a bit of extra real estate for their listings.

Sperling began by highlighting the challenges faced by subscription-based portals in their quest for revenue growth.

"Subscription-based portals every year are trying to innovate and grow in certain directions to increase their revenue." Traditionally, portals have two options: increase pricing or introduce additional valuable products. However, these options may have limitations. Sperling noted, "You either increase your pricing which everyone hates or start offering some really valuable added products... but the problem is that you start cluttering the UX."

Flow's solution lies in offering a value-added product that seamlessly integrates with existing subscriptions. Sperling described it as an "off-site featured listing." He explained, “What Flow offers is a value-adding product that gets bundled into existing portal/marketplace subscriptions. This is a true revenue generator that allows portals to provide additional value without cluttering the user experience.”

By retargeting users who have already visited the portal, Flow enables portals to reach potential higher-intent customers on various online platforms. Sperling highlighted the immense potential of this approach, saying, "A great portal has an average user visiting the portal for one hour a month. That same user generally spends two to three hours a day on social media. So you can retarget your same audience on social media and therefore have an unlimited inventory."

While some agents may already be using social media ads, Sperling emphasised that Flow's service provides superior results. He explained, "The real key, and where we really see a return on investment and success is when you've got your own audience data to retarget." By leveraging a portal's proprietary data, Flow enables agents to target specific demographics and interests more effectively than they could on their own. This targeted approach ensures better outcomes for agents and a higher return on investment.

Sceptical real estate portals often wonder about the differentiation and branding opportunities Flow offers. Sperling addressed these concerns by stating, "We provide the back-end and the plumbing to enable this for a portal to completely white label and own the product, to configure it how they want."

This means that portals can fully customise the product to align with their unique brand identity. Unlike other service providers that operate at the brokerage level, Flow ensures that portals have complete control and ownership of the product.

Flow's commitment to innovation sets it apart from competitors. Sperling highlighted the company's focus on creative ability, particularly in incorporating video into their ad campaigns. He stated, "Our creative abilities are more advanced, and this is really where you get the performance on social platforms… It's quite proprietary." This emphasis on cutting-edge creativity enables Flow to deliver world-class campaigns and outstanding results to portals and their agents.

In terms of implementation, Flow aims to make the process as seamless as possible for portals. Sperling assured, "We put a lot of focus on ensuring that the onboarding and the integration is as slick as possible." By handling the integration of feeds and offering user-friendly interfaces, Flow simplifies the process for portals, ensuring a smooth transition.

Any portal wanting to integrate its services will have to pay a licencing fee but Flow mainly operates on a revenue share basis. Sperling says that his company is generally pretty flexible when it comes to how it gets paid: "We take a much smaller revenue share and enable portals to have the upside of the revenue that they unlock, but the base license fee can be broken up into different features that you use too. So there's some flexibility."

"We ensure that the portal ultimately has the benefit of the upside because it's their brand equity, position and power in the market that enables the additional revenue stream… I think other providers are quite aggressive when it comes to the revenue and we're less so."

Flow's off-site ad solutions empower real estate portals to grow revenue, deliver superior results to their agents, and expand their reach across various ad networks. By leveraging social media platforms and providing seamless integration and customization options, Flow enables portals to unlock new opportunities for success. To find out more visit their website or connect with Gil on Linkedin.

Among the distinguished speakers at the event, iovox CEO Ryan Gallagher and Anoop Tiwari, VP of Customer Analytics and Product Partnerships at Cars.com, will share their insights on industry evolution and innovative leadership.

Speaking about taking to the stage alongside a big name customer, Gallagher said:

"It's an honor for us to allow Cars.com to showcase their views on the evolution of the industry and their commitment to leading through innovation."

Cars.com, a prominent digital marketplace and solutions provider in the automotive industry, was established in 1998 and serves as a vital connection between millions of car shoppers and sellers every year. Anoop Tiwari, VP of Customer Analytics and Product Partnerships at Cars.com, highlighted their mission, stating:

"Through our connected platform, Cars.com stays ahead of changing consumer and market demands and streamlines the car buying and selling process with tools that help consumers and dealer partners alike. Our data-driven approach allows us to remain at the forefront of this changing industry by exploring the digital car buying experience in-depth."

The Global Online Marketplaces Summit aims to provide attendees with practical takeaways and tangible value. Simon Baker, founder of Online Marketplaces (one of the companies organizing the event), emphasized the significance of iovox and Cars.com's presence at the conference:

"Having iovox and Cars.com provide a glimpse into their approach to innovation and creating new opportunities for revenue growth will surely be a highlight for our participants at this year's conference."

The three-day conference will commence on June 7, 2023, and alongside iovox and Cars.com, it will feature renowned speakers from Loft, OLX, Rollick, EMPG, Apax Digital, Ringier, Swiss Marketplace Group, 360 Latam, TrueCar, Property Finder, Encuentra, and other industry-leading organizations.

More information about the event can be found at https://www.gomsummit.com/. Interested participants can also get a discount by using the code IOVOX20 when registering.

Gender equality - could be a lot better

Real estate portals are overwhelmingly controlled by men. In fact, only 6% of portals are led by a female CEO.

Of those 6% of portals led by a woman, none were founders - every female CEO we saw was an external hire. The only female founder we came across was Wendy Jordan, co-founder of Central American generalist classifieds site Encuentra24, who acts as COO of her company.

Female portal CEOs tend to be more recent hires

The women are all recent hires, too. Female real estate portal CEOs have an average tenure of 2 years and 3 months. Cecilia Beck-Friis was the longest-serving female portal CEO in our sample of leading portals, having been appointed to the role at Swedish market-leader Hemnet in October 2017, just under five years ago.

Meanwhile, the average male CEO has been in the role for 7 years and 7 months.

There are 15 portal CEOs worldwide who have served less than two full years.

Founders tend to stay put

43% of portals are founder-led. This is broadly in line with what the research out there says is the normal rate (a 2018 Harvard study found that 40% of companies still had founders as CEOs at IPO).

Long-serving CEOs include Andrew Florance, who founded CoStar in 1986 and has acted as CEO since day one—36 years. In Europe, Eamonn Fallon has been at the helm for 27 years, after he founded Daft (Ireland) in 1997.

Takashi Inoue (Lifull, Japan), Jesus Encinar (Idealista, Spain) and Nikolay Nedialkov (Imot, Bulgaria) have also served for over 20 years.

The average tenure of founder CEOs was 13 years.

Not many know customers' way of thinking...

Interestingly, only 2% of portal leaders had previous real estate agency experience before being appointed.

One man bucking the trend is former estate agent Jason Tebb who has been roundly praised by shareholders and customers alike for the job he has done since being appointed CEO of British, majority agent-owned portal OnTheMarket back in 2020.

Perhaps other portal companies, especially those owned by industry associations, will look at the job Tebb has done building bridges with the industry and search for an ex-agent as their next CEO.

Hired CEOs tend to come from a small pool

45% of non-founder CEOs had previous online classifieds experience before being hired by their current company and 60% were promoted from within. This last point tallies with the proportion of one-third of CEOs hired from outside the company cited by Professor Dovev Lavie from Bocconi University.

You'll find most portal bosses on Linkedin

92% of portal bosses had a presence on LinkedIn. This is around the same percentage (94%) of Fortune 500 CEOs that Influential Executive found on the work-based social media site back in 2020. Notable absentees came from Asia: namely China, Japan and Korea where the platform isn't as dominant.

idealista CEO Jesús Encinar is in the minority in actively choosing not be on Linkedin. The Spanish classifieds boss is pretty active on Twitter however and in 2013 took to the platform to announce he was deleting his Linkedin profile for an easier life.

This report was sponsored by call tracking specialists iovox who are as committed to bringing you people-based insights from the world of online real estate marketplaces as we are.

To date, more than 14 million households have relied on Habitissimo’s platform to improve the quality of their property and lives. Since 2017 they’ve been a part of HomeServe, one of the UK’s leading home assistance providers.

A phone call is the preferred communication option for important home projects, however Habitissimo had very limited visibility on the quantity and quality of leads they were sending to their professionals. The challenge Habitissimo was trying to solve was improving the visibility of this important data from these phone calls to demonstrate the value of their platform to their customers.

The Solution

Flexible iovox API Opens the Door to New Phone Data

Given the flexibility of the iovox platform and the simplicity of implementation, Habitissimo elected to utilize the iovox API. With the API, Habitissimo was able to bring the service live very quickly and they enabled a wide range of call features including iovox Dedicated Numbers for tracking all calls, Call Whispers to remind professionals that the Habitissimo platform was responsible for the new opportunities, in addition to missed call alerts, spam blocking, and analytics.

The Results

Visibility on All Calls Enables Value Reinforcement for the Habitissimo Platform

One of the main benefits derived from the implementation of iovox solutions has been having tracking on all calls that take place on the Habitissimo platform. The API enables Habitissimo with access to the data that is needed to improve both their user acquisition strategies and the service provided to homeowners by knowing the results of all the phone calls. The result is clear visibility of the value delivered by Habitissimo to its clients.

A Practical How-To Guide for Conversational AI

Cecilia’s presentation, entitled 'How to Unlock Revenue When You Choose Conversational AI', will offer attendees real-world insights into how iovox’s conversational AI solutions are being used to discover new sources of revenue and improve business outcomes, without increasing call volumes or radically changing marketing approaches.

“Our team has a very unique lens into the competitive challenges faced by incumbent marketplace brands and those who are trying to enter the market for the first time,” said Cecilia West, Director of Global Account Management at iovox. “In my presentation, I’ll be sharing practical applications of how conversational AI is being used by forward thinking companies to strengthen their competitive position.”

Miami Plays Host to Global Marketplace Leaders

The 3-day event kicks off on June 8th at The Edition hotel in Miami Beach. Among the speakers joining iovox will be executives from Shift, OLX Brazil, Meero, El Clasificado, Ringier AG, Introu, and Apax Partners, Automotive Ventures, and Kevel as well as many others.

“Our conference attendees have come to expect tangible take aways from our events and information that can be acted on immediately to improve business performance,” said Simon Baker, Founder of Online Marketplaces and CAV Investment Group. “Iovox has always delivered impressive case study examples and we look forward to this year’s presentation around the future of conversational AI in marketplaces.”

Special discount codes for attendees are available directly from iovox.

Conversational AI Use Cases

iovox Insights enables analysis of every call with conversational AI

The iovox platform offers customers the building blocks to integrate enhanced communications tracking into their marketing and/or operational workflows. The proprietary system and patented technology includes modules for voice, SMS, email, chat, call data, and a new conversational AI solution called iovox Insights.

Applicable in real estate, automotive, any call center, or in tracking marketing leads and conversions, the uses of iovox Insights are endless.

In addition to quality sampling at scale, iovox Insights opens the doors to new ways of understanding challenges and helps companies answer questions relating to lead quality, call outcome and marketing performance.

Fully customizable keyword rules can be established for every call, creating bespoke data sets that directly address the business challenges of the individual marketplace.

Call Tracking Not Required. Privacy Compliant.

The conversational AI solution from iovox relies on recorded calls and is fully compatible with privacy regulations around the world. The iovox Insights service can work independently from iovox’s traditional call tracking solutions.

Backed by Octopus Ventures, iovox helps companies increase revenue and improve operational performance with call tracking, analytics, and conversational AI solutions that are off-the-shelf or customized through an advanced API. Iovox is a global business with customers in more than 100 countries, and offices in London, Paris, San Francisco, and Sydney.

The company is one of an increasing number of large online classifieds businesses leveraging advanced call tracking features from iovox to ensure they stay ahead of the competition and remind their customers every day of the value they create. We spoke to Subito's Sales Director Andrea Volontè to find out more...

Hi Andrea, could you please tell us a bit about Subito and your role within the company?

Subito is part of Adevinta, a global online classifieds specialist which operates digital marketplaces in 15 countries, serving over 1 billion users every month.

We are very proud of the fact that Subito is the No. 1 platform in Italy for selling and buying. We operate in four main vertical markets; Automotive, Real Estate, Market/Classifieds, and Jobs. We were founded in Milan in 2007 and with our 37 different categories, we serve more than 13 million buyers and sellers visiting our pages every month.

Our aim has always been to offer the simplest, fastest, and safest online buying and selling service in Italy. With Subito, professional users, as well as individuals with no previous experience, can do excellent business through our platform.

What challenges were you facing that led you to explore Call Tracking? What goals did you want to achieve through this service?

We work every day to improve our product offerings for our professional clients, and we want the quality of the leads produced through Subito's professional subscription to be clear and tangible.

We believed a call tracking solution would help us achieve the goal of making our leads clear and allow us to demonstrate the value of the Subito platform to our customers.

What solution are you currently using from iovox, and why did you choose it?

When we looked at the challenges we were trying to address and the solutions offered by iovox, we chose the dedicated call tracking solution. This solution enables us to evaluate incoming calls for the professional sellers on our platform. We do this to prove the return on investment for our professional subscribers. One way we reinforce the Subito brand leadership among our customers is the use of the iovox Call Whisper which says “This is a call from Subito” to the dealer as they answer the phone.

The whisper is short enough to not interrupt the flow of the phone call, but it also gives Subito the opportunity to make a positive brand impression with our customers on every phone call, reminding them that our platform has value, and we are delivering new opportunities to them every day.

In addition, we like the fact that our clients are able to keep track of all the calls they receive as a result of advertisements published on the Subito platform. It’s just another reminder of our value when they can see the data and volume of calls coming from ads running on our network.

Lastly, the missed call feature is something our clients benefit from as well. When they miss a call, they get an alert and can respond immediately to a new sales opportunity before it becomes a lost sales opportunity.

What made you choose iovox?

We knew that iovox had expertise in the marketplaces category and that they could customize a solution to fit our needs. We wanted to offer our clients a complete, efficient, and well-featured service, and iovox was able to deliver that for us and our customers.

What are some of the advantages you have gained from implementing the services provided by iovox?

Thanks to iovox's call tracking services, our professional clients have complete, real-time visibility on all the telephone leads that arrive that are a direct result of ads published on the Subito platform. Our clients have daily reminders of our value to their business and when our customers are growing and happy with our services, that helps us with client retention and creates new opportunities to help our customers grow their business.

As Andrea said, with iovox's flexible API and pricing to fit any budget, iovox can design a call tracking and analytics solution to meet the needs of your company and help grow your business cost-effectively.

You can email iovox at hello@iovox.com or give them a call toll-free from within the US at +1 888 369 9519.

From outside the US use one of these numbers:

Las Vegas, USA +1 702 425 7505
London, UK +44 (0)20 7099 1070
Sydney, Australia +61 (0)2 8520 3530
Paris, France +33 (0)1 84 88 46 40

The Australian Financial Review’s Fast 100 and Fast Starters list recognises the fastest growing Australian companies, and features companies with a turnover greater than AU$ 500,000, and that started trading before July 1, 2016.

With its Loopa Automate solution that focuses on property portals marketing, the company has partnered with the likes of Trademe.co.nz and Oneroof.co.nz in New Zealand, Hemnet.se in Sweden, Singapore-based PropertyGuru Group and Encuentra24.com in Central America.

Signifi Media was formed by Nick Sertis and Matt Cahill in Perth, Western Australia, in 2016. It has since developed bespoke technology solutions to enhance the performance and conversions of generic digital marketing for its clients.

The Loopa Automate product was developed in response client demands for the need to reach larger audiences with hyper-targeted messages. It is now operating in more than 10 counties, and with some of the world’s largest property portals. At the core of all of its marketing for clients is an emphasis on building long lasting relationships and a focus on client success.

It cites an impressive 3,144% growth in revenue between September 2018 to September 2021 for one of its long-standing clients.

The company has also announced that Loopa Automate will expand to include AI facial recognition and comment sentiment analysis in addition to its long list of features.

Its co-founders spoke to OnlineMarketplaces.com is October 2020.

We asked our sponsor iovox to provide us with a real-life case study of how their technology has materially benefitted a leading portal company. Like the pros they are, they delivered immediately and even kept under the word count...

The Client

Immobiliare.it is the leading property portal in Italy with more than 1.2M listings published on their portals, both by agencies and private users. The portal gets around 55M visits per month and is used by around 90% of Italian agents.

The Challenge

Help agents improve performance and see the extra value of Immobiliare.it as a marketing channel

The primary objective was to help real estate agents using the Immobiliare.it platform improve in their daily work and connect with more leads faster, but also to be able to clearly show the value Immobiliare.it generates daily for these agents in the form of new leads, opportunities and sales. Email was the primary form of lead flow, however, that was only part of the value Immobiliare.it provided to professionals since users can contact agents not only by sending emails but also by calling.

Immobiliare.it was creating value for its customers by generating calls but not getting any of the credit since they didn't have a way to prove that the calls agents were receiving were coming directly from their efforts...

The Solution

iovox Numbers, Call Whispers and Analytics clearly demonstrate the value of the Immobiliare.it platform

Using the iovox API to integrate Call Tracking into its normal workflow, Immobiliare.it was able to implement local iovox Numbers and Call Whispers into their platform.

Call Whispers allow for a short, pre-recorded message to be played to the called party prior to answering. In this case, each time an iovox Number on the Immobiliare.it portal is called, an Immobiliare.it brand reminder is played to the agent answering the call, reminding them of the value of the Immobiliare.it platform. Paired with robust analytics, Immobiliare.it’s team now has data it can share with customers that demonstrate the value of their platform.

The Results

Goals achieved. Customers can see the quantitative value of Immobiliare.it portals

Once the system was operational and running at a level of scale, Immobiliare.it had all the data they needed to improve customer awareness of the value their portals bring every day. With branded call reminders through the whispers and all call statistics available for the agents, the quality of the interactions between Immobiliare.it and its customers has improved. The Call Tracking and Analytics solutions from iovox enabled Immobiliare.it to achieve both goals: improved service to customers and more awareness of the value of the platform.

Short, sharp and to the point. Just how we like it. If you want to see what iovox can do for your business, get in touch with them here.

Q: Ryan, how would you characterize this unprecedented year we just completed?

A: Well, ‘unprecedented’ is a good starting point, crazy is more like it! Obviously 2020 was unlike any year we have ever seen before. Looking back, on a personal level, I’m incredibly proud of how our team navigated the uncertainty and that we were able to keep our staff together. With a global team in multiple time zones, our employees did a great job of staying connected and looking after one another which allowed us to do a better job of looking after our customers. Our business proved to be quite resilient and we learned a lot about ourselves and the industry in 2020.

Q: What did you learn in 2020?

A: Without a doubt, the pandemic accelerated the rate of adoption for non-telephone number-based phone calls. As an example, at iovox we use Microsoft Teams as our primary collaboration tool. Rarely do we have a conference call internally or with customers, where we dial a telephone number. We press a button and connect to a virtual conferencing space. We do the same thing when calling each other one-on-one. These tools have been around for a long time, but the big difference now is the comfort level of using this technology. It would be hard to find someone today that hasn’t spent hours on Zoom, Teams, Google, Slack or any number of virtual conferencing tools and we believe this uptick in non-telephone number-based calling will have a major impact on the call tracking industry.

Q: How does the adoption of tools like Teams and Zoom impact call tracking?

A: If you think about it, as a global society, from grade school children all the way up to grandparents, we’ve all become comfortable making calls without dialing digits. Many of us would prefer to tap a button and be connected rather than punch in digits, which is what we have all grown accustomed to in the era of the smartphone. Gone are the days of remembering someone’s phone number, now we just tap their name. So why should we have to call a business from a phone number displayed on screen? If you’re a business and someone is visiting your website, why shouldn’t the visitor just be able to click or tap a button and make a call from their mobile phone, tablet or laptop? Of course, they can always dial the number too, but the mindset of calling without dialing digits is here to stay. This is absolutely transformative and is changing how we communicate, but the technology is not entirely new.

Q: What do you mean the technology is ‘not entirely new’?

A: I remember being on a panel about 10 years ago when people we’re talking about the ‘death of the phone number’. The vision at the time was that we’d no longer rely on telephone numbers to route calls, but we might rely on things like email addresses to route voice traffic or we’d be using tools like WebRTC for point-to-point communications whether through chat, voice, or video. These tools have existed for years, but the difference is that in 2020, we’ve all become more comfortable using them, and that opens up a ton of opportunity for iovox.

Q: What kind of opportunities do you foresee as a result of the worldwide adoption of non-telephone number-based calling?

A: Our new WebConnect solution is definitely one of them. In reality, the phone number may never go away entirely, but in certain industries where companies are looking to increase leads and create immediate connections with their customers, putting a button on your website to enable instant calls is an easy way to open yourself up to more engagement with customers. Not only that, but the attribution and analytics from web-based calls is 100% accurate. The current method that most call tracking companies use to get deeper data on what drove the call is by using dynamic number insertion, or DNI. The problem with DNI is that it is not 100% accurate. By trying to match a digital session with a traditional phone call, we lose accuracy, and as a result, impact. When the session of a website visit is combined with a website originated phone call, the data becomes extremely powerful and actionable. We’re seeing more and more customers who are looking for data well beyond, ‘did the phone ring’ and ‘where did the lead come from’ and this solution helps us provide so much more with absolute confidence in the data.

Q: Where do you see the trend going related to data tracking beyond counting calls and marketing attribution?

A: Let’s use broadband as an example. As broadband speeds increased and costs decreased, the universe of new applications exploded. Today, we’ve completely transformed industries like entertainment due to broadband. Yes, other factors are involved, but broadband is at the heart of that industry transformation towards streaming. Now apply that same concept to what’s happening with speech recognition, voice inputs like Alexa, and automated transcription. As that technology continues to improve, and costs come down, the number of business uses for voice-based data will also explode.

Q: How do you see speech analytics evolving?

A: We’re already seeing much more interest in our iovox Insights product where customers are looking for “Conversational Intelligence” which means they want to know more about the nature of the call, was it handled in a manner that is consistent with their quality standards, did the person on the call treat the customer respectfully, and so on. These advanced speech analytics tools used to be reserved for big companies with big budgets, but that’s no longer the case. As I mentioned, as costs come down and the technology gets better, services like this will only increase in usage because of the value in being able to search voice conversations similar to how we search email today. Voice is data.

Q: Back to the phone number, do you think we’re at the point where we no longer need them?

A: In reality, there are some very large companies and governments that have a vested interest in the status quo when it comes to the routing of phone calls, so, no, I don’t think we can simply eliminate the use of phone numbers. That said, technically, we live in an Internet-based world and the routing of calls can be handled by other addressing schemes, even something as simple as an email address if we had a commitment to global standards. Maybe we’ll get there someday but given the size of the industry and the strong economic interests tied to the status quo, it will likely be a long time before phone numbers completely go away, but 2020 will definitely be remembered as a transformative year that fast-tracked the change in mindset around how phone calls are made.

Q: Ryan, thanks for your time. As we wrap up, any final comments?

A: We’re taking the ‘silver lining’ approach to 2020 and there were certainly some bright spots that we believe will have a lasting, positive impact on our industry. In times of adversity, there are opportunities for innovation, and we are proud that in the past year we did exactly that, improving our platform and adding new in-demand functionality that puts us well ahead of the competition. We’re excited by these developments and embrace the changes that come with it.

To learn more about iovox call technology head to iovox.com or email them directly at hello@iovox.com.