Voice Nation

Lance Hood (FranPro) 0:00

Hi everyone . I would like you to meet Richard Colberson , CEO of Voice Nation for North America . He is a communications , retail , media and technology executive with over 20 years of experience . Richard , welcome .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 0:15

It's great to be here . Thanks for having me , Lance .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 0:18

So , Richard , I did want to get your insights , but I think we need to take a second and just discuss Voice Nation and , as a sample , we're going to actually put a Voice Nation chat box on this page so that people can actually see it , because every website should really have a live interaction because otherwise you're going to miss so many people . You miss leads and opportunities , but you also miss if somebody's upset or confused . Otherwise you're just you're not going to pick up stuff . So we definitely want to talk about the live chat and how you guys do it , but also the virtual reception slash call center , because so many people you get these leads and you need to have a unified way to speak with them . And you guys it's so well thought through . I mean , you really have everything there to like . It's like you really are one of their staff members and you keep it staffed . The biggest problem people have is staffing . You guys have it covered . So can you talk about Voice Nation and what you guys do ?

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 1:17

Sure , thanks , lance .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 1:18

I'm actually really glad you said that and that came through , because that's we think that's one of the really one of the different changes that we have is we talk to the businesses and the clients that we serve , being able to go wherever their customers are , whether it is on the phone or especially digital , as you mentioned in the live chat .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 1:34

It's trying to allow our clients to focus on their business and then we can make sure those phones are always being answered and they're not missing opportunities and leads , as well as opportunities to support their own customers . So we've been in the marketplace in North America for quite a while now . We really started with that virtual receptionist , so answering calls , whether it's to supplement in-house labor or if that's something that they don't want to have done by their own business . But increasingly we've really loved live chat because almost every customer , prior to engaging with the brand , goes online and searches and they go out there , whether it's top of the funnel for marketing or they're going to the convert on the website . Having that real human interaction and actually leading that through , we've seen that there's great results and they will capture so many more leads and they would be able to do otherwise . We think having that real live interaction is a differentiator for businesses in the marketplace , because you see so many stale websites out there today that they lose that engagement . So it's something we've seen really successful for our customers .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 2:38

Yeah , exactly . And then picking up that phone , I mean you guys have such a detailed process of telling people exactly what to say and how to classify a call , like if this is like we'll just say we have a franchise and it is a home services franchise , you guys know where the lead came from . Things are tracked , you know who to put on the job and to get that thing rolling so that they're actually like , have a tech out there working and making money and to take this burden off of people and have this set up . When I saw how intricate it was , I was . I can't see how people wouldn't do this flawlessly . Like you have all the stuff worked out behind the scenes so Sure .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 3:19

Now that's we . We like to call it your business's second home . I think that's one of those and everyone has gone through one of those experience where you get on the phone or you're in you know that that's not somebody who's close to the business . So what we do is we put a lot of time , money and effort both in our people and the technology behind , so that really feels like part of your business . So we do a sector based approach .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 3:42

So , whether it's especially in the franchise space , if you're in the fast food space or if you're in home services , you know the language that your people would use and we know the problems and typical calls that are driven off of that . So we focus extensively on making sure that our people and our technology behind the scenes that we know exactly . We can have a very scripted conversation . So if you want exactly for us to get to the point on why they're coming in and can capture the exact information that they'd like to have , or for more fluid personal conversation and we can tweak our positioning based on the tools that we have and the people that we have available to make sure that we're doing . Whether it's 24 seven , it's bilingual capabilities we know that that's something that most businesses either can't afford or don't want to focus on , so we're making sure that we can do that and have it look like a part of your business . So anytime they call in , it really does look like your business is second home .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 4:35

Yep and from working with potential franchisees looking to buy into a system , the ones that have the call centers or call center capabilities were always the most attractive to the people I spoke with .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 4:49

It just seemed like something was put together and organized and that created , I guess , trust and confidence , and it just took that stress off of how do I call the leads , how do I handle it , how do I make sure I can staff it , and so I saw that , as the call center is huge and wanted everybody have an opportunity at an affordable rate to just have those services that you can scale up . I mean , if it's just corporate and as you scale up to however many locations you need , it's all done for you . And then the live chat was something that was just missed , because you have the lead side but you also have the questions . And then you have the customer support , where you're handling people who are not happy , and you guys could probably you guys could do this with people who are even looking at buying into a system to handle the initial conversations and schedule them in with a franchise sales rep too . Correct , absolutely .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 5:47

I think that's it always comes back to me to peace of mind as you're looking in how you want to expand your franchises and the different capabilities .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 5:56

It's one less thing to worry about and it's something that it really can become the central part of what you do . It's one of the it's I always call it . It's the front door of your business . When somebody calls in or one's coming , someone goes to your website . How do you make sure you give them the right experience ?

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 6:11

So to have someone that's an expert on that and bring scale that you might not necessarily have on your own , it buys into that scale that you can get from having a much larger company who quite often cannot afford 24 seven coverage or people that are constantly on the phones . That lets you focus on your core business . So that's a way to I mean whether it's making sure your customers existing customers get the right experience . But really where we're seeing a ton of traction is to make sure we're capturing those leads so someone knows what information can be asked . How do we pull that into the business so they can focus on executing on it ? So we're really pleased about the conversion rate that we see on that and the uplift it gives to businesses .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 6:53

Right and and you know from working with a lot of leads myself having to call people so you get this contact information the hardest part for me was constantly following up and calling people and having the ability to have somebody that can handle that for you and handle that inbound was great . Do you guys have anything where you'll do outbound or no ?

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 7:17

Yeah , we do inbound and we also do outbound . We do outbound back to customers , but also we can handle dispatch as well . So if you have your own fleet or if your business has people on the go , then we can make sure that they're connected . So , again , that's something that's not too common , because we know that we might interface via text on their phone or different mediums to make sure that we make that real time connection , because we found is the timeliness of delivery of those messages incredibly important . So we really we try to focus on both the outbound customer as well as internal capabilities to make sure business is making sure all the connections , both internally and with their customers , are happening .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 7:55

So say , if I , if I'm a company or or even like a franchise broker and I have like 20 , 30 people a day that are coming in as a lead and I'm busy working with the people I have , someone could hire you guys to maybe handle that initial contact to just see if they'll book into a schedule .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 8:14

Absolutely so . If you look at consistency is very important on that , knowing that you're getting the right information captured consistently . But also what we found is we have a lot of technology integrations that we can use their differentiated as well . So if you have an existing CRM system , we can work with you to make sure , capturing that information and even integrating with your CRM . Some , for example , love us to go ahead and calendar their invites for them , so we can work with your Calendly or other similar platforms where we can help schedule times with them as well . So we found that that takes one level closer to the business that most people don't have , but it allows . Again , that makes sure that information is flowing seamlessly . So it's one less thing to worry about during the day .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 8:59

Right . What would you say is the timeline of if somebody was going to onboard with you and start using your services ? I know it's going to vary , but could you give us an idea of what that onboarding , the basic core steps of that onboarding , would be and the rough timeline variabilities ?

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 9:18

Sure , so it depends on the relationship and the integrations that we do . But we can be up and running as quickly as 48 , 72 hours . All it takes is having your calls diverted and we can write that script with you to make sure . So a light introduction or even a test trial we can stand up incredibly quickly . We have the people ready , the staffing is in place , we have sector expertise . So for franchises , for in-home services , we already serve different customers . That's similar . So we can come in with best practices . So you know when we can come and start coaching , what is the most efficient way to get that information . So we're not starting from scratch . So that's one of the benefits of working with a scaled partner , because we know what has worked and then we'll personalize that based on how you want to run your business . So we can do both quickly and incredibly personalized using the people and the technology that we have on the back end .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 10:09

Right ? Well , that seems pretty simple and I know that we'll have a button here on the side where people can reach out to your company and have an initial experience of talking with your company , either over the phone or through the chat here , and see what it would be like for them and how it would service them on . You know , you have the corporate side , you have the incoming potential franchisee side and then you have for all your franchise units where they're going to handle their leads and their initial customer support and can all be put into a CRM .

Driving Growth and Effective Teams

Lance Hood (FranPro) 10:45

I was going to ask you just as a side question , because we talked about kind of sharing some of your insights from your experience in the industry , and I want to ask you what do you think are some of the key factors for driving growth in a company ?

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 11:03

It's a really good question and you start to like I think it's really probably the people who are closest to their customers and know what those customer needs are are the quickest to react to it , and I think that's the biggest piece . When people get a little bit separated from that , you start to see that you lose that trust that you need to help to establish relationships and really grow and take off off of that that . I think it's focused on priorities . Everyone has so much to do . So when you focus and say , well , this is what the core piece of my business is and how it can interact and do get closer to those customers , focusing on that something I mean really transparently .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 11:42

I've struggled with in the past and it comes up from time to time of how do you know what you do best versus where can I tap into other , whether it's your own team members , other partners there's a rich ecosystem , especially in the franchise space , of people that can help bring you along and give you some of the scale and capabilities that you might not have had otherwise . So I think that's proximity to customer as well as knowing what is most important that you deliver right and then understanding where do you kind of round yourself out with other people that can help you do things right . I've always been key lessons that I strive to do my best . I kind of say , do it every day though .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 12:19

Well , I know you have experience in turning groups of people into highly effective teams and , honestly , that can be pretty hard to do . What insights do you have for people on helping to take a group of people and making it a cohesive , well-running team ?

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 12:36

Sure , it's kind of a make the joke sometimes . This world is awfully easy without people in it . Sometimes I think it's easy to overlook the human factor , whether you're talking about with your customers , your partners or your own teams , spending that time and making sure people get together and there's active communication . I think , again , one of the most common mistakes it's had is assuming . So I think it's easy to get buckled down on what's the next problem and how you jump into that , but making sure everybody's coming along at the same pace . So I think one thing that we're always trying to do is making sure all roles are clear , as well as what the vision is and the role that they play in it . So I think it's easier to go like .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 13:21

This is what the day-to-day operation is . What I've found is whether it's for us , for example , a receptionist or a call center agent , or it's someone sitting in account management or in sales , understanding whatever one else is doing and understanding what the incentives are and what the core value proposition to the customers is is incredibly important . So if you start looking too much on the day-to-day , you lose focus on where you want to go to . So investing that time to bring everybody together or channels . Whatever the communication channel is , it pays huge dividends just to slow down every once in a while and make sure everybody's on the same page .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 13:59

Easier said than done probably .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 14:01

Right , right , well , and it seems like to stay relevant , you have to focus constantly on if you need to adopt or add new business models to what you do , new technologies to what you do . What advice do you have for people on how to think through and figure out which of these technologies or new business models might make sense , because you don't want to get distracted and go in the wrong direction . But if you don't continue to change and you're still trying to sell eight tracks nowadays , it's Hello , my big Macs player .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 14:34

Yeah , exactly , you're going to be left behind . So I think the status quo is an invisible sign that you're going away . You have to stay on the leading edge . So how do people decipher these different things , decide what's right for them ?

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 14:50

Sure , I think it's important , like I said a little bit earlier , that it's important to have focus and knowing who your customer is and what's their problems . I think everyone is very . It gets very easy to focus on your own needs or what you can do or how you need to improve If you're constantly looking at what is the problem that you're solving for your customers and then thinking what other problems do they have . Because that's one of the reasons we got so much into live chat , as we've talked about . We're trying to make sure . Initially we said virtual receptionist , that when someone calls in , how do we make sure that's connected to the right person at the business . But then we found those increasingly people love chat and synchronous and asynchronous messaging or a kind of look at live chat .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 15:34

Obviously , as we're doing on the site , we need to make sure that wherever a customer is , how do we be there and help be that intermediary ? Because we got ourselves in trouble initially when we said , well , let's just focus on phone calls . But we start to realize that we really start helping a business when we become that front door to their business of no matter how someone enters or who enters . So just don't just think about customers , for example . Just think about partners as they call in or vendors . It can be in nature of different people that need to come into contact and then making sure we're in the channels that that customer resonates with .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 16:10

I think another example of that is when you have fleets on the road , for example . That's an incredibly important to make sure that that technician's on the road they're not on their phone all of the time , or email is not a reasonable way . So how do we make sure we adapt to what their needs are , rather than the technology we have today ? And what we found is that's changed . We've introduced new products , we've tweaked our business model . Just when you really think about what the customer needs are and how you can solve those , it starts to feed into adjacencies that you might not have been into prior .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 16:41

Right , and last question is is that uh , do you have any metrics or numbers on what happens when people go from a static website to having live chat or having a uh , you know , professional , uh , virtual call center team ?

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 16:58

It sure is , um it's funny because I think people very quickly think about from a customer support lens which is incredibly important .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 17:05

The biggest thing is just making sure you have that avenue and especially in the digital space . There's so many metrics you can look at um and get an understand . Uh , I really the first thing I can keep coming back to is when you start looking at , uh , your sales funnel , and you look at that conversion and start to understand where that breakage is , you can start to see really where that starts to flow and you can see what interactions are going through which channels . So we look at conversion rate by channel . Um , there's lots of different .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 17:34

I'm trying to think of a very good key metric that we use specifically , but I think when I kind of when I blur my eyes , the most important thing is when , especially on the digital side of live chat , the most immediate question of what's the traffic getting to your site , understanding which pages they're hitting .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 17:51

So , as we were talking about before of , it might not make sense to only have live chat on your main page . Understand where the breakage is occurring and where you're , where you're not converting . Maybe that's at your marketing on your front page and making sure you're hitting up on the splash page , but if you find further down in that buy flow , if you're an e-commerce engine , you'll be able to say , well , it's at , really . That third step is where we're starting to break people . How do you engage that at that point and you can see where people are starting to fall out of your sales funnel and how do you engage with them . So the kind of the win in how uh has been a critical factor for us and you can change that really easily . Uh , with digital metrics that are out and available .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 18:30

Right . Or maybe , if your scheduling program has an error page , put it right there . So they're having a challenge making a purchasing decision and someone's right there to help them .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 18:40

So , and where does a customer not have all the information they need ? I think that's a great piece . I mean , you bring up from a timing that they might say well , I don't know my calendar , I don't know when I can get to that . If you can come in at that point and help reduce that friction for them and say don't worry about , we'll follow up with you and we can do an outbound call instead of you having a schedule right then , creating these options , uh , to make sure that they don't have to break away when they're engaged , because that's when you really see a loss of opportunity .

Excitement and Appreciation for Voice Nation

Lance Hood (FranPro) 19:08

Well , richard , I appreciate you joining me today on this call and , and I would tell everybody , uh , go ahead and uh , you can click on the link here https://Franpro . vip/GoVoiceNation , check out voice nation , um , or you can use the chat function here . Uh , the more I dig into this company , uh , the more excited I am actually , you know , using it myself . Um , I appreciate it and I want to thank you for your time .

Richard Colberson (VoiceNation) 19:33

No , thank you , Lance , and we really appreciate you , what you've done and , uh , you really bring to life what we're trying to , what we're trying to accomplish . So , thanks for your time and , uh , let us know and let's engage anytime .