The AI Sales Coach Should Have a Clue: Venkat Malladi
The Vymo executive says a good sales support system needs to be a self-starter.
If life insurers and distributors want agents to pay attention to artificial intelligence-powered sales support systems, the AI needs to understand what the agents are going through, according to Venkat Malladi, co-founder and chief technology officer at Vymo.
Vymo is a San Francisco-based startup that runs a sales engagement system designed for banks, insurers and other financial institutions. It has relationships with about 250,000 financial professionals.
The firm offers to capture information about users’ calls, meetings and emails automatically, and mine the data captured to provide “intelligent nudges,” or ideas about steps that could improve sales.
Some agents might not be thrilled to let an AI monitor their behavior. But Malladi said, via email interview, that activity capture is critical to making “UX,” or user experience, positive enough to keep an agent interested.
“An average insurance agent uses six to eight apps on a daily basis: a calendar, a CRM, generating quotes, document sharing, commission and so on,” Malladi said. “Each of these apps is purpose-built for the problem it solves. So when thinking about UX, the most important thing is to unify the journey across these different applications, by minimizing context switches and repeated data entry.”
Vymo
Vymo was founded in 2013. In addition to the office in San Francisco, it has offices in India, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.
It has raised about $45 million in financing. The company’s clients include Allianz, AXA, Berkshire Hathaway and Generali.
Malladi
Malladi started out at Google as an engineering intern in 2004 and helped the company develop its mobile-based ad system.
He later founded Atome.in, a travel planning system for people in India, then helped start Vymo.
Borrowing the Fitbit Model
Malladi recommends that companies trying to develop support systems for insurance sales agents should start by looking at great fitness applications.
He noted that an app might record or collect data about metrics such as weight and resting heart rate, recommend that the user take 10,000 steps per day or exercise for 30 minutes every day, and praise the user when the user makes progress toward meeting a goal.
“They’re a perfect combination of data, goals, nudges, actions and rewards,” he said. “Likewise, applications that can offer value contextually to an agent’s day-to-day activities will see high adoption among users.”
Venkat Malladi. (Photo: Vymo)