label: Colin Heilbut - Rime

text: Hey good morning very nice to meet you all. You have such a beautiful office


text: Is there like a story behind this? How long have you guys been here?


label: Voice 2

text: Oh, thanks. We miss


text: in about six months ago. We wanted a space that feels a bit more like a workshop


text: than a showroom.


text: Nothing fancy. We just like being close to the teams.


text: Cool. We like hearing that. It's


text: cozy, but a little chaotic too.


text: Anyway


text: That's


text: a I


text: I


text: So what you're saying?


text: Oh, sorry. Just curious how that trip in was.


text: Oh, I'm just in an Airbnb down the street, so not too bad at all.


text: Anyway It's okay.


text: I love to kick things off, just a brief introduction myself and then can go over


text: a few items for the day.


text: So my name is Colin, as you might know. I'm the founding account executive here at Rhyme. Relatively new to the company,


text: but some Right.


text: So you don't have to interrupt quite so much.


text: I've actually been in speech a number of years now. I was actually


text: the first employee at a company named Deepgram.


text: Okay. And more recently then spent


text: few years at intelligent voice in high security speech recognition.


text: Mhmm.


text: And I just got back from France where I was helping out a voice AI lab


text: there.


text: So perhaps we could do a quick round of intros on your side just


text: with your roles and a little bit of information as to


text: how voice the voice product touches or or relates to what you're doing.


text: Sounds good.


label: Maya

text: Thanks, Colin. I'm Maya. I'm the director of customer experience.


text: I look after post sale and the ongoing customer experience


text: voice is a big thing for us there.


label: Jordan

text: Hi, I'm Jordan. I manage contact


text: center operations for the warranty site, day to day


text: handling escalations and making sure customers get


text: what they need.


label: Sam

text: And I'm Sam, I handle partnership


text: and procurement. So my world is risk,


text: contracts, visual guardrails.


text: Great. It's a pleasure to meet you all. So I guess we've got the introductions out of the way.


text: I'll kind of go over


text: the the method I'll be going through today, then just tell you a little bit about and how our


text: generally able to help companies like Assurant.


text: Then really the bulk of the time today should be about you and kind of the the


text: challenges you're facing or kind of your


text: interest in potentially improving your technology and what that looks like.


text: Afterwards, they did prepare a short live demonstration featuring our


text: technology in your problem area.


text: And, throughout the whole conversation, please, you know, interrupt anytime if you have a


text: questions or would like me to to go a bit deeper on anything, then I I save some


text: time for that at the end as well as a little bit of time for potential next steps. Does that agenda work for everyone?


text: Sounds good.


text: Yeah. See that. One super quick note. I've built a custom digital whiteboard for today


text: call. It's completely secure and encrypted.


text: But it's it just allows me to be able to track what's


text: being said more more carefully. When you identify particular


text: pain points or success criteria, those just get specifically


text: noted via AI.


text: And, yeah, I just have the world's worst handwriting. So this is


text: just a personal tool. I hope you don't mind, and we'll we'll get rid of it afterwards.


text: Oh, no problem.


text: Gosh, a little bit about us. We are now


text: nearly four years old, started by Lilly, Brooke and Ari's.


text: And


text: how do h I t b d, how do you pronounce name r e e a r e s?


text: Ari, like Ari's.


text: Like Ari from, that show?


text: Entreage? Exactly.


text: Yeah, that's the one.


text: So, yes, sounded by Lilly Brokenari.


text: So a strong linguistics background primarily.


text: With a strong technical background too. But really what differentiates our approach


text: amongst other things


text: You know, we have a


text: Rather than using the same generic


text: data sets from actors and from podcasts,


text: We've incorporated thousands of hours of custom


text: made recordings from our studio.


text: We put a lot of care into how those were


text: collected and the exact conversations that were were said.


text: To also make sure that they're just natural in the way the real speak and the


text: the result of that is so, obviously, we're we're starting to to


text: power tens of millions of calls every month for


text: some of the largest restaurant chains in the world, in aviation, healthcare, telecom, enterprise. So


text: it it really is showing great results even though it was tremendous amount of effort that we had to put in.


text: One recent result actually was about a 100,000 calls that were made as part of a test


text: of


text: system as well as some of the leading competitors.


text: The most obvious result is


text: most people do not like receiving cold calls. So


text: I can tell you that certainly.


text: And so even humans get hung up on a lot.


text: But interestingly, of all of the solutions, we had the lowest hang up rate.


text: So folks actually were most engaged with us. We were also


text: fastest to consistently complete the survey about politics.


text: Institutions are certainly one data point, and maybe even more relevant to you as some of our larger


text: customers


text: You know, we had a 25% increase in the containment rate from a large telecommunications provider or 20% increase in


text: sales. You know, all of the word error rates and


text: expressiveness stats in the world as relevant as, you CSAT and NPS


text: and things that really matter. I'd love to dive into those more.


text: Speaking of which, what does really matter to you


text: I understand I had some very, very high level notes here from our partners at NICE that you had concerns about


text: voice quality, but that could mean so many things from prosody to latency to


text: even language use. So I would love to understand what that means for you guys.


text: Sure. Yeah. For us, it mainly shows up as


text: slightly off the intonation that makes Conex hesitancy


text: Sometimes the pacing feels a little robotic, especially


text: notestaker didn't get it.


text: Sure. So what we noticed is that intonation sometimes feels slightly off and that makes collars kind of hesitate Sometimes the pacing feels a bit robotic, especially when people are upset or in a hurry. And for us in the call center, it's when that uncanny kind of not quite human sound, that triggers I just want to talk to a human behavior.


text: Uh-huh.


text: And


text: so how out of 10 would you rate the importance of that problem?


text: Pretty high


text: maybe in eight It affects containment and CISA and


text: agent workload.


text: Yeah, but I'd had risks


text: and rollout complexity are


text: big factors for us.


text: Two, like we need to be certain that anything new


text: is compatible with our existing stack.


text: And doesn't introduce new compliance exposure.


text: Uh-huh. And, so getting to that uncanny, not quite


text: human intonation,


text: how would you measure success there?


text: I think less about


text: how many boxes we take and more about whether we see it


text: change in production metrics like


text: containment, post call surveys, and whether sentiment


text: stays steady or even improves a bit.


text: So, you you're currently doing, you have a lot of the stuff in place, sort of containment


text: stats, post call surveys, and sentiment analysis.


text: Right. Yeah.


text: That sounds super relevant.


text: Jordan, what about from your perspective?


text: Well,


text: if it really feels smoother,


text: and we don't see spikes in handoffs or complaints


text: that would be a strong signal for us.


text: And from my side, we'd need


text: clarity on data handling, vendor risk, and how any pilot is


text: fenced.


text: We're careful about not introducing new risk


text: surfaces unless there's a clear measurable gain


text: That makes a lot of sense. So,


text: when you say measurable game, what does that mean to you? And we've talked about a few measures already, but any addition


text: ones?


text: It's mostly


text: demonstrated improvement on agreed metrophsites site.


text: Not just potential.


text: So it still sounds like the the biggest thing is that, not so quite human intonation that


text: causes increased customer frustration


text: that's affecting CSAT and compliance and call containment.


text: That's number one, but then the the rollout complexity is a big one too.


text: And Yeah.


text: Anything else?


text: That's basically it. Reliability is important too.


text: And how reliable is your current solution?


text: It's okay.


text: Not amazing.


text: But are cautious. So when you say not amazing,


text: can you double double click on that for a moment?


text: Yeah, it works, but it's a little fragile.


text: We see drop offs when calls get emotional or messy,


text: and that means extra human intervention which adds cost


text: and inconsistency.


text: Cost and inconsistency is the impact there.


text: And so


text: what does that look like when it gets emotional and there's a drop off?


text: People start talking over the system. They get


text: and they might demand an agent Sometimes they just hang up.


text: Oh gosh.


text: Yeah.


text: So the, the success criteria would be fewer hang ups there because of,


text: and more more reliability.


text: Right.


text: Great. Anything else in regards to kind of


text: problems that would be really exciting for you guys to to solve today, even if you had kind of a magic wand and


text: things that you kind of really would like that maybe I know about in the road map


text: that you might not have read about before.


text: Honestly, if I'm waving a magic wand


text: I'd want more adaptive tone without us


text: hand scripting every edge case. Something that


text: flexes naturally.


text: And something that stays consistent under stress.


text: That's where we'd feel it most.


text: And for me,


text: Go


text: on.


text: Oh, sorry.


text: For me, a cleaner deployment path


text: If we can evaluate without a six month integration and the


text: success criteria are measurable


text: that just makes it much easier to green light


text: Speaking of green lighting, I wanted to get into this a little later, but maybe you can speak very briefly


text: your process here. Obviously, if something's exciting for you, I imagine you'd structure a POC


text: and based on success criteria, we'll get into that. But other than that, you know, how do how do you guys


text: buy software, at Assurant?


text: Sure. It depends a bit on the scope.


text: Typically, it's problem alignment, then


text: a limited pilot with clear success criteria.


text: If that proves out, then we go through security and


text: legal and standard review.


text: Right, and we usually start small.


text: So a slice of traffic, not a big bang replacement.


text: Mhmm. Yeah. And if the data's


text: gone,


text: Oh, I was just gonna say, if the day is


text: shows measurable improvement without, you know, a heavy lift,


text: it's a lot easier for us to get aligned internally


text: We just, we like


text: proof not promises.


text: And when you say aligned internally, are there particular decision makers or other


text: teams that also has to get approved by aside from the ones we've mentioned?


text: Typically,


text: the business sponsor plus


text: security and legal and procurement and ops If a pilot is clear and data driven, then it's easier for everyone to get on


text: board.


text: And the the average time you see that for technology that's really moving the needle for you?


text: Good question.


text: It varies, but for something that solves a real problem and


text: proves out in a pilot,


text: a few months rather than weeks.


text: But if the results are strong, that definitely helps build momentum.


text: Yeah. If it really works, we make time.


text: And


text: it's what what I'd love to do next, you know, based on,


text: some of these concerns in terms of the, you know, dealing with emotional complaints,


text: and


text: naturalness and reliability. I'd love to


text: show you a quick demo. I understand that phone warranties are a significant part of your business.


text: Yeah.


text: Let's try a phone warranty call right now. This wasn't set up by an


text: It was just me, the lowly sales guy. But


text: gonna give a live demo try and see what happens.


text: Sounds good. Go ahead.


text: ChatGPT, you can pause.


text: Pausing.


text: Hello?


text: Hi, I'm here.


text: Oh, ChatGPT paused.


text: Okay.


text: Pausing now. Say start whenever you're ready to jump back in.


text: Start.


text: How


text: can I assist you with your device protection today?


text: Hi. I'm calling because I got this


text: phone number from T Mobile about a problem with my phone.


text: I wanna make sure you get the right help.


text: I'm here to help with NoSTAR device protection.


label: Voice 3

text: To get started, can you please tell me the five digit ZIP code on your account?


text: Thanks. I verified you as Colin.


text: Your policy is active and covers accidental damage.


text: What happened to your phone?


text: When did the damage occur?


text: Gosh. It occurred at


text: two days ago on July 11.


text: Thanks. The damage happened on July 11.


text: Was the damage accidental?


text: Yeah, you know, I had this big presentation coming up


text: and I was repairing so hard. I getting a lot of sleep, and I'm just so


text: excited to meet these incredible people


text: And so I guess I was working on


text: a phone app, and I kind of knocked the whole phone right onto the floor and the screen just cracked.


text: I'm sorry to hear that.


text: So the damage was accidental on July 11 Does your friends still power on and work despite the crack screen?


text: Yes, it does.


text: And do you still have the phone with you?


text: Yes. I do.


text: To confirm your iPhone 16 Pro screen was accidentally cracked on July 11,


text: it still powers on and you have the device


text: Is that all correct?


text: Yes,


text: is.


text: Your claim number is COMDemo2049. The deductible for screen repair is $29.


text: I can send a secure document upload link to your phone now.


text: Would you like me to do that, or would you prefer to finish up or speak with the device client specialist?


text: I'd like to speak to a specialist.


text: Oh, and, Colin, before I transfer you, I just wanted to say good luck with your big presentation today.


text: Oh, very I'll transfer you now to a device clean specialist who already has your full summary.


text: One moment, please.


text: Hi, Colin.


text: I have your full claim summary here.


text: How can I assist you further with your iPhone 16 Pro claim?


text: En fait, est-ce que vous pouvez m'aider en français s'il vous plaît


text: Alô?


text: Bonjour Colin.


text: Je vois votre demand concernant votre iPhone 16 Pro.


text: Avec dommages accidentel.


text: No. I'm Do you have a French voice that you can use?


text: Colin.


text: I've sent a secure link to upload documents to your phone.


text: If you would like to continue in French with a voice that speaks French,


label: Voice 4

text: I can transfer you to a specialist who can do that for you. Yes. Would you


text: like me


text: to do that?


text: Oui.


text: Colin, I see you're back.


text: How can I assist you now?


text: Hello, and thanks for calling NorthStar Device Protection. This is a demo.


label: NorthStar's

text: And the call may be recorded. I'm NorthStar's virtual claims assistant.


text: How can I help you today?


text: I'd like to report a problem with my phone.


text: I'm sorry to hear that.


text: To get started, may I please have the ZIP code on your policy


text: to verify your identity?


text: Thanks, Colin. Let me look up your policy to inform your coverage.


text: One moment, please.


text: Your policy with us is active and covers accidental damage.


text: To report the problem, can you tell me the date the damage happened?


label: Voice 5

text: July 11.


text: Was the damage accidental, liquid, mechanical, or something else?


text: It's so embarrassing. I have this really big presentation coming up and


text: a part of it's a phone app. And so I was working on it and I got so excited thinking about the


text: amazing people I was going to meet. I just kind of knocked it off the table. The screen just broke


text: and now I'm calling you.


text: Thank you for sharing that, Colin.


text: It sounds like accidental damage.


text: Does your phone still power on after the screen perk?


text: Yes.


text: And do you still have the device with you now?


text: To confirm, on July 11, your phone suffered


text: accidental damage with a broken screen, it still powers on, and you still have the device.


text: Is that all correct?


text: Thanks Colin. Your claim number is CLMDemo2049 The deductible for a screen repair under your policy is $29.


text: I can send a secure document upload link to your phone number on file to help finish your claim.


text: Would you like me to do that?


text: No need.


text: Alright, Colin. Would you like to finish up here or speak with the device claims specialist for any more help?


text: Specialist, please.


text: I'm transferring you now to a device claim specialist.


text: Your summary travels with you so you want me to be presenting.


text: Oh, and before I transfer you, I just wanted to say good luck with your big presentations today.


text: Alright. I'll transfer you now to the device claim specialist who already have reports on it.


text: Une étape suivante possible, elle envoie un lien sécurisé pour téléverser des documents


label: Voice 6

text: afin de compléter votre verify-mail. Voulez-vous que je vous envoie ce lien


text: Non, merci beaucoup, bonne journée.


text: So what did you guys think of the voice quality?