Welcome to Episode 82. Emerging technologies like AI are taking the world by storm at the moment with the likes of Microsoft’s Chat GPT, for example, and today’s guest, Soumya Mohan, is the Co-founder of Poised, an AI-driven app that I’ve been using for a couple of months now.
I believe it’s pretty game-changing for account managers to help them communicate on a much more deeper level with their clients. I invited Soumya to talk to me about it and share the features and benefits so you can decide for yourself.
When using video conferencing tools like Teams, Zoom and Google Hangouts, it really is a very discreet and helpful way to improve your communication skills, and it will enable you to connect with your clients on a much deeper level.
If you’re in an agency account manager or director role, and you’d like to enhance your client growth skills, check out my Account Accelerator training programme. It’s specifically designed to help you in your agency role and will give you a more systematic approach to client retention and growth. You can also schedule a short call with me if you’d like to chat about whether this is a good fit for you.
Transcript:
Jenny Plant 00:02
Okay, today, I am really excited to be speaking to Soumya. Soumya is the co-founder and COO at Poised. Now Poised is an AI powered speech coach that gives you real time and retrospective feedback on your virtual meeting. I have been using Poised for a few months now and I am so impressed that I have been recommending it to all of the account managers that I am training. Really excited to have invited Soumya on the show, so he can talk about it himself. Talk about the details, what it does and also tell me a bit about why he put it together and why he did it. So Soumya, welcome to the show.
Soumya 00:44
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jenny.
Jenny Plant 00:47
It’s a pleasure. So do you mind starting by just explaining a bit about your background and experience?
Soumya 00:53
For sure and I may be a bit more of an unusual guest on your podcast, because I started off, I mean, I grew up in India, but I have been in the US, in the Bay Area mostly, for the last 10 or 12 years. I started off my career as a software engineer. But soon moved into product management, which is this newish field related to software where you are managing the development of the software, the strategy, the roadmap, and the design end to end, making sure the software is being developed, that would meet the user’s goals and the business goals. And, yes, I have been in the product management space growing my career for the last 10 years or so before starting Poised, and I worked for a few different types of companies, worked at Microsoft, on their meetings platform, actually, which is called Microsoft Teams. So contributed to that, worked at Glassdoor, which you may be familiar with. You know, working for a lot of products to help employers better understand the company better, understand the hiring market. So products like that, I also worked in the energy software space. So a few different types of companies of different sizes, until around two years ago, I decided to partner up with a few folks and start Poised.
Jenny Plant 02:21
So how did that come about? What was the trigger for you to decide to do this?
Soumya 02:29
So this was around, you could say, around six to eight months after COVID happened. A lot more of the work was happening online, with remote meetings and stuff and I was exploring a few opportunities and as we were brainstorming, this idea, this vision of Poised really resonated with me, around helping professionals present themselves and communicate much better in online meetings. Throughout my career, I felt this pain point where communication is so important to getting things done, to having an impact, to moving forward in your career. I saw that but it was so hard to actually improve on it and then to actually take action on it. I can recount one episode when I was leaving one of my jobs after working there for three years, I asked my manager, what is one thing, maybe I could have done better here, if I just ask that question to do retrospect. He said, after a lot of pushing, he said that, maybe you could have been communicating much more confidently when talking to the executives in the company. I mean, this was something that was never shared with me before and something that was kind of a surprise. But, on pushing, I realised how hard it is to also share this type of feedback where as a manager, maybe you don’t want, or you are not sure how somebody would action on it, or how somebody would take it. So it is something that people are hesitant to share. So in general, I found it is not just me, so many other people are in that same boat where these skills are so important to getting things done. But then it is very hard to get feedback, which is really vital to improve. Then obviously, not just one feedback, but you need continuous feedback in order to make progress. Some of the other sources like going to a coach are so expensive, or going to some other training programme takes a lot of time takes a lot of money. So it is not easy to do. Combining all of that, plus, the fact that so much of the work was happening online, which created this opportunity. We thought that we could analyse these communications that are happening online automatically and provide feedback to people as soon as possible. All of this progress in artificial intelligence that was happening and we felt already a lot of it was there and it was going to continue to develop, which would really help us develop this product and make it much more powerful in the future.
Jenny Plant 05:12
It is and there are so many things that I want to play back, because I think for those account managers that are listening to this, and first of all, I would like to say, well done for asking for feedback from your employer to say, what could I have done differently? I think that takes courage and the other thing that you said is, sometimes managers don’t feel comfortable giving someone feedback on their performance on a meeting, maybe on a client meeting on Zoom, or Teams, etc. and it is difficult. So I think you are right. It seemed like the perfect storm, from what you’ve described, everyone has had to go online and I am not sure I was using Zoom before the whole pandemic, but maybe a lot of people weren’t, and you have just got one little box, that you are trying to make an impact, you use the word impact, which I think is fantastic. So tell, for those who are listening, who are unfamiliar with the AI tool, Poise, can you just tell us, how does it work? And what does it do?
Soumya 06:19
Yeah, so Poised. Today is a desktop application. It’s a Mac or Windows application that you install. Then it connects to your meeting tools, whatever you use, Zoom, Google Meet, it works with all the meeting tools out there pretty much and connects with your calendar if you’re able to.
It automatically comes down during your calls, in the background, and it starts listening to what you are saying and your video and starts analysing that privately, without telling others, that you are using this platform and based on that analysis, it gives you both real time feedback during the call on things you could action during the call itself. Like maybe you are speaking too fast, or you are speaking a lot and you could take a pause, or you are interrupting others a lot. So all of those different aspects. Then it provides retrospective feedback after the meeting, where you can dig into what you did well on, or could you have improved on maybe where you were not concise and how you could have been more concise or where you were low on energy.
So you can see all of those things in that particular meeting. Then because it is there with you and all your meetings, it is attending them and analysing them automatically. It is able to show you these trends and patterns over time as to how you are progressing over time, how you do in different kinds of meetings, where you are more confident or less energetic, and all of these patterns it is able to identify. Then based on all of that it also starts then recommending you certain actions, which we call challenges, that start bubbling up, these challenges which help you, in a more fun way, take care of a lot of these improvement areas, by working through them inside your meeting itself. So this is the whole journey of working through Poised.
Jenny Plant 08:21
I think it is so funny, because I have only just started using it for the last couple of months and I have been sharing it with the account managers that I am training, and I get a mix of reactions. Some people say, “that’s scary”, or “Oh, my God, I don’t want to know”, and things like that, is that a familiar first reaction that you are getting?
Soumya 08:46
Totally! Yes, we hear that a lot from our new users and people who are visiting our website and stuff, and we try to make them comfortable. One thing we actually hear a lot is that people say that they were afraid before coming into it, but once they start using it actually does not feel that intimidating. Maybe because it is not like a person giving you feedback. It is a software giving you feedback. So it does not come across as that judgmental and everybody has strengths and weaknesses. The product is not trying to just point out your weaknesses or really hone in on them, it is also trying to encourage and make it fun for you to work through this journey.
Jenny Plant 9:38
I think you’re absolutely right. What I have been emphasising to people is that it is private, no one’s looking at this stuff. It is just a machine. So it is like having an individual coach that is giving you real time feedback. I have to say having used it myself and I use it on all my Zoom meetings. I have been looking at my reports and see that often I am using hedging words. So I love how you get a little retrospective report and they pull out a clip and play your voice back to you where you have used hedging words, or, as you said, “am I using stories to engage with my client”. Because I think particularly when you are in the service sector, so we’re talking about account managers where it is your job to create rapport with your client, to make them feel comfortable. So you have got to set the tone. So I just think there are so many things about this tool that are useful. I have had feedback and I’ll be honest, it has said, you did not sound so confident in that meeting, or your energy was low. Now, who does not need to hear that stuff? I think, particularly if you are the one that’s trying to make your client feel comfortable, and trying to be more engaging with your clients, I just think it’s a massively useful thing to have and it is coming up right on your screen. So what else? Can you tell me about the tool in terms of benefits? And particularly with what people have said back to you?
Soumya 11:21
You said, particularly for account managers? Definitely,
a lot of our users are account managers or people who are interfacing with customers all the time and, as you said, building rapport is one of the fundamental goals for them in any conversation they are having. I would say, beyond that, I think influencing their clients, how well they can do that without just taking orders from them and in order to do that, I think it is really important that you are coming across as confident, engaging, you’re very clear, concise in how you are communicating. So all of the aspects that this tool is trying to give feedback on and measures on, roll into making you more and more effective with that. Another aspect is how, as part of that is building trust with them and making them feel heard. So that is another aspect of the tool, in two different aspects it is measuring, it is making sure that you are coming across as empathetic and coming across as a trustworthy person, that you are not interrupting them too much, you are not using too much sensitive language,
things like that. So yes hopefully, as you said, the communication with clients is one of the most critical things to be effective in this role. If you can get 5% better, using this product, it could have huge, huge benefits for your impact in your business.
Jenny Plant 13:02
That is such an important point, I think you are so right and you would think someone like me is proficient because I do a lot of my training on Zoom, etc. But actually, I am always learning new things and personally, I like personal development, I like improving myself and I am open to receiving feedback and you are too, clearly, if you asked your previous employer, what could I have done differently? I think I would encourage anyone listening to this to really check it out. Because, again, from an account managers perspective, a lot of our job is listening and the last thing you want to be doing is interrupting your client talking over them or talking too fast, so that they don’t understand what the hell you’re saying.
Soumya 13:54
Most likely a client is not going to give you any feedback on any of these things. So if you are just getting a black hole, and everything is going into a black hole, really, and you are not getting any feedback that is where it can really, I think, bring light to so many things.
Jenny Plant 14:11
You know, I just thought of something a little bit funny, the other aspect of being on a call with a client is not just energy voice, things like that, but, what about the visual part? I am curious. Well, two things really. One is, how can it? How can it tell that your energy is low? So that’s my first question. And then secondly, I suppose what I want to know is how is it going to develop in the future? Do you see it having additional capabilities to what it has currently?
Soumya 14:44
Totally! yes and that energy piece? It does that today, mostly based on, so we work with a lot of speech coaches who are coming from a high level, at Stanford, ready to record some of the big executives here and in the US and so energy is one of the big things they focus on to make sure these people are sounding inspirational or are sounding really confident. And the big factor is there is a lot of research behind this as to what goes into that. It is your vocal radiation, how much are you really in your voice, in terms of the pitch, in terms of the volume, in terms of your pace. So that is what really goes into energy along with the volume itself to some extent and as you said, it is so important on Zoom, especially because you are just in the small box. If you are really trying to get something across, then coming across energetic in your voice is really important and then, as you said, energy is also visual to some extent. So how are you visually? How are you coming across with your eye contact? When you are speaking how you are framing yourself in the camera, your body language, these to some extent are also super important.
Jenny Plant 16:09
Can it tell if you’ve got a door behind you with your dirty washing hanging on the back?
Soumya 16:15
Not yet, but easy for us to do, actually.
Jenny Plant 16:19
Oh, my God. that is hilarious. I have seen it so many times, because actually, it is about the setup behind you as well. A lot of people use backgrounds, obviously now, but it would be hilarious. So tell me what you have got planned for Poised? I would love to hear how it is going to become even more scary.
Soumya 16:40
Yeah, well, hopefully not scary at all. We don’t think of it like that. But, if you think about communication, it is all so broad, right? There is so much to do around being a better communicator. So we think there is just huge potential in terms of where the platform can go and develop. So a few different aspects of it I can talk about, firstly, is the type of feedback it provides, I think this can be just be much, much more powerful, especially around the content of what you are saying, the words that you are also using. So I think in the future, it can much more deeply understand the context of the communication and then provide feedback to us, maybe you could have said this instead of that, or you could have said this along with it. So for example, maybe even in an account management situation, where an account manager is trying to convince the client about taking a certain approach Poise could provide feedback that maybe you could have provided this example here, instead of just telling them the fact and that could have been much more powerful. So I think, yes, taking into understanding the context much better, and then being able to provide these cues around what you could have said, and that would be possible, but just like how AI is progressing, the kind of intelligence that can provide, but also the data we have, and being able to see all these conversations, and what is being more effective or less effective, can help us provide these sorts of recommendations as the platform improves. Second is, today, Poise primarily provides feedback and that is the way we help people improve, but I think improving a lot of these things, are new skills that we are helping users develop, it takes time for people to develop these skills. It is not like suddenly you receive this feedback, and you snap and you become an awesome speaker. So yes, help to make it easier for them to go through this journey. I think we can, we will be doing a lot more there. That could be in the form of making the process much more gamified and fun, you could say because it is always on, it is always in your meeting, it could gamify it much more, like okay, let’s maybe focus on your energy for this week and then taking you through that and gamifying it for you. So you are really motivated to put in that effort, day in and day out and that it’s fun and it’s not just scary or seems that there is too much of this feedback and demotivating or that you are not able to improve or something. But it’s actually fun to keep making progress towards those things. You are also providing a lot more tactics, maybe try this, maybe try that and providing all these different approaches you could try to actually make an impact and to work these skills. So yes, I think making that improvement journey much more easier would be the big step forward. In the long term, we also see this product does not have to just be in online meetings. We also see that it could be there with you in your physical conversations, maybe if you wear an Apple Watch, it could be an application on your Apple Watch that’s just listening to you, and could be providing you feedback through that. So it could be much more broader or even outside of online meetings, helping you with all your communication, verbal communication that is important to you.
Jenny Plant 20:18
Oh, my goodness, this is so exciting. I love the idea of making it more fun and for people that particularly are competitive, I can see that maybe within a company, you could invite your colleague to take part in, as you say, look at our use of hedging words, who can use the less hedging words and filler words? I love that it is such a good idea. And then longer term, my goodness, physical conversations as well, that is a really good idea. I was also thinking that there may be incidences, and you have probably already explored this, where you have companies who want to give this tool to their sales teams. As presumably, they have their own key messages that they like their sales team to use in sales conversations. And I am just wondering if there was an option to have a company specific version of Poised where you would programme in, you know, when you described this particular feature of our product, or when you described our services, you failed to mention that the company had been around for 100 years or something like that. Can you see that there would be a need for this in a company specific environment?
Soumya 21:46
Yes, totally. We are just starting to talk to companies to understand some of those needs. So definitely, but I see the potential. I think that with a lot of the sales tools and people already have a lot of these sales tools, that are providing some of the feedback today where they are trying to enforce this messaging. We are trying to see where the point is split among the ecosystem of tools that the field team uses today. But definitely trying to understand that and move more towards that direction.
Jenny Plant 22:17
So Soumya, you are very, obviously, very plugged into the AI space. Tell us where you think this is going to go in the future. I would love to hear your thoughts on trends. Maybe what you are seeing, what other things that you are you and your colleagues and network working on?
Soumya 22:34
It is always hard to predict the future. But I think I can just say what may happen. Even in the last six months, a year or two, I feel like a lot of the AI has had so many new products or services that have come out that are surprising, and nobody had expected that to happen so quickly. So that is why I am saying it is really hard to say how fast things will progress in the future, and maybe we will hit a bit of plateau at some point, it will take some more time to for things to develop. But one thing I think, and most of us at Poise really believe is that there is a lot of narrative around AI just taking away jobs or automating everything, but I do feel that, it is much more about augmenting people, and then making AI being really a tool for them and a superpower for them. That it really makes their job easier, may increase the impact as to what they work on and make them 10x more effective than what they were in the past, then you would say it is taking away a lot of jobs. And that is what we are really trying to do at Poise in some sense, in terms of making them a much, much stronger communicator. That is how I see AI evolving in more and more of those areas. If you think about anybody’s daily job, what are some parts of it that are hard for them or that are maybe even boring for them and drudgery for them? AI can automate those kinds of tasks and then where it’s hard for them to get good at it, it can really help them make a difference. In terms of evolving I think maybe you and your listeners may have heard about ChatGPT for example, which has become really, really popular. But you could see that being applied to so many different things. And I mean, I have and the base of it is just like Google Search, which we all use so regularly and how that will be much more powerful if it’s able to deliver to you really succinct answers without you searching for things of what you want and that is actually accurate, which it is not today, but I think it will advance to a level where it could guarantee you that it is accurate. One place where I think it will improve more and is more understanding really of the context of what you are asking it to do, and then being much, much more smarter around it. And that is how I also mentioned how we could leverage Poise at that point, understanding the context of the conversation that is happening and then in the context in which somebody said some things, being able to provide them much, much more personalised, important feedback in that instance. Yes that’s my two cents there.
Jenny Plant 25:37
Very exciting I think, Chat GPT, yes, absolutely, my network has blown up. We are all using it for different reasons. Recently, for example, I have drafted some landing pages for my website and drafted emails, I have done research for case studies too for my training. I know there are lots of people using it in different ways. And I was just keen to see, obviously, ChatGPT is Microsoft, isn’t it?
Soumya 26:06
Yes and it’s mostly backed up to Microsoft. Google came out with its own thing pretty recently.
Jenny Plant 26:13
Any thoughts on that? Because I have just been looking at the launch and everyone’s saying that Google didn’t do such a great job. I don’t know what your thoughts are. It’s bad, isn’t it?
Soumya 26:24
Yes it is quite bad. But I would say that it is hard to underestimate Google, because they are really a pioneer in this field and they have been investing in artificial intelligence since whenever they started. So it is hard to really underestimate that they are behind them. And then they obviously have the brand and they have the reach of already being in everybody’s fingertips. So to take somebody off Google and use a new thing, that thing has to be 10x better than Google. Which I would be surprised if somebody is able to come up with something like that, which Google doesn’t have.
Jenny Plant 27:01
I agree. I mean you are right. Don’t underestimate, but I just think it is quite exciting to watch these two giants, just with a race to getting the best product to market and to get everybody using it, obviously.
Soumya 27:15
And that is always good for consumers like you and me.
Jenny Plant 27:20
Yes, we are the ones that are going to ultimately benefit, aren’t we? Any other thoughts? I just mentioned drafting website landing pages using AI, or, maybe an email sequence to your customers, from a marketing perspective, from a promotion perspective have you got any other thoughts on how AI can help marketers?
Soumya 27:48
Yes you already mentioned creating content, which is a large part of what marketers do. That stuff can be really streamlined, be much more efficient and coming up with much more impactful content there. But I think outside of that, there is also so much more data that marketers have access to now with how users are engaging with their content or with their website, or different parts of the ecosystem that they have created. And so AI could also be really beneficial in terms of automatically analysing that content for different things. So
the use cases and there are many, for things like predictive analytics, AI could be used to predict, okay, this prospect maybe reached your website, how likely it is that this prospect could be really high value for you. Then maybe you do something much more targeted for that prospect, because the AI was able to predict, based on past patterns, that they are much more high value for you as a prospect. A lot of predictive analytics like that, maybe predicting when a customer may be at high risk of jumping from you, based on the data patterns you’re observing and how they are interacting with you, maybe even how they’re having the conversation with you during a meeting. So there is so much predictive power in AI because there is so much more data now to glean from, to make those predictions.
It could be used for a lot of customer segmentation, again, from all of this data, which is the key thing that marketers have to do, understanding how, or what.
One part of AI is called unsupervised learning where you do not even have to tell it this is the outcome I want to achieve. It just sort of tries to make sense of all of the data it gives you and you give to it. So that is where customer segmentation could be powerful, where you could give to it the data and it tries to come up with what are some patterns in it. That could be different segments of your market.
Those are just some examples.
Jenny Plant 29:57
Great examples. Thank you for sharing, just one question that has popped into my mind, from a data protection stance, clearly Poised is, where you have given it permission to record your voice, not the voices of the people that you are talking to, how do you, I probably signed up and clicked, what happens to that data? Who holds it? Can you give us a top line policy just from a data protection angle?
Soumya 30:32
Yes, so all the data, all the meeting data that you are recording is obviously owned by you as a user of Poise. In fact, we also have a functionality where all data gets automatically deleted after a week. So you have all your meeting recordings and everything, because it still keeps the analysis part of it, which does not have anything super sensitive. But all the recordings get automatically deleted after the week. So you are not concerned about any of those things. But, yes, I think we have obviously been very careful, we know that this is sensitive, confidential data for our users. So making sure that we are not using it in any way or to have access for intentions of using it in any way in the future. In fact, I think this is another area for us to really keep investing in and making sure we are continuing to follow the best industry practices out there. One of the things we are exploring now is a functionality where the data does not even leave your devices. So all the analysis just happens on your device and it’s all stored on your device and nothing is going to the clouds so you are even more assured that the data is not going to go anywhere, in any way.
Jenny Plant 31:53
That’s a great idea, actually, because then hopefully, it will encourage people to think that no one is looking at this, this is just me. Do you have I mean, we have talked about different use cases for AI and how it’s evolving and how it is particularly useful for marketers maybe in looking at their data. Obviously, my audience are agencies that are supporting marketers. Do you have any thoughts on how they could embrace AI?
Soumya 32:27
Yes, I think the agencies themselves are obviously a large part of them, what they’re doing is marketing. So all of these use cases we discussed are very relevant for them. But outside of that, as I said, a lot of what AI helps with is the jobs you do not want to do, or, not a core of your job. So just automating all of those things, I think it’s going to be really useful with AI, say, a lot of the HR stuff that you are doing could be the sort of tools that are becoming more and more advanced by incorporating AI into them that could be useful for that. So, all of these different sorts of functions that are involved in maybe augmenting an agency can be automated away, whether that’s HR, whether that’s operational work, or legal, all of these things. For example, I recently came across a tool that automates new employee onboarding, very easily for any company, really, by taking in some patterns from past employees and how they are being onboarded. So making it super easy for new employees to join any company. So all of these functions, I think, will get much, much more automated and also much more effective, and certainly some other ways by having the power of data behind them.
Jenny Plant 33:16
That’s interesting. So how does it actually onboard employees?
Soumya 34:00
In the sense of giving them all the resources that they would need to get started with them, and giving them access to that – giving them access to these are the people you should meet, giving them access to all the different systems, IT systems within the company and all of those things happening in an automated fashion.
Jenny Plant 34:21
That would save so much time, wouldn’t it? And what would you need to do to set that up? Are these programmes that you buy?
Soumya 34:35
I think it is obviously an evolving space. I would say, generally, it starts with the end state of it. That there is a programme that you can easily buy off the shelf and really plug into your company and it is super easy to use. That is where it will probably reach pretty soon, but you could see some of the early adopters hacking it together themselves, Where there is a lot of AI based tools that you can hack together yourselves to make it work for you and then have no code tools, where you do not even need to code to use these tools. Then like Zapier and things like these, where you could hook them together to make a system.
Jenny Plant 35:18
Gosh, it just feels like there is so much opportunity here. And, like you did is to identify what the pain point is. Because as you said, HR is a hugely, sometimes, cumbersome process, no one has got time to dedicate to it because they are too busy working on the business or getting new business. So anything that is repetitive or a process that could be speeded up, I think is a great thing. So, Soumya, this has been fascinating. Are there any questions that I have not asked you that I should have done or anything that you can share with my audience that you think would be useful?
Soumya 35:56
No, I think we have been pretty thorough and I would just encourage you and obviously everyone, to try out Poise. Give it a try. Don’t be shy or afraid and we would love to get any feedback from folks. We are still, I think, early in our journey, we have a long way to go in terms of developing the platform and you will see a lot more powerful features coming in. So we are always looking for feedback. Do reach out to me personally, if you have any feedback at soumya@poised.com. But yes, it has been great having been part of this, and I think the audience you have is a great use case for the product we are developing. I am excited to have more of them using Poised.
Jenny Plant 36:54
So am I. Soumya thank you so much for sharing so much value and enlightening us and we will include your email details in the show notes as well. So thank you so much. And I will include the link to Poised obviously, for people to get signed up. I think there is a free trial initially isn’t there? And then there is a very low fee on an ongoing basis. So once again, thank you so much.
Soumya 37:20
Yes, thanks a lot Jenny.
