Call bots: from code to voice, from voice to sales

Alexandre Jabot is a Digital Alchemist. It may be apt, given that the company he currently works for – Locuta – is developing the kind of product that feels like technological alchemy.

Except that, in the case of Locuta, there’s no chemical transformation happening; instead, the company is turning code into voice. More specifically, it develops call bots that can handle increasingly sophisticated scenarios, such as assisting customers with their utility inquiries or helping someone looking for a refund.

Now the company is using its alchemic skills to help with sales and business development, which led to it spinning off Starleads.

I met Alexandre at CES, where he talked me through how all of this has the potential to help companies. Interview below, edited for clarity.

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Could you introduce yourself and the company, please?

Yes. Thank you, Ricardo. My name is Alexandre Jabot and I work for Locuta. We are at CES to present a project called Starleads, which allows customers to create their own virtual agents.

Essentially, our call bots can respond to different cases. For example, if you need to collect any information for your business, or if you need to prequalify leads or have proof of interest in your product or service, you can use our AI to do it. Instead of having a salesperson making 100 calls a day, you can have our call bot do it instead. That prequalification of leads can help optimise sales processes.

How are Starleads call bots different from others available in the market?

The biggest difference is how much customers can customise them to their specific use cases. We don’t offer a “one-size-fits-all” call bot that treats every scenario the same. Dealing with sales rebuttals is always going to be different according to the business. So that’s a big strength of ours, it’s how much you can customise your own call bot.

What goes into that customisation process? Is that something that’s by your clients or does Locuta have to be involved?

At the moment we are in Beta mode so we help the customers create the prompts and the scenarios. But after a few weeks, clients can then do it themselves directly from the platform.

Why has Locuta decided to launch Starleads?

Locuta has been in business for four years and it’s a good fit for big, complex projects such as the kind we do with banks.

One day, we had a customer from Lyon, France, who approached us with a problem; they mentioned that their prospective sales database was unqualified, not least of all because a lot of people changed jobs during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

That led to us developing the first version of Starleads, which was a call bot calling switchboard numbers and asking the receptionist whether someone still worked at the company, essentially prequalifying leads. That project then led to customers asking us to develop more, similar, scenarios that the call bot could be used for. After a few iterations, the result was what is now Starleads.

How’s 2024 looking for Starleads?

Right now, a lot of Starleads’ clients are prospecting companies and data providers but we are open to working with any type of business. If a company is looking to generate leads, prequalify or verify information then we are capable of doing so. So 2024 is looking pretty good so far.

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