01732 759725 20 TELEPHONY Making voice recordings for phone systems has traditionally been time-consuming and expensive. Gotalk.ai offers a quick and easy alternative, enabling users to produce AI-powered messages in minutes. James Goulding finds out more from GoBig Online CEO Simon Langford How it works Gotalk.ai is powered by API integrations with three key elements that it brings together in one white-label platform accessed via a self-serve portal and monthly subscription: n OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which automatically generates scripts in any language using information gleaned from the customer’s website. These include welcome greetings (e.g. ‘All our calls are recorded for training and management purposes’); on-hold marketing messages; out of hours messaging; and, uniquely, auto attendant scripts (e.g. ‘Press one for sales, press two for accounts, press three for support etc.’). The customer can select the ChatGPT scripts, edit them or create and upload their own; n Microsoft Azure’s AI voice generator, which lets users choose a voice to read their scripts from a huge selection of English and international voices; and n Soundstripe, which gives access to a portfolio of 8,000 music soundtracks from real artists, in every genre. Gotalk. ai merges the scripts and music together, so that the music dips as soon as the voiceover kicks in. Customers use the Gotalk.ai studio to edit, order and programme these different elements. When they are satisfied with the results, the reseller uploads the chosen recording into the customer’s phone system. “At the moment, the reseller gets notified that ABC Scaffolding has just made a recording and their support guys upload it, which is a five-minute job,” explains Langford. “In the future, we hope to link into the phone system so that as soon as the customer makes their choice, Gotalk fires the recording straight into the phone system, removing the human element completely.” Huge benefits Langford points out that the ability to create a recording in this way is transformative for resellers and their customers. “Traditional recordings would normally cost about £150, whereas this is a subscription model, so the customer will pay, say, £10 or £15 per month, giving them unlimited access and the ability to make as many changes as they like. If they have a special offer or an event coming up, they can easily create a new on-hold marketing message to promote it. Before, they would have to have put in a request to the reseller; the reseller would have sent them a link; they would have written down what they wanted; and it would take about two weeks to get it professionally recorded and sent back. Gotalk.ai does everything instantly.” He adds that end users love the flexibility and speed with which they can create scripts and recordings, which is encouraging them to explore additional use cases. “We've got estate agents using the software to create AI voiceovers for virtual viewings on Rightmove and car dealerships using it for voiceovers on videos they're putting on Autotrader. Customers are using it for videos they’re uploading to YouTube.” Langford says that Gotalk.ai’s self-serve capability is also great for resellers. “From my own experience with Berry Technologies, resellers tend to get swamped in the run up to Christmas, Easter or bank holidays with customers asking to change their out of hours messages – typically on the day before. Support teams would get drowned in requests. With Gotalk.ai, the customer self-serves, which removes all that support burden from the reseller. That is a huge benefit.” Recurring revenue Above all, Gotalk.ai is a valuable differentiator in a crowded market that Langford claims can also improve customer stickiness and generate significant recurring revenue, as a calculator on the company website shows. “The Holy Grail is to get the reseller to roll out Gotalk to its entire customer base. They put it on a 30-day trial and the customers can choose whether they want GoTalk.ai is what happens when an entrepreneur, a bit bored after selling his telephony business, meets a telecoms engineer and coding enthusiast who has developed a way to automate the expensive and tedious task of creating recorded messages for phone systems. Simon Langford, who sold Berry Technologies in 2022, instantly saw the potential of Kyle Brown’s solution for speeding up and simplifying the production of voice recordings in a wide range of use cases, including telephone systems, social media snippets and YouTube videos. Over the next 8 or 9 months he and Brown refined the latter’s initial concept, creating and launching a platform, GoTalk. ai, that enables customers to automate the writing and production of phone system greetings, on-hold marketing and IVR prompts, with musical backing, in minutes not weeks and for pence not hundreds of pounds. It quickly became apparent that focusing on telephony resellers would enable GoBig Online to grow more quickly and that going through distribution would enable it to reach many more partners, while leveraging distributors’ sales and marketing expertise. Gotalk.ai has already secured a distribution agreement with The Trust Group, including Trust Distribution, and Telcoinabox. With other distribution agreements in the pipeline, it is well placed to make further inroads into a reseller community looking for differentiation, recurring revenue and reduced customer churn. The power of AI
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